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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

General election tomorrow - who do you vote for?

534 replies

IaminRome · 15/11/2022 19:12

I'm so sick of this government and reading a lot of the posts on here, it feels like on the one hand, so are lots of people, but there are also lots of other people who are very sceptical about labour or lib dem or greens. Added to which, there are so many issues at the moment, I know there's a lot of GC and what makes a woman, that is particularly important at the moment, and cost of living, private rentals, the environment, etc etc

So knowing what you know about the parties, if there was a general election tomorrow, who would you vote for..

YABU - Tories
YANBU - Labour
Comment for a third option

I used to be green, but I'm so not sure any more. So I think I'd vote labour, to stand best chance of keeping Tories out. (What I'd really like to vote for is a more representative government)

OP posts:
Thread gallery
8
BitOutOfPractice · 29/05/2023 07:04

Labour.

and @Colourfingers2 I’d like to thank you for possibly the best post I have ever read on mn. I look forward to receiving my solicitor’s letter 😂

Thebestwaytoscareatory · 29/05/2023 07:31

Cariadm · 29/05/2023 02:39

I know this is a very unscientific and imprecise assessment BUT going on the AIBU figures/percentages above there are approximately 120 people on this thread who would still consider voting for the Tories!!! 😱SERIOUSLY?! Where have you all been for the last 13 bloody awful years? How can you not have noticed that they HATE the 'State' with a vengeance and that the country is almost destroyed both socially and economically?! 😳They started as they meant to go on, with AUSTERITY, not at all a necessity but a purely political choice and now there are more FOODBANKS than McDonalds, millions of people are supposed to somehow budget on 'zero hours contracts', the NHS/Social Care etc is on the brink of collapse and you can get to see a doctor eventually IF you're lucky but don't expect to see a consultant, get an op, urgent treatment or even an ambulance unless of course you're dying but even that is no guarantee!!! There is practically NO ACCOMMODATION either to rent or buy and what little there is most can't afford!! 'SOCIAL HOUSING' is not even a serious consideration because, guess what, it's not 'profitable' and people who live in that type of accommodation historically DON'T vote Tory, yes REALLY!! They are the most corrupt, inept and generally dysfunctional 'government in living memory, they have casually and systematically STOLEN billions of pounds of tax payer's money from the Treasury for themselves, their cronies, business associates and backers and the complete and utter callous mismanagement of COVID😷was responsible for the DEATHS of thousands....BREXIT was a completely pernicious and unnecessary vanity project that has isolated and humiliated the UK, it has negatively threatened the economy, destroyed businesses and lives, taken away freedoms and hard fought for rights and privileges that many didn't even know they had until they were taken away!😔It will take years, possibly decades, to recover even after the inevitable happens and we eventually rejoin the EU!! 😍They have much of the Media, Police and Judiciary in their back pockets and our HUMAN RIGHTS are being eroded before our very eyes!! STILL HAPPY TO VOTE FOR THEM?!
🙄😡

Ah, but at least they claim to know what a woman is*.

*please ignore the fact that they are the one's who have overseen all the attacks on women's rights that so many claim to be the reason they couldn't possibly vote for another party, and that their policies and actions have had a significant and disproportionate detrimental impact on women for the last 13 years.

bamboonights · 29/05/2023 07:38

I'm spoiling my ballot paper as I'm now politically homeless.

MargotBamborough · 29/05/2023 07:40

Thebestwaytoscareatory · 29/05/2023 07:31

Ah, but at least they claim to know what a woman is*.

*please ignore the fact that they are the one's who have overseen all the attacks on women's rights that so many claim to be the reason they couldn't possibly vote for another party, and that their policies and actions have had a significant and disproportionate detrimental impact on women for the last 13 years.

KNOWING WHAT A WOMAN IS SHOULDN'T BE SOMETHING POLITICAL PARTIES CAN EXPLOIT TO THEIR OWN ADVANTAGE.

I cannot stress this enough.

No serious political party which wants to be in power should be pretending it doesn't know what a woman is. Particularly not when the cost to 51% of the population is so high.

Blossomtoes · 29/05/2023 08:36

Outline the cost for me then.

happinessischocolate · 29/05/2023 09:45

Cariadm · 29/05/2023 02:39

I know this is a very unscientific and imprecise assessment BUT going on the AIBU figures/percentages above there are approximately 120 people on this thread who would still consider voting for the Tories!!! 😱SERIOUSLY?! Where have you all been for the last 13 bloody awful years? How can you not have noticed that they HATE the 'State' with a vengeance and that the country is almost destroyed both socially and economically?! 😳They started as they meant to go on, with AUSTERITY, not at all a necessity but a purely political choice and now there are more FOODBANKS than McDonalds, millions of people are supposed to somehow budget on 'zero hours contracts', the NHS/Social Care etc is on the brink of collapse and you can get to see a doctor eventually IF you're lucky but don't expect to see a consultant, get an op, urgent treatment or even an ambulance unless of course you're dying but even that is no guarantee!!! There is practically NO ACCOMMODATION either to rent or buy and what little there is most can't afford!! 'SOCIAL HOUSING' is not even a serious consideration because, guess what, it's not 'profitable' and people who live in that type of accommodation historically DON'T vote Tory, yes REALLY!! They are the most corrupt, inept and generally dysfunctional 'government in living memory, they have casually and systematically STOLEN billions of pounds of tax payer's money from the Treasury for themselves, their cronies, business associates and backers and the complete and utter callous mismanagement of COVID😷was responsible for the DEATHS of thousands....BREXIT was a completely pernicious and unnecessary vanity project that has isolated and humiliated the UK, it has negatively threatened the economy, destroyed businesses and lives, taken away freedoms and hard fought for rights and privileges that many didn't even know they had until they were taken away!😔It will take years, possibly decades, to recover even after the inevitable happens and we eventually rejoin the EU!! 😍They have much of the Media, Police and Judiciary in their back pockets and our HUMAN RIGHTS are being eroded before our very eyes!! STILL HAPPY TO VOTE FOR THEM?!
🙄😡

👏 👏 👏 👏 👏 👏 👏

verdantverdure · 29/05/2023 10:02

bamboonights · 29/05/2023 07:38

I'm spoiling my ballot paper as I'm now politically homeless.

I'm a bit gender critical,

I think Brexit needs to be reversed as soon as possible in order for things to get better in this country. It's a millstone around our necks.

And I think the time has definitely come to take the climate crusts seriously.

Who should I vote for?

AnarchoTyrannosaurus · 29/05/2023 10:56

MargotBamborough · 29/05/2023 07:40

KNOWING WHAT A WOMAN IS SHOULDN'T BE SOMETHING POLITICAL PARTIES CAN EXPLOIT TO THEIR OWN ADVANTAGE.

I cannot stress this enough.

No serious political party which wants to be in power should be pretending it doesn't know what a woman is. Particularly not when the cost to 51% of the population is so high.

This.

Blossomtoes · 29/05/2023 11:43

verdantverdure · 29/05/2023 10:02

I'm a bit gender critical,

I think Brexit needs to be reversed as soon as possible in order for things to get better in this country. It's a millstone around our necks.

And I think the time has definitely come to take the climate crusts seriously.

Who should I vote for?

Whichever ticks the most boxes on your priority list.

MargotBamborough · 29/05/2023 12:20

Blossomtoes · 29/05/2023 08:36

Outline the cost for me then.

Well, assuming you're the not an athlete, the biggie is that if a male sex offender or paedophile wants to come and ogle you or your underage daughter in the women's changing rooms at your local sports centre, there is absolutely nothing you can do about it. Because there is no way of making a rule which allows nice trans women in but keeps people like Levi Bellfield out.

Basically, no more safeguarding. It's gone. All for the sake of a tiny number of men who think they're women.

verdantverdure · 29/05/2023 12:39

@Blossomtoes

My top priority is what's best for our country, and I think that's to get the Tories out of power and reverse Brexit.

I don't think the country can afford another five years of the Tories hardly bothering to govern unless it involves culture wars, taking away our rights and funnelling the country's money into their mates' wallets.

So I will vote tactically for whoever can get more votes than our Tory MP and deny the Tories this constituency.

I don't believe either the Lib Dems or Labour could be any worse.

Brexit will have to wait.

verdantverdure · 29/05/2023 12:42

If the Tories had a slogan about reversing Brexit I still wouldn't vote for them because they are liars and I wouldn't let them use me to cling on to power for a lie.

My vote can't be bought that cheaply.

Blossomtoes · 29/05/2023 13:31

verdantverdure · 29/05/2023 12:39

@Blossomtoes

My top priority is what's best for our country, and I think that's to get the Tories out of power and reverse Brexit.

I don't think the country can afford another five years of the Tories hardly bothering to govern unless it involves culture wars, taking away our rights and funnelling the country's money into their mates' wallets.

So I will vote tactically for whoever can get more votes than our Tory MP and deny the Tories this constituency.

I don't believe either the Lib Dems or Labour could be any worse.

Brexit will have to wait.

Same. That’s exactly how I feel about it too.

If anyone is desperate enough to ogle me @MargotBamborough, it’s fine by me. The cat can look at the king. I don’t think Bellfield had form for haunting changing rooms, did he?

MargotBamborough · 29/05/2023 13:34

verdantverdure · 29/05/2023 12:42

If the Tories had a slogan about reversing Brexit I still wouldn't vote for them because they are liars and I wouldn't let them use me to cling on to power for a lie.

My vote can't be bought that cheaply.

None of the parties can promise to reverse Brexit because it isn't within their power to do so.

But your reasoning can also be applied to my not wanting to vote Labour.

I simply don't believe anything they have to say on the subject of women's rights.

We have seen this before, with Brexit. In 2017 Labour tried to court both leavers and remainers and said just enough to get remainers to vote tactically for them, whilst not actually promising to do anything to lessen the fallout from Brexit, other than vague claims that they would "get a better deal".

Of course, those of us who understood how the EU actually works knew that the only way to get a better deal was to agree to continued free movement. Of course Labour weren't going to admit to that, because it would have required them to come off the fence and say to leavers, "Sorry, but we can't control EU immigration AND have economic prosperity, and we think economic prosperity is more important because it pays for stuff like schools and the NHS."

So they said just enough to persuade remainers to vote for them, and no more.

Then once the election was over, it was all, "everyone who voted Labour was part of the 80% who voted to get Brexit done", and so despite Gina Miller's landmark judicial review case, Labour voted to give Theresa May carte blanche to trigger Article 50 without setting any parameters whatsoever, then sat back and did fuck all for two years, and then when she came back with her deal which was the entirely predictable result of the red lines she had set, said, "Wah wah wah, we don't liiiiiike it!" when asked to vote in favour of it in Parliament. But it was too bloody late for that, we were staring down the barrel of no deal.

I vote in a constituency where it is the Lib Dems, and not Labour, who have the best chance of ousting the Tories, so I voted Lib Dem. If Labour had had the best chance of beating the Tories, I would have voted Labour. And given what happened afterwards, I am glad I didn't vote Labour, because no one can accuse me of having voted to get Brexit done.

But this is why I don't trust any of these incoherent mumblings from Labour about protecting women's rights.

Have they explained what they think a woman is, other than the fact that only 0.1% of them have penises?

No.

Have they apologised for the treatment of Rosie Duffield and dealt with those within the party who have bullied her relentlessly?

No.

Has David Lammy apologised for calling women "dinosaurs who hoard rights"?

No.

Has Lisa Nandy said, "I admit that I was completely wrong about the prison thing. I really hadn't thought that though."

No.

Has Keir Starmer said Labour won't introduce self ID?

No. He's said it's "not a priority".

This is Brexit all over again. They're making carefully crafted, plausibly deniable comments about protecting women's rights and self ID not being a priority, in order to persuade women who are concerned about this issue that Labour aren't completely batshit, that they take women's concerns seriously, and that it's OK to vote for them.

Then when they get into power it'll be full steam ahead on self ID and "if you voted Labour, you voted for this".

As for other issues, I'm afraid I just don't see them as a serious party at the moment so I don't rate their chances of magically turning the country around. The vast majority of senior Labour MPs were elected post 2010 and have zero experience of being in government. (That in itself is an argument against the first past the post system and in favour of PR and pretty much permanent coalitions. The current system means that you get a decade or more of one party which remains in power until everything is shit and people vote for change, and then they are replaced by a new crop of people who largely have no government experience.) Obviously their lack of experience isn't a reason not to elect them, and perhaps they will get into power and fix everything. Perhaps their legacy will be halting the cost of living crisis and saving the NHS. Perhaps they will even manage to get us back into the EU, against all the odds. But something tells me that the people who keep insisting that women can have penises are not the heroes and heroines we need right now, and they are likely to be a disappointment all round.

MargotBamborough · 29/05/2023 13:37

Blossomtoes · 29/05/2023 13:31

Same. That’s exactly how I feel about it too.

If anyone is desperate enough to ogle me @MargotBamborough, it’s fine by me. The cat can look at the king. I don’t think Bellfield had form for haunting changing rooms, did he?

You would be happy to strip naked in front of a sex offender, and for your young daughters to do so?

Wow. Just wow.

FilthyforFirth · 29/05/2023 13:39

Labour

AnarchoTyrannosaurus · 29/05/2023 14:13

Blossomtoes · 29/05/2023 13:31

Same. That’s exactly how I feel about it too.

If anyone is desperate enough to ogle me @MargotBamborough, it’s fine by me. The cat can look at the king. I don’t think Bellfield had form for haunting changing rooms, did he?

It's not fine by me. And it's not fine for my teenage daughters either. Which is why there isn't a chance in hell I'll be voting labour.

loislovesstewie · 29/05/2023 14:31

And you don't give away another person's dignity because you are fine being ogled.

CabernetSauvignon · 29/05/2023 15:48

MargotBamborough · 28/05/2023 18:35

Why should we have to choose between women's rights and child safeguarding and those other issues?

Labour should be committed to all those things.

And the women's rights and child safeguarding issues aren't even things that cost money. All the need to do is say no to some spoilt brats who think everything is about them. The number of women who care about and need single sex spaces is much higher than the number of trans people, so Labour should be taking our side as a matter of electoral arithmetic if nothing else.

So should elected governments never consider the rights of minorities if the electoral arithmetic is against it?

MargotBamborough · 29/05/2023 15:55

CabernetSauvignon · 29/05/2023 15:48

So should elected governments never consider the rights of minorities if the electoral arithmetic is against it?

This would be a really excellent point if there were actually any rights trans people don't have, which everybody else has.

But there aren't.

What they want is to trample over the rights of the majority.

CabernetSauvignon · 29/05/2023 15:56

MargotBamborough · 29/05/2023 12:20

Well, assuming you're the not an athlete, the biggie is that if a male sex offender or paedophile wants to come and ogle you or your underage daughter in the women's changing rooms at your local sports centre, there is absolutely nothing you can do about it. Because there is no way of making a rule which allows nice trans women in but keeps people like Levi Bellfield out.

Basically, no more safeguarding. It's gone. All for the sake of a tiny number of men who think they're women.

As my local sports centre only offers cubicles to change in, how is anyone going to ogle us?

How effective are the rules in keeping the equivalents of Bellfield out if they want to come in to supposed safe spaces?

TiredOfCleaning · 29/05/2023 15:56

I will hold my nose and vote Tory.

Fucking useless bit labour and the Lib Dems stand for nothing feasible.

It's a joke

HappySonHappyMum · 29/05/2023 15:58

None of them - if they can't work out what an actual women is then they won't have any policies that will apply to me.

FifteenQuarter · 29/05/2023 15:58

I will probably spoil my paper, with nothing exciting.

MargotBamborough · 29/05/2023 16:02

CabernetSauvignon · 29/05/2023 15:56

As my local sports centre only offers cubicles to change in, how is anyone going to ogle us?

How effective are the rules in keeping the equivalents of Bellfield out if they want to come in to supposed safe spaces?

Before all this nonsense kicked off, if a man entered a women's toilet, changing room or shelter, women could ask them to leave, scream and run away, complain to the person on reception, ask security to have them removed. The question of them being in women's prisons or women's sports wouldn't even have arisen.

Now we are supposed to just accept it. So if someone like Levi Bellfield enters a women's single sex space for the purpose of finding someone to attack, we cannot say anything. He cannot be challenged. Because he might be a trans woman and so we would be committing a transphobic hate crime to question his right to be there.

By the way, not all changing rooms are arranged into cubicles. Communal changing rooms do still exist.

Can you offer a suggestion as to how we make these spaces inclusive of both Muslim women and male women? Because I can't think of a way.

Including men in women's spaces - even men who believe they are women - means some actual women are forced to self exclude. Shame on you if you are OK with that.

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