Results like these at a general election would mean Tory annihilation

[noblegiraffe]

Says a BBC headline this morning.

Anyone else stockpiling popcorn?

The point is any other party could have built council houses (and at the time there were no housing shortages so the right policy at the time) or renationalised water and chose not to. It as ridiculous to blame thatcher for now as to blame Churchill for any problems in the 80s

Were you paying attention to the conference reports last week? You could find the answer to all those questions there.

Absolutely. Labour’s vote actually went down in Mid-Bedfordshire from the 2019 GE (14,028 in 2019 v 13,872 yesterday). They won because the Tories are a shower of shit at the moment and their vote just didn’t turn out for them.

I've lived under Labour rule, Tory rule, the SNP locally, I don't think I've noticed much of a difference to my life under any them.

It's a lot harder to spend the huge sums of money to buy back what was sold off than it was to sell it.

Especially as when you take over from a Tory government everything is broken and there's no money left.

Those short termist "selling off our country's silver" policies set us up for so many of the problems we have today.

I notice this one

No mortgage?

Sounds like an argument for ensuring that businesses pay a proper living wage, rather than creaming off money to give to their directors, whilst taxpayers fund their workers wages.

I have just been on the IFS website and read 2 of the papers published this week. I cannot see anywhere what you are alluding to.

I think I will need to vote Lib Dem where I live to oust our Tory MP.

There are several constituencies like mine where (probably) Labour is the wasted vote.

The Greens are campaigning hard in university towns because the young and intelligent want a liveable planet so they might be a force to be reckoned with in some areas.

Voting for someone who can't win in your constituency is a wasted vote if you want the incumbent out.

In the interests of factual accuracy there are by some estimates over a million empty homes in England alone.
The government figure has it at nearly 700,000.

There is not a shortage of housing, there is a crisis in the distribution of housing.

And when the Tories win it’s because they ‘aren’t Labour’. This is what happens with FPTP. People end up voting for the party they dislike the least.

Honestly, plenty of people don't . I don't vote how I vote because they are 'not Tories'.

That doesn't mater : they lost. Traditionally, Tories are better at getting their voters out. This is a Huge Problem for them.

Do you actually want the answer or are you just being rhetorical?

It does matter for democracy. Labour did not win. They came first because of voter apathy, which shows more people are not happy with either of the main two parties.

Sigh.

We are still living in the long shadow of Thatcherism.

The lack of security and profiteering in the rental sector that the Housing Act 1988 enabled and the other ramifications that Act had for housing.

The current profiteering of the utilities companies that Thatcher privatised.

The long term deprivation in once thriving communities that were destroyed by Thatcher's policies.

That is just off the top of my head.

Do you not understand that the political past affects the present day?

Wait... coming first isn't winning??

The mental gymnastics on this thread are astonishing.

Piggy is right. The one and only reason the Tories lost in Mid Beds is because of the god-awful mess created by Nadine Dorries. Labour didn't win here because of a nationwide shift in the direction of Kier Starmer, however much he thinks otherwise.

Assuming this is the paper you refer to ? Published in August ?

Thanks but actually I think there is more to it than Nadine. But I do think it shows how much disgust there is in her.

However, I think you miss my point that she embodies the party - not just an individual.

Does that mean the Tories didn't win in Uxbridge?

Combination of the two I'd say.

If Dorries had stepped down in an orderly manner as the result of (say) a cancer diagnosis then the seat would have stayed blue regardless of Johnson/Truss/Sunak's disasters.

But if Dorries had been a shitshow for months on end as a single bad apple within a confident government with some public goodwill and providing decent public services then I think they'd have also held the seat.

There is truth in this, of course. But Nadine Dorries didn't exist in a vacuum. She was part of a toxic culture that started at the very top of government, created by Boris Johnson, in which a complete lack of integrity, an absence of any accountability and a strong inclination towards self-serving behaviour became the norm. And our current PM was a very senior minister within that regime, so he doesn't get to distance himself from what he previously supported by claiming that he is now the candidate of change. The toxicity has not been cleansed.

I was no fan of Theresa May and her right wing politics at all, but I do believe that she was driven by a sense of duty, service and integrity. That version of the Tory Party has long since been eroded, and while Nadine Dorries and Boris may have finally gone, it is the politicians of her ilk and that calibre that we are left with. The Tories are in very great trouble indeed.

Turnout is nearly always considerably lower in by-elections than in GEs, so the Tories who stayed at home this time, may well make the effort, but I doubt it’ll make a lot of difference.

Labour needs to guard against complacency, though, not to mention any sort of triumphalism before the results. Some of us are old enough to remember Neil Kinnock’s celebratory rally - just before Labour lost yet again.
I’d hope that KS will be a lot wiser than to indulge in any such thing.