Any Tory voters here who are switching to Labour this time?

[mavismorpoth]

Curious because I think this rarely happens and I can't see Labour getting in, I don't think Tory voters change their mind. Am I very wrong? Do you/have you?

The last four elections I’ve voted Labour, Lib Dem, Tory, and Green. Floating voters are very real, I promise you!

Haven’t decided yet who to vote for next time. The current Tory party is clearly obsessed with internal drama and unable to run the country. But I’m very upset about Labour’s policies on gender self-ID and attacking private education. Lib Dem and Green policies seem a copy of Labour (with the Greens in particular insane, and obsessed with pleasing trans lobbyists at the expense of solving climate change).

So personally for my family we’re better off under a Tory Government, but I hate them, so keep going round in circles.

I’ll probably just keep it simple and vote for Kier Starmer. I admire him and Angela Raynor, even though they hate people like me.

Sod policies, I love that Kier bought his mum a donkey sanctuary.

Manifestos are a bit meaningless when the Govt appears to be utterly incapable of delivering them...

I thought I’d be a lifelong Tory voter but they’ve 100% lost my vote. The trouble is, I wouldn’t vote for Labour even if you paid me (well OK, a million might do it) 😉 There’s no other party that’s got any chance to get in so I might as well just not bother because it’s just dumb and dumber as the choices.

You might be FINANCIALLY better off under a Tory govt (as am I), but is your life any richer? When I see the state of the NHS, councils, state education, bills, poverty and hunger, I don't feel better off life-wise!

I think a lot of people have the blind allegiance you describe.

This is laughable - as if the Tories haven't "pissed away" all the money over the last 12 years. I can't believe anyone still tries to peddle this shit.

I will vote to get my MP out, one of the cuntiest of all the Torys. So it will either be Labout or Lib dem depending on who has the best chance. I would urge the Lib Dems to not stand against Labour and vice versa if that would result in the Tory getting in. Just this once, they need to learn a lesson

I'm astonished, ASTONISHED that your main issue with Labour is that they piss money away, when members of the cabinet and Govt have just cost the UK economy BILLIONS and made the cost of living crisis significantly worse without anything to show for it - except another disgraced PM. Not forgetting they literally funneled hundreds of millions of public funds into their mates (aka their own) pockets during a global pandemic. And got away with it.

Lib dems don't stand a chance of forming a government due largely to our crap FPTP system

My instincts are Tory and I'm also wavering. The next few weeks will be interesting

Annihilate the Tories at the next Election, Vote Tactically

Some posters worry that there will be a hard left 'coup' in the Labour Party.

That is SO not going to happen. The rules have been changed to make prospective candidates garner a larger number of MPs' nominations to get on the ballot - and given the modus operandi of the Labour party bureaucracy, if there's any fear of that not being enough they'll just change them again. Even with the system as was, Corbyn only got on it because a bunch of MPs who didn't really support him lent him their nomination "to broaden the debate", not thinking for one moment that he might actually win. Given the Herculean efforts - and the depths of moral depravity - that the right of the party have had to go to to reassert control, there's no way they'll be making that mistake again.

Then there's the fact that they're busily manipulating selection procedures in order to ensure there are as few left-leaning MPs as possible standing at the next GE, particularly in safe seats.

The socialist Labour left is over as an electorally represented political force. Starmer has ruthlessly and methodically destroyed it. The focus of that kind of energy on the street now is in trade unions and protest groups. I guess plenty of people here are happy about that, but people on the left are mostly pretty "meh" about whether to even bother voting Labour at the next election, except for those with an outstanding left wing local candidate who has somehow managed to slip through the net.

There are surely plenty of good reasons not to vote Labour, particularly for those on this thread who are confirmed natural Tories. But fear of reds under the beds at Labour HQ ain't one of them.

That's true, but lib dems winning large (by their standards) numbers of seats where they are in the running could lead to the best of all possible outcomes: a minority Labour government forced to introduce PR as the price of lib dem support.

For those worried about voting eg Labour or Green because of women's rights: Look VERY carefully at what the current govt are doing - or planning to do - in terms of ripping up EU laws which enshrine things like paid maternity leave, pregnancy/ maternity as a protected characteristic, anti discrimination laws, equal pay for women.

NO guarantees any of these things (alongside other workplace rights, environmental protection etc) will stay in place after 2023.

Who would you vote for then tigofigo?

Yep, that anyone can still present the Tories as the party of fiscal responsibility absolutely beggars belief. So much so that I can't even see how to engage with it. It's like flat Earthism or something.

Tigo I agree with you! It's like people are talking about the Conservative Party of years ago not this party of second hand car dealers that we have at the moment!
I've never voted Conservative but I can recognise that they have had some amazing politicians over the years, John Major when he speaks now sounds positively statesmen like & he's deemed to be one of the worst of them!

But now we have James Cleverly ( who most definitely isn't!) Nadine Dorris, JRM, Stephen Barclay, before you even start on Truss & Kwarteng!

It's a party split into so many fractions, the ERG, the One Nation lot, they can't agree on anything which is ironic considering Cameron called the Referendum to try & unit the party!

I can really understand why people have voted for them in the past but atm I have absolutely no idea how anyone can watch the news now & think they are doing a great job!

@RedAppleGirl so where has all the money gone ? We've had a supposedly fiscally responsible tory government for the last 12 years. Huge cuts to public services, local government spending slashed, especially to less affluent northern councils.
Other countries managed to provide vital financial support during the pandemic, if not more generously and fund decent public services. What's different about the UK ?
Why can't we let someone else have a decent throw at governing the country rather
than rehashes of the same inept crew who have crashed the economy single handedly.

I feel the same way about labour. That people are voting for something that no longer exists.

I do too. Blair’s Labour I got, but what it is now is a different thing.

Some posters worry that there will be a hard left 'coup' in the Labour Party.
The horror - you mean like the ridiculously hard right "Britiania unchained" takeover that's happened to the Tories?

For those chatting maternity rights - do you understand that EU countries differ in their offerings? I speak as someone who had 16 week’s maternity leave in the EU. Not a year of baby yoga and sign language.

I feel the same way about labour. That people are voting for something that no longer exists.

How so? Pretty much everyone can see what the Labour party is now: a centrist capitalism-friendly party with a bit more consideration for public services and a welfare state than the Tories, and a bit more tolerance of the taxes required to fund such things. Pretty much the same economic space as the lib dems, although maybe less "lib" on social issues.

A lot of people will vote for that because it corresponds pretty well to what they want. Some disaffected Tories (eg on this thread) will vote for it because it's close enough to what they want while the option they really want is disintegrating before their eyes. Some people genuinely on the left will vote for it simply because they have no better option, even though it's nowhere near what they want, and some won't bother or will vote Green or whatever.

But I've not seen anyone who still imagines that the Labour party is what it used to be.

What do you see as the main differences? Curious about this as Starmer has put so much effort into marketing himself as Blair version 2.0

^^This