Anyone else wobbling about voting Labour?

[MaryMaryVeryContrary]

I desperately want to GTTO but the last few years have taught me that ‘any change’ isn’t always good and things can get worse, even if you think they can’t.

I’ve watched all the debates now and Starmer is so… wet. I don’t like him. The first thing he did when women’s rights were mentioned his first thought was men who ‘identify as women’ and how ‘marginalised’ they are. When asked about immigration he squirmed and squirmed before muttering about his role as DPP (who cares? We want to know what you plan to do NOW). When asked about his support for Corbyn he said ‘but I didn’t think we would actually win..’

There’s something about him which is making me very uncomfortable and I just have a bad feeling now about what would happen if he was leader.

Anyone else? If you’re not voting Tory or Labour, who are you voting for and why? I assumed I would vote Labour this time but my gut is suddenly screaming at me not to!

I'm in a reasonably safe Labour seat - Cambridge - and the sitting MP seems a decent old cove but I don't think I can give Labour my vote this time.
And it's some of the Labour women that worry me most (not Rosie Duffield, obvs) but more Dawn Butler, Rachel Reeves, Angela Rayner and so on. They seem very happy to sell women down the river to look inclusive without thinking the issue through.
Wes Streeting seems to understand it better.
At present it is lawful to exclude trans women, regardless of whether they hold a GRC or not, from specific women's spaces and i would like to see that reinforced. KS and others have said women's spaces will be protected, but details are scarce so who knows?
And what about official data? Like birth certificates and crime reporting/criminal records, plus women only academic awards, prizes and sport. Then there's protecting children -- will the Cass report prevail?
Because under Labour, or even worse a coalition with Lib-Dems, many more TWs will be getting that piece of paper in a couple of years.
I don't like to do it and it's not an action I take lightly but I might spoil my ballot again.

I really like Starmer. He is considered and analytical. During the televised debates Sunak is aggressive, he barks everything and consistently relies on buzzword lies or misrepresented guesswork to achieve his ‘points’. It’s highly defensive campaigning and it’s horrible to watch – it’s cheap, it’s tacky and I don’t want anything like that in a Prime Minister. If all he can do over is opposition is rely on dubious shots, rather than positively claim why and how is party is better with specifics, then it’s horrendously poor.

And if he mentions the furlough scheme one more time I’m going to walk into traffic.

Well the Tories certainly won't.

I’ve always voted labour, they never get win in my Surrey constituency which is very blue. Labour will win hands down so Kier will be PM. Yes things can get worse, but I just can’t ever bring myself to vote Tory, even though I guess they align more with my circumstances. So I will just hope that Labour are a refreshing change and not something that people regret like Brexit

I’m stuck and have no idea about who to vote for. Historically I’ve always been labour but knowing their views on safeguarding women, I’m unlikely to vote for them

I am fearful that Labour won't protect anyone's daughters.

Our local Tory MP is fab. I do think we are long overdue a change in government though which makes me reluctant to vote for them. I really don't like Labour at the moment though, they're not filling me with confidence that they will be a good alternative. I will probably end up voting for the Green Party or something..

This is excellent

@feellikeanalien said she was voting Labour to unseat the Tories. Like a lot of the country in this GE.

Nope I can't vote Labour, can't do Conservative either, so still sitting on the fence waiting to figure it out and my Bum is getting numb.
Plaid Cymru is now in the running for me, maybe, I still don't know.
A lot of people this year aren't voting for a party, they are voting against Conservatives just trying to make sure we don't end up with them again.

This.

"Austerity" economics has killed approx 300,000 people, I'm not voting for a party that has committed to continuing the same economic & social lunacy. Sadly, I'm including Labour in that.

Me 🤚 I feel like Sunak has a good plan and he is delivering. He was a good chancellor. Don’t get me wrong the Tory shit show over party gate, Liz truss etc was appalling but he is decent. I also think Starmer appears weak, and globally we can’t afford that in such a war ridden time. I don’t want to pay more taxes either- every day life is expensive enough and we’re in a cost of living. Sunak has managed to get inflation down and wages have risen.

I was all for voting for Starmer but I know I won’t be . I think we need 5 years of Sunak to get us all back to some kind of normal. I’m worried if labour come in, it’ll be a disaster and we’ll go backwards. I wasn’t feeling this strongly before and we were voting labour but I know that’s because I was pissed off about the Tories and I thought Starmer seemed a nice man. But that’s not a good enough reason to vote him in- I don’t think he’s strong enough

I'm a floating voter and I've already put in my postal vote for Labour.

I don't expect to agree with everything they do – never have with any government. But everything I've seen makes them look better than the Tories on every issue, including women's rights.

Thank you to all the cheerleaders parroting "at least the Tories know what a woman is" while the Tories presided over the shitshow of the last few years and had parliament's first trans MP.

You've ensured I've had plenty of time to think through this issue and to watch what the Tory party does, rather than what it says.

Whilst this is correct, whichever party you give a local seat to contributes to the overall make up of the government which therefore elects the prime minister.

You're not electing a President! Starmer has to do all the debates as leader of the party, but unfortunately it's not his strongest point. He has a good team around him though and I believe he has integrity.

I voted Blair Labour in 97 and then Cameron Cons in 2015. Centre slightly right; if you read the Saturday Times and like Matthew Parris - that’s my perspective. Voted Remain and have felt absolutely disenfranchised from the Cons party since then. Despise BoJo and all he stands for.

But I don’t feel that voting Labour is a positive choice. The stance on women’s rights is pretty much the main issue for me; I don’t trust them. The vat raise won’t work in the way they think it will and it just reinforces them as the party of levelling down and reducing choice.
LibDems are a joke, even worse.

On a personal level, I don’t want tax cuts. I just want public services that work and for rights to be respected. I actually don’t mind paying more tax!

but this is all a total shit show.

It's worth remembering that those not voting labour because of the gender stuff that no other parties are going to fare much better. Tory party definitely won't protect women, green and lib dem even worse.

Anyway there's more to life than that.

We're very blue here, awful current MP, never around and has had a scandal or two historically and I cannot wait to vote Labour for the first time in my life to get rid of them! It'll be just like Christmas has come early.

This illustrates my problem with the parties though. All of the buses available to me go to places I really, really don’t want to go.

If you're a woman...wobble, wobble wobble because once Labour allow women with penises full throttle, it will be very very hard to undo,

Why do you think creeps like David Tennant and various police forces-who define some rapists as women-are emboldened to come up with the shit they're already spouting. They know they're on the home run, that's why.

Women silenced, told to shut up, cancelled, sacked...that's what Labour will do.

These are the gormless and wicked people who will set the tone once Labour are in and it will be impossible to undo. Do you think these men -women with penises-will ever give up these rights once granted. I think we all know that a child of four could answer that.

So wobble. If you can't vote for anyone else, spoil your paper. some things are bigger than party politics.

No - truly just don't do that.

In the end it is central government that has the power and whichever party has a majority they will dictate the direction our country goes in. And local MPs have their hands tied by the whips - they are not able to vote for the good of their local constituents as they are tied to voting with the party line.

My local MP is a good local MP, but if I vote for him I will contribute to the sum total of Tory MPs. There is no way I would wish to do that after the debacle of the last 40 years.

Look at your local area. In the vast majority of areas voting green won't make any difference at all, they have zero chance of winning most seats.

Realistically, you are not voting for the leader and to be honest they're all a bit crap.

What do you want for the country?

• unrestricted capitalism
• low taxes
• small state
• wages set solely by competition
• individualism (so an expectation you look after yourself /your own, so disabled and vulnerable relatives are yours to care for, not the states)
• social conservatism (so a preference for "traditional nuclear families, less support for childcare, less in favour of abortion etc)

• vote conservative or reform

If you want:

• higher taxes/more redistribution
• bigger state/more services
• socialism (society looks after the vulnerable, we all need to think about everyone and not just our own immediate family)

Vote labour

If somewhere in between or unable to work out what you actually want - vote liberal.

14, not 40 - heaven forbid!!

Ditto. We have a libdem MP in our neighbouring constituency and he incredibly hard working and has done a great deal for his own area. The libdem candidate for our constituency is a very hard working city councillor who is very visible on a weekly basis and appears to actually care about the town and it's people. So I'm voting for the person. I'd never usually vote libdems, but just can't muster any support to vote for Starmer and can't vote for the odious little cretin Sunak because of the 3 million he excluded from covid support which wrecked my small business (not because of personal lack of support, but because half my client base was excluded and many had to give up their businesses so I have far fewer clients now!).

No.