To feel completely disillusioned with the Labour Party?

[user6776]

I've voted Labour since I've been able to vote. Come from a working class family of Labour voters also and I'd never vote Tory, but I'm feeling so disillusioned by Labour at the minute.

Wasn't really a fan of Starmer to begin with, but even less so after his comments about Margaret Thatcher. I really don't want to vote for them at the next GE.

AIBU to just not vote at all?

Please do vote. No vote no voice. if you don’t vote, why would any politician care what you think?

vote green, vote for a local party, spoil your ballot if you don’t want to vote labour.

@WannabeMathematician But then I feel if I vote for somebody else it's just a wasted vote 🤷🏻‍♀️ because let's be honest it's the Conservatives or Labour, there isn't a decent alternative.

Yanbu to feel disillusioned. Yabu to not vote.

But not voting means the vote basically goes to the party you least want in power. Not voting won’t change a thing.

Green is not a “wasted” vote.
Not voting (or a spoiled ballot paper for that matter) is a wasted vote.

How is voting Green not a wasted vote though?

The main parties fight over people who vote, though. So by not voting at all your are saying they don’t need to care about you at all.

If a small party get a sizable minority of the votes the larger parties will try to steal policies from the to appeal to you in future and maintain their control. It does help, albeit indirectly.

Please vote. I totally understand your disillusion but we have to get this criminal shitty Government out.

For the first time in my life I will not vote Labour I will vote Liberal Democrat, and anyway in our town the Lib Dem guy is the only guy who can knock the Tory twat out of his seat.

You could vote Green

You need to vote for whatever party is least bad. Please. Parties aim at meeting the needs of those who vote. Presumably their thinking is that you don't win elections by appealing to non-voters!

Currently we've had a series of successively more right-wing Tory and coalition governments, and that's shifted the "Overton window" way to the right of what you want.

The current Labour leadership is pitching itself just to the left of the Tories, as that's where they think they need to be positioned to capture as much of the vote as possible in our stupid First Past the Post two-party system.

If we vote in a few successive Labour governments, we'll hopefully find a choice between a more recognisably socialist Labour party and a Conservative party that's trying to pitch itself as a sort of Blairite democratic liberal grouping.

Of course, a more representative electoral system could also be something to try, but I'm not holding my breath!

@MissyB1 I've considered voting Lib Dem also as an alternative, but not sure how well the candidate would do in my constituency

Yes it’s tricky, sometimes you just have to tactically vote.

What, exactly, is it about his comments on Thatcher don't you like?

Because...what he actually said is not the same as what's been put out in headlines.

I spoiled my ballot paper a few years ago in protest because none of the parties available valued women's rights or could even say what a woman was. I could not morally use my vote to support vulnerable children being sterilised and women being raped in prison.

Fortunately the SDP then fielded a candidate in my area. Like you I don't want to vote Tory but I can't support destroying children.

And that's the reason you should vote for him. The only vote that makes any sense is for the person who can get/keep a Tory out in your constituency. Tories back in is the worst possible outcome. Anything else will be better. Why wouldn't you vote for better?

Would you be honestly just as happy to have one in power as the other?

This. Go back to the Telegraph article and read what he said. It's quite different from the spin being put on it by the BBC, the rw media and even the lw media.

Exactly @ntmdino
It keeps being reported as 'praise'. All he said was that she changed Britain, which she did. He's also clarified he wasn't suggesting the way she did it was good. I've no idea what people are getting so het up about.

All he said was Margaret Thatcher sought to drag Britain out of its stupor by setting loose our natural entrepreneurialism.. It’s a straightforward statement of fact, how on earth has that got twisted into praise?

Not sure that I am too bothered about the Thatcher thing but on voting in general I am with you 100%. I'll only vote for a party on the grounds that I actually want them running the country. Being slightly less bad than the alternative isn't good enough. If you keep voting for crap parties they don't have any incentive to be anything better than slightly less crap than the opposition.

I feel the same and so millions of others. My worry is that voting for an alternative party could heavily dilute the vote against the Tory monsters.
i can only see greens as a viable party for me but even then I’m not 100% about all their policies so it feels like a half hearted defeatist vote.
im so so sad about what’s happened to our labour.

Because the election campaign has already started, and the Conservatives have decided the best way to win is to exploit the left's natural tendency to eat themselves.

If the Conservatives win, then it's going to be exclusively because left-voting folk have decided they hate the leader of the only left-leaning party that could possibly govern.

In a FPTP system, especially one which is gerrymandered to favour the right, voting according to strict ideology is no different to giving half your vote to the Conservatives.

Starmer's article in the DT was ill-advised, and that concerns me. I would like someone in power who has the brains to realise how this one sentence would be taken out of context by the media and inflated. It does not show any wisdom or foresight.
However the absolute priority at the moment is to get this dishonest unprincipled shower out of government, so if voting for Labour means the local Tory candidate gets the boot, then so be it.

This. Go back to the Telegraph article and read what he said. It's quite different from the spin being put on it by the BBC, the rw media and even the lw media.

Who the fuck believes a word any of our hallowed arbiters of truth prints ?

Right now the burning issue is to dump the Tories. We can deal with what follows afterwards.

If people don't want to grow the fuck up and keep on insisting on a princess perfect political party before they will vote then we are all fucked.

This. You've fallen for the distortion of KS' words by other media outlets who just want to manufacture outrage.