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

You must not know anyone who works in education or health care then.

Prof Curtice's analysis is not far from mine:

“Both our two biggest party leaders have been left with something to think about.”

"Labour must ask why its hold on voters is apparently so weak"
"The Tories still have an awful long way to go before they look as if they might have a chance of being able to retain power”.
“The Labour Party should be the largest party in the next parliament”.
He predicted that Labour would win 312 seats meaning it would be 14 short of an overall majority. The Conservatives would win 226 seats.

I am a single-issue, tactical voter. Have been for about a decade. I am in Scotland, my main aim is voting for whoever is best placed to give the SNP a kicking. That might be Labour, COnservative or Lib Dem depending on whether it's a general election or Scottish parliament election.

I don't agree with everything any party says and certainly don't agree with the Lib Dem stance on sex/gender. But the independence issue is more important at present.

Sorry, all I got from your post was “I, I. I. Me, me, me”. You’d think an adult would realise that people vote differently for a variety of reasons.

It’s miles away from yours. At no point does he suggest that electoral success in Selby or Frome was due to Tories staying at home. His predictions - opposed to his analysis - aren’t very accurate. He predicted last week that both Selby and Frome would be close run and the Tories might hang on in Selby by the skin of their teeth.

There was a good comment in the Guardian comments section yesterday. I can’t be bothered hunting for it, but the gist was that when many Labour voters suggest other people tactically vote, what they actually mean is “you guys should see the light and vote for the correct party”.

Even though I am a Labour voter myself, I can sense a definite whiff of that from many of my fellow Labour voters, and I can see it would be pretty off-putting

I disagree. Labour voters in the West Country are likely to vote LibDem in droves in the next GE having seen how successful a tactic it was on Thursday. Tactical voting means exactly that - a vote for whichever party is most likely to prevent a Tory victory in a given seat.

I got told off by the same poster who laid into you for suggesting that voters in Uxbridge and South Ruislip had been swayed by the Labour mayor of London extending the ULEZ to their area, which is classically suburban in nature.

I was WRONG because it was apparently the Tories who insisted on this and poor old Sadiq Khan had to carry the can. As proof, they quoted a letter to him from the ministry of Transport asking for "proposals to extend the scope of the ULEZ". It clearly wasn't an order to extend it to Uxbridge but nevertheless, was presented to me as a gotcha.

I still refuse to believe that political parties are paying daft buggers to argue anonymously on discussion boards late into the evening.

It clearly wasn't an order to extend it to Uxbridge but nevertheless, was presented to me as a gotcha

It clearly wasn’t an order to extend it everywhere except Uxbridge either.

This is an interesting article on Starmer and Khan. It also highlights the fact that Starmer doesn't like any MP or Mayor going off message. The northern mayors clashed with Starmer a couple of weeks ago and everything suggests that he no longer supports regional mayors and local democracy. The more I see of Starmer, the less I like it and I don't know what the current Labour Party is for. If he can't support women, won't reverse the 2 child policy to bring children out of poverty, and won't trust local politicians to know the best way to implement policy I do worry there will be little to no difference between the Tories and Labour. I am absolutely not a Corbynite and I understand Starmer wants to be seen as solid and sensible to get elected but at this rate he will get the Tory votes and lose the Labour ones.

www.onlondon.co.uk/jack-brown-starmers-response-to-the-uxbridge-result-is-wrong-in-more-ways-than-one/

Agree, I think both major parties wanted the ULEZ extended and personally I think it's a good idea, even if it was introduced by a Tory mayor.

There are fringe areas within the boundaries of outer London boroughs such as Bexley, Chingford, Feltham and Uxbridge that have more in common with the surrounding Home Counties. Not because they are genteel (Uxbridge isn't) or white (Feltham isn't) but because of the low housing density and limited availability of trains and tubes. There are buses but they go to other local destinations, not Trafalgar Square.

No-one ordered Sadiq Khan to incorporate these places in the ULEZ. Other arrangements could have been made. I think he made the wrong call, Kier Starmer thinks he made the wrong call, and it seems like the Uxbridge electorate think he made the wrong call.

Just a thought

Do you think FPTP would work better if mandatory voting was in place?
Or do you think those forced to vote would all go for 'none of the above' so constituencies would essentially remain the same?

I think mandatory voting is good. It removes the apathy, the "it's not my fault I didn't vote". It sounds as though it works well in Australia. I don't know if you need a ' one of the above' or people can spoil their ballot, but at least most people would actually go to the ballot box, and there may well be fewer safe seats.
I wouldn't ever not vote, but I have spoilt my ballot once and I can see myself doing it again.

none of the above that should say!

I don't think you can force engagement. Turnout at general elections was never lower than 71% between the First World War and the millennium, but has averaged below 65% since. We need to investigate that first before we start telling people they have to vote or else.

But my point is that the Labour assumption that a Lib Dem voter would do anything to facilitate an overall Labour win, simply because Labour aren’t the Tories, isn’t necessarily an accurate one.

Plenty of Lib Dem/Green/SNP voters don’t want a Labour government either, or else they would just cut out the middleman and vote Labour. So tactical voting doesn’t hold any appeal for them. But there is this attitude among Labour voters that Lib Dem voters are “letting the side down” by not voting Labour, even though we saw in coalition that if anything, Lib Dems actually cosy up very nicely with the Tories, not with Labour.

But my point is that the Labour assumption that a Lib Dem voter would do anything to facilitate an overall Labour win, simply because Labour aren’t the Tories, isn’t necessarily an accurate one.

Who’s assuming that?

But there is this attitude among Labour voters that Lib Dem voters are “letting the side down” by not voting Labour

No there isn’t. Where the Libdem candidate stands the best chance of ousting a Tory Labour voters should vote for them. That’s the entire point of tactical voting.

we saw in coalition that if anything, Lib Dems actually cosy up very nicely with the Tories, not with Labour.

The coalition and cosying up with the Tories really didn’t go nicely. The Libdems were virtually wiped out in 2015 and are only just recovering. I bet Nick Clegg wishes every day of his life that he’d turned left instead of right in 2010. If they’re in the position of kingmaker again, I’d put money on them not making that mistake again.

Think it would be more accurate to say 'some' rather than 'plenty' at the start of your para 2.

The Tories are currently dealing with a strong desire amongst the electorate to get a change of government. The party polling is very consistent but also so is Best PM and Sunak's favourability is still falling (currently -40).

It is notable Sunak is now talking openly on the front pages of being more divisive.

This is an optimistic take. It's also a possibility that lots of people still wouldn't go, because they don't want to or just haven't organised themselves sufficiently. So then we end up having to find a load of resources to sanction people who can't or don't want to engage in the process. There's also no reason at all to think there'd be fewer safe seats.

I think it’s a jump to assume that if someone can’t vote Lib Dem that they will automatically vote Labour.

Unfortunately I did just read this.

Because it is not democracy op. In a democracy you are supposed to vote for what you think is the best course of action. Obviously people with similar ideas group up together, so that they can leverage group power greater than individuals can manage alone, and that is the origin of the party system. The problem nowadays is what exactly is and should be the relationship between those organised groupings of power and both other groupings and more importantly of the individuals who are all working diligently to maintain this system.

A group of parties working together to oust a single other party is as much a stitch up as the power systems that support the main single party in power. All it does is maintain and create another all-powerful unchallengeable body.

I don’t know the magic spell to redress the organisation / individual relationships in Britain but more groupthink isn’t the way to promote diversity of voices.

Why should Lib Dems form a pact with Labour when they won't entertain electoral reform (and will win a majority anyway)? Why should Greens when Starmer flip flops all the time on Green issues.

Is this the same Tories that have been in for 13 years?

"The thing that I found most interesting is the comparison between the Tory candidate who unexpectedly held Uxbridge, an ex-postman who became a manager for Royal Mail, and the victorious Labour candidate in Selby who went to private school followed by Oxford and has worked as a political advisor. The old Tory middle-class / Labour working-class dichotomy is dead, it would seem."

Yes, back to the Blair days of Oxbridge careerists parachuted into every seat while the left are stopped from standing by any means necessary.

We’ve also had a Tory get in with fewer votes than Labour and the Lib Dem’s combined. Bloody FPTP.