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!

Wow you are depressing. Shouldn’t you be leaving the UK?

I mean you make us sound hopeless. I don’t think so!

Firstly, political parties spend a lot on social media campaigns for a good reason- it's effective.

Secondly, I'm not saying you're a Tory stooge, rather that you have absorbed the Tory rhetoric that we can't have anything better than their desultory offerings.

Things can change for the better - not if we keep the Tories, but when we get rid of them. Not sunlit uplands immediately, but better than we have right now and better than we could have under Tory rule.

We will still be in the shit in 2027. I think we all know it is going to take a long time to repair the damage. Three years won't cut it.

Maybe in the 2030s things will be better if Labour wins a second term.

It’ll be interesting to see how the U.K. fares if France goes further right and Trump gets in, which feels more possible after the debate

Er think you need to check Green's stance on women.

If I thought that I’d slit my throat. Life goes through cycles.

I’ve lived through the 70s which were far worse than this, the 80s which completely polarised society because money was God, the 90s which were very much like now except the economy wasn’t fucked. Then came the Blair government which was the best period of my life politically, we saw real improvements for the majority of people (no matter how many anecdotes Tory voters produce). It was heartbreaking seeing all that destroyed by Cameron but worse when the country voted for Brexit and it’s been utter chaos ever since.

I’m old and jaded but still hopeful that this is the dawn of a new cycle and a new government will start to repair the country.

What rhetoric? I hate the tories, I would spoil my ballot rather than vote for them. I’ve made this perfectly clear. This is so fucking tiresome, actually engage rather than just whining about anyone who feels negative about the political landscape as having ‘swallowed the Tory rhetoric’

How were the 70s worse than the lowest wages in history, an unprecedented housing crisis, loss of our biggest trading union, a pandemic which kept you under house arrest for months at a time and child health so bad our kids are literally shrinking?

Yes. Global issues like covid have had a huge impact. Scotland under the SNP did roughly the same, outcome wise, as England under the Tories. Bad decisions were made, for sure, but I think the impact largely came down to a 'black swan' event, rather than political affiliations per se.

I’m voting Lib Dem. They got the second highest number of votes after labour in the local elections and I don’t want to vote labour, nor see them walk away with a massive majority

No

Blair is remembered for Iraq. Brown for selling off the gold. Cameron for Brexit, May for Gender Reform, Truss for crashing the economy, Sunak for bottling it.

None of these people have conspicuously covered themselves in glory. Politics is bloody depressing. Maybe I expect too much from it.

Met my labour constituency candidate yesterday, he was canvassing near school. He was really nice and came across as genuine unlike the smarmy conservative blowhard we currently have.

No, once again you seem incapable of understanding what 'objective truth' is.

To start with, there is no universal agreement on what the biggest threat to women's rights actually is and where it comes from. There is a reasonably widely held viewpoint that gender ideology is the biggest threat and therefore if you subscribe to this school of thought it is totally logical that you would view the Tories as a preferential party to vote for as they have been more clear on their views regarding this. No hidden agenda required. Women are literally telling you this over and over again this what they think and yet, because you disagree with their opinion, you are insisting that they actually must be somehow misleading you and hiding weird alternative agenda.

Bringing Tommy Robinson into it is just the modern day equivalent of comparing anyone that you don't agree with to Hitler. Literally nobody has mentioned Islam and women's rights so it's a random reference anyway and then to insist that women are pretending to care about their own and other women's rights based on absolutely no evidence other than you subjectively cannot see how they have decided to vote for the Tory party is just so narrow minded.

Do you generally think that everyone that disagrees on you on all policies and issues are extremists too? Have you ever considered your inability to accept differences of opinions could make you the thing you happily accuse others of?

Yeah, this .. I was actually tempted to vote for the Lib Dems to be honest. But I don't want to split the vote either. I would hate for the Tories to get just 27%, then LibDems and Labour get 53% between them. (Lib Dems 25%. and Labour 28%,) but neither of them get enough individually to beat the Tories!

So then the Tories win. It's a case of everybody will get what nobody wants.

Hopefully some people who previously vote/usually vote for the Tories will vote for Reform, and it will split the Tory vote! So eg, Reform gets 11% and Tory gets 20%, so it splits the vote and leaves Labour as the winner! (Or LibDems, that would do too!)

I'm also in Gillian Keegans constituency. My vote will be Lib Dem to hopefully remove her.

Our Labour candidate doesn't even live in the area!

I honestly think that most politicians have the best intentions but there are just too many big calls to be made and too many massive banana skins so most end up being remembered for some major fuck up. This is one of the reasons I would never enter politics as even with the best intentions, something will happen that will make people hate you and they will always suspect you did it for some terrible reason even if it was just because the law of averages means you will make the wrong call some of the time.

Read some history. I’ve lived through both as an adult. I was young, healthy, optimistic and resilient in the 70s. It was a nightmare. Inflation was rampant in double figures throughout the entire decade, public services ground to a halt, rubbish wasn’t collected for weeks, bodies weren’t buried. At one point our power was cut off at 9pm every night. We had a change of government every five minutes. Awful times you had to experience to understand.

Tbh that sounds easier than now.

I see now the Conservatives are doomsayers doing the country down! What happened?

I've engaged a lot on the thread. Too much for one morning in fact!

Does it? You barely had time to read it, let alone process it before you typed that knee jerk comment.

Unfortunately, this whole thing has forced poor women to choose between their financial status and their sex, and the need to eat is a pretty convincing motivator. I cannot survive the current inflation rates. That will get worse under the Tories.

Jess Brown Fuller has sent several communications since the boundary change. As she lives locally and is the only possible chance of ousting Gillian Keegan, she’ll get my vote.

Yes. Physical obstacles that you could in part plan for and must’ve been bloody annoying. But there was affordable housing, a roof over your head and at no point were you legally forbidden from putting your foot outside your front door.