GE Poll: Why are you voting Labour?

[GiantTagliatelle]

First of all, I know there’s a GE topic but I can’t put a poll in there (can I??) so I’ve made it clear in the title that this is about the election in case people don’t want to read it. MN - pls feel free to do your thing as you see fit.

Inspired by another thread.. if you are planning to vote Labour, do you really want KS as a PM AND believe in Labour policies, or do you just want the conservatives out?

YABU - I really believe in KS, Labour and their policies

YANBU - I’m primarily voting for Labour because I don’t want a Conservative govt

Both!

Why do you even have to ask? Do you not live in this country? Anybody with a single brain cell wants the tories out. Labour is the only party who can win. Anything else doesn’t matter that much although actually I do support most labour policies and KS.

I was a Labour party member until last year but resigned my membership for a number of reasons. They have got steadily worse since Keir Starmer became leader. I despair of UK politics. I do not like the Tory's at all and they have made life in the UK a lot worse since coming to power in 2010. There seem to be no parties and represent my views at all. I will vote and will probably hold my nose and vote labour although I dislike our local candidate, a right wing careerist who the PLP shoehorned in as our candidate even though the local party had an excellent local candidate. They think we are stupid not to see exactly what they are doing.

I think the SNP will get in here again although they may be the worst party of all, given they think it is ok to put male rapists in women prisons and a strong criminal element right at the heart of their party.

I'm kind of at the point now where I feel like I may as well not vote at all, I will but it feels very futile, like a game of pin the tail on the self serving fool.

There's a sleight of hand going on though. Labour has also said that they will make it far easier to get a Gender Recognition Certificate granting a change to "legal sex". Unless they reinforce the Equality Act to clarify that the protections it contains relating to sex mean "biological" sex rather than "legal" sex (as was recommended by the Equality and Human Rights Commission last year and belatedly proposed recently by the useless Tories) it will be self-ID in practice, just not in name. Labour has already said that it is opposed to such a change to the Equality Act. Instead the party has suggested that a single GP could sign off on a GRC and that the granting of that would be on the basis of a person's self-identification.

When the Gender Recognition Act was passed, it was made clear throughout the debates that it was designed for a tiny cohort of people in the country (around 5000 adults, primarily male) who suffered from distressing gender dysphoria and who didn't have sufficient legal rights and protections under the law of the time. But the law has moved on considerably since then. Those who transition now do have those rights and protections already even without a GRC.

I'll wait to read the manifesto detail in case things have changed in the past few weeks but based on recent performances and pronouncements from the Labour leadership I expect it to be a con trick and they intend to effectively introduce self-ID by the back door. They've just learned from the debacle of the Greens and SNP in Scotland not to call it that.

I disagree it’s a false dichotomy.

If you believe in KS and their policies then naturally you would want to see the conservatives out of government (assuming there is actually any meaningful water between them that doesn’t include soundbites around immigration and private schools). So it your answer is both, you’re driven by policy.

On the other hand, there are a lot of people who don’t particularly support KS or their policies, who just want to see a change of govt. So far 2/3 of respondents have actually picked that over and above supporting any policies and many have commented to back that up.

Otherwise pls feel free to ask MN for a polling function.

I'm not.
Never have.
Never will.

With your clarification that I should choose the first option if both apply, I suppose I'll go for "I really believe in KS, Labour and their policies".

But the idea that I can either "really believe in" Keir Starmer or not is a bit odd in itself: he's a human being, not a religion. I can only judge him relative to other human beings. There are many other people I'd prefer as PM, but my assessment is that he'll do a better job than Sunak. Thanks to the limitations of first-past-the-post voting, that's effectively the choice I have.

Maybe when the Labour Party manifesto has been released we will know a bit more. As it stands we have ample evidence of the Tory’s disgraceful morals, management, and leadership so naturally that is the evidence base most people are using to make their decision.

Those of us over the age of 40 also remember being adults under a Labour govt, which was not perfect but it was a world away from this level of absolute shittery