WTF won't Labour, Lib Dems (& potentially the Greens) endorse tactical voting?

[Pipsquiggle]

This is obviously prompted by the by election result in Uxbridge. If there was no Lib Dem candidate, Labour could have won that seat (assuming their votes went to Labour).

I'll make no bones about it. I really dislike the Tories and want them out ASAP. Their policies have embedded generational poverty in so many parts of the UK. I reside in the home counties, a Tory stronghold seat - my middle class neighbours have zero clue how hard it is to grow up in a poor part of the country and thrive.

I want Labour to win a huge majority with other left leaning parties also getting seats. I would love electoral reform - PR and mandatory voting. The first past the post system is just shit and doesn't represent how the country voted.

YABU - Political parties should not endorse tactical voting, it's fine as it is

YANBU - Tactical voting should be encouraged as the FPTP voting system is shit

The one thing I’ve noticed about shill posters that is they don’t like hearing reasons for their party losing

They can’t debate it so go for the insults

Lame but predictable

@MrKenTuckey
Completely agree

You just can't take it that women's rights is a big issue for many female voters can you? I am a woman as are 51% of the country and I'm sick of being treated like shit, so you're damn right I'm voting on this issue.

And you think voting Tory is the answer? Not going well so far is it?

@SmartHome
I do get that gender ideology is a big deal to some people.

I do think women's rights are vital and fundamental to our society, however, I would want the following tackled first:
High quality and affordable childcare
6 months Paternity leave as standard
Girls the same proportion as boys studying STEM
Exclusion zones outside abortion clinics
Wage parity for women and men
Rape prosecutions to increase from their woeful state
DV to decrease ....

There are many others before I get to gender ideology semantics

You are talking to people in a state of such irrational fear that they don't want to think about any of that. The very definition of a phobia.

Yes, that’s exactly what I said.
Verbatim.
Jesus 🙄
If I had comprehension skills like yours, I wouldn’t be arguing on the Internet.

I think she was talking to GC posters like @Runningslow.

I’m a GC poster, and her post appeared to be addressed to me too.

I wouldn't vote Tory if you paid me. never have, never will. If I vote at all, it will be for a party that has the balls to come out and acknowledge that humans can't change sex, preventing children from going through puberty is abuse and that women and girls need protected single sex prisons, shelters and sports.

Parties do endorse tactical voting of a kind, they only endorse seats they want to win by having target wards where they pay for leaflets & allow candidates to go door to door, in none target wards candidates can only canvas by doing social media.

There are bigger more urgent issues than what is a woman, the economy, NHS, education, the cost of living, housing, to say just a few. If Labour can start to address those in their first term, then the country would be in better shape & things like gender issues can come later.

Really? So women can wait? Just let their human rights to dignity, sport, equality fall by the wayside for men to have good sexual feelings? Unbelievable that so many posters would vote labour with these ideas, Lisa nandy anyone?

Suzi boniface talking such nonsense on sky papers, joker. Thinks we can give ptsd support to people on barges when camhs can't even see kids for years. So silly. No grasp of reality just ideology.

When you think about it, Uxbridge voted for the party that came up with ULEZ in protest against ULEZ...

Firstly I acknowledge that by election turnout is normally lower than in a general election, but there was massive tactical voting in these three by elections.

In Selby the Lib Dems lost over 75% of the votes they received in 2019. The increase in Labour votes was lower than the Lib Dems lost.

In Frome, Labour lost 88% of the votes they received in 2019, and only half of these votes were picked up by the Lib Dems.

In Uxbridge, Labour lost 25% of the votes they received in 2019, and Lib Dems lost 82%.

The only performance that was actually good was by the Lib Dems in Frome. Both Labour and Conservative parties performed poorly, but they will never acknowledge this in public.

By far the biggest factor in all three by elections was the number of 2019 Tory voters who stayed at home and didn't vote, one reason being that whatever happened, the Tories would still have a massive majority in Parliament. In Selby, Labour are boasting about overturning a 20,000 Tory majority, but they didn't persuade these Tory voters to vote Labour, the Tory voters stayed at home, and Labour picked up enough Lib Dems tactical voters to scrape over the line.

Many are thinking that Labour are on course to comfortably win the next general election, but they face a massive task to persuade those who voted Tory last time to switch to Labour (or stay at home) and these by elections show there is little sign of them achieving this. The best news for Labour has been the self inflicted implosion of the SNP, but I still think that no party will achieve an overall majority in the next election.

Sidebar - Does it annoy anyone else that three new MPs are being paid their £86,584 salary from today, when Parliament will only sit for 2 weeks between now and 16th October?

There do seem to be a couple of pp with low grounds for making any sort of point.

The ‘weird fuckers’ one and ‘shill’ poster

For the latter it’s a shame some get invested enough to follow posters on mn around with personal insults.

I’ve had some in the past but happily they all buggered off, looks like the Hannibal poster is more committed. Lucky me.

That’s not John Curtice’s analysis. I think his is rather more reliable.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/tories-labour-byelection-results-uxbridge-selby-b2379395.html

We need some type of electoral reform, when the Lib Dems get nearly as many votes as the SNP but have 1/10 the number of seats then the system is broken.

Surely all it takes for Labour to win is for Tory voters to stay home. Which they are doing in droves. The Tories haven’t helped themselves by requiring voter ID at the polling station; lots of pensioners didn’t have a driving licence/passport.

1. Because it's an admission that you can't win - it's essentially defeatist.
2. There aren't that many seats where it would make a difference.
3. People don't like being told how to vote, or other people interfering in the democratic process. You risk the danger of emboldening the Tory vote.

And if you think about it a bit more, it's a hard sell. In most cases you're appealing to third-placed LibDem voters to switch to Labour in the cause of unseating a Conservative. The LibDems are already the smallest main party so you're inviting them to vote themselves out of existence. People who vote LibDem presumably prefer their policies to Labour's.

The Labour vote is already more efficiently distributed (in terms of fewer 'lost' votes) so their failure to win reflects the quality of their offering. You're trying to find excuses for a party that's failed badly in the past. And your solution is to move the goalposts rather than address their failings.

And don't fall for the PR nonsense. It's an open invitation to the extremists and populists who are firmly locked out under FPTP.

I agree. The only time I ever hear or read gender-critical views is on here. Among my friends, family and colleagues it's simply not an issue.