To ask what stops you voting for Labour?

[Winniethepoohandtiggertoo]

No agenda I’m just interested as Kier is on LBC this morning…

For me it’s the TWAW magical thinking, and not being convinced they would prioritise average earners, which I want to happen.

Ah, that reminds me - removal of productive farmland so that corporations can plant non-native fir trees and greenwash away their emissions, that's another thing I don't like about Welsh Labour.

Everything.

I don't trust them.

I don't believe the answer to everything is "tax the rich" (even more).

I disagree with the private school VAT policy. It feels mean. It will have very real negative effects on lots of families while not providing noticeable benefits to anyone.

OH and women's rights. Both against predatory males but also not supporting segregation in minority communities to win votes.

That’s interesting re Starmer being more unpopular than Blair was! I’m assuming though that maybe it’s just easier to measure those metrics today than it was 20 years ago and perhaps that’s where the disparity comes from

Reading back on this thread one thing stands out to me.

People who will not support Labour at the next GE have clear reasons why not.

The "defence" from Labour supporters is overwhelmingly why people shouldn't vote Conservative.

I think it's clear that Starmer has got a lot of work to do to make Labour worth voting for in and of itself, rather than rely on the alternative being worse, especially when they have already lost huge swathes of their traditional support base.

R00K · Yesterday 10:52
Being able to feed my kids is more of a priority than the supposed erosion of women's rights under a theoretical labour government

Yes but if kids grow up with confusion from gender identity ideology and think they aren’t the sex they were born, and are then affirmed into a harmful hormone and surgery pathway, though that may not be not as bad, it is pretty grim.

So is living in a totalitarian state where it is not allowed to say only women have a cervix.

Ahead of Labour probably getting in, let’s offset the damage that has crept into law already by making clear in the Equality Act law that women with cervixes - not the ‘other’ kind - are the ones mentioned under the heading ‘sex’.
www.mumsnet.com/talk/petitions_noticeboard/4758082-petition-to-update-the-equality-act-thread-3

I’m not sure it’s the ease of measuring. Blair had personal ratings that were very high. A lot of Labour support is due to party disparity and Starmer is lower.

Their not the Tories is what will being me to vote for them.

Swing voter (fairly centric) who has voted both in the past.

But the current Tory government have lost their way and integrity. And that's being kind!

Like others I am conflicted. Do I vote for a Tory MP who fights for the environment, knows his area and is GC? when a vote for anyone else will be lost but signify a protest? When Labour won't speak out about these issues?

This would be a no brainer for me - I would 100% vote Tory in this situation.

At the moment, but could change;

1 All sound bites to get votes atm, no actual policies yet. Let's see. Not convinced by his character, say anything to get a vote

2 Starmer still can't say what a woman is. Beyond me how any woman could vote for him.

3 I'm not a socialist. Socialism doesn't work

4 A hundred other reasons

Might vote for my lovely Independent next time.

Rishi Sunak charismatic? 😂 I don't think charisma is the be all and end all but on the rare occasions you see Rishi doing anything he has all the charisma of a goldfish.

if Labour announce policy now, the Tories will take the ones they like/popular, as they have done already with windfall taxes

The government were considering windfall taxes some months before Labour announced their 'policy' in January 2022;

September 2021
Kwasi Kwarteng told MPs ... the government was considering “all options”, including looking at the Spanish government’s plan for a €3bn (£2.58bn) windfall tax on generators and energy traders

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/sep/22/windfall-tax-on-firms-profiting-from-gas-price-rises-an-option-says-minister

Labour's original plan was only a £1.2bn windfall tax in any case - January 2022;
The producers would be forced to contribute £1.2bn to help fund the proposals, through a year-long increase to their corporation tax of 10 percentage points.

www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/jan/08/labour-proposes-windfall-tax-on-north-sea-oil-and-gas-to-reduce-bills

Inability to know what a woman is.
Child grooming. Enough said.
No rights for women.
Immigration issues as it seems they will let anybody in with no background checks.
Angela Raynor and Diane Abbott.
Hard working and high earners would be taxed to the absolute hilt while those who choose to doss around can do so.
Much, much more, I worry for my girls if Labour ever come into power

They are not socialists any more. They are a bunch of middle class well- off people who have no more knowledge or interest in the lives of working class people devoid of inheritances than the Tories. I specifically remember New Labour and how they effectively destroyed the concept of working for a living. They seemed to think that the people providing a service should all work for free and did their real income elsewhere, coincidentally they also encouraged buy-to-let landlords and the mass immigration of both rich people and their capital from abroad. Inequality increased under New Labour. I am not seeing anything different now; the need for public sector infrastructure to support both people and business too simply is a destroyed concept in Britain.

I agree that Labour need to appeal to the working-class again, instead of middle-class public sector workers. How many Labour MPs have ever worked in a call centre or a supermarket or as a delivery driver? 40 years ago there were plenty of Labour MPs that started off as miners or industrial workers.

1 Womens rights
2 Kier Starmer ( I don’t trust him , sadly )
3 Just look at the mess the Welsh Labour government have made of Wales

How odd. Aren't public sector workers like nurses, teachers, paramedics all working class ? I'm a nurse on £16 ph, surely that's low enough to vote Labour ?
40 years ago before Thatcher decimated the mining and heavy industries there were plenty of miners and steel workers, now not so many who might become labour mps. Even union reps who often became labour mps have all but disappeared.
I suspect more labour mps have come from ordinary wc backgrounds than tory ones in any case. Even Starmer was educated at a state school and did remarkably well, went to Leeds Uni rather than Eton/Oxbridge.
Surely that's what the country needs - well educated, knowledgeable, grounded public servants rather than someone who hasn't studied beyond GCSE or equally, wealthy upper class types who've never stepped outside Tunbridge Wells. Funnily enough for some reason the tories get away as usual for being a party full of the latter...

Huge tax increases for higher earners despite a sizeable majority of higher earners already choosing to go down the private route for education/health etc. So they are doubly penalised.
Really disagree with nationalisation of services, the majority work more efficiently when semi-privatised.

I don't actually think the party we vote for makes a big difference in this country. Labour and the Conservatives like to make out they are poles apart but in reality they are both pretty centrist, in comparison with political parties in other countries. It's mostly rhetoric. You can see policy continuities across Labour and Conservative governments.

In 1997 I remember thinking Labour was really going to change things for the better, but they didn't. That's why I don't vote Labour. I don't trust them to follow through and I don't think they would really do anything positive.

1997 was followed by high employment rates, increases in wages, including the introduction of the minimum wage, 40 year record lows for NHS waiting times, record investment in schools and lifelong education, 11 years of continuous economic growth, Sure Start, Excellence in Cities, expansion of HE, European partnership initiatives and renewal projects and peace in Northern Ireland. All of which were opposed by the Conservatives. Vote Tory all you like but it is ludicrous to say nothing changed after 1997; for some of us we could feel included in society for the first time since 1979.

I don’t vote labour because they do not support Scottish self determination.

I’m a Scottish voter in Scotland, for context!

@Hobbi, the New Deal initiatives on unemployment had very limited impact on unemployment for lone parents and the sick/disabled. New Labour introduced the hated fit for work tests and the tax credit system incentivised part time working and low wages. Employment improved exactly the same amount under the Conservatives and Labour if you look at ONS statistics. It's simply not as rosy as you like to think.

(((Zionist)))

Icandothattoo
Even Starmer was educated at a state school and did remarkably well, went to Leeds Uni rather than Eton/Oxbridge.
Surely that's what the country needs - well educated, knowledgeable, grounded public servants rather than someone who hasn't studied beyond GCSE or equally, wealthy upper class types who've never stepped outside Tunbridge Wells

Starmer went to a grammar school that became private while he was there and he was given a scholarship to continue at the school. He was also a young scholar at the Guildhall School of Music.

So that his scholarship to school is similar to Rishi having a scholarship to Winchester College. Then after Leeds University Kier Starmer did go to Oxford as a postgraduate too.

In Tunbridge Wells, and a lot of that Kent area I think, they are privileged to have free grammar schools giving the equivalent education to selective, now entirely private day schools. So someone would not have to be a wealthy upper class type to go to one.

None of that invalidates the obvious successes I listed or stops your assertion that nothing changed from being incorrect.