To be surprised how many threads on here are about …

[Ednasharples]

Labour making a hash of things. It’s like we are living in a weird kind of masochistic Stockholm syndrome. Most of us are experiencing the reality of broken Tory Britain, where nothing works (unless you live in a very well off area I guess) but we’re being gaslit that everything is hunky dory.
I listened to Oliver Dowden literally shouting over the interviewer on LBC this morning, telling us how taxes will shoot up within 6 months of KS being PM, how British children are the best readers in the universe, how Rishi single handedly brought down inflation (but funnily enough had nowt to do with it going up). I read on here that Labour hate women, hate rich people, hate aspiration, and will raise the red flag over Buckingham palace after Starmer has been overthrown by Corbyn.

It’s like the country is facing an existential threat to its survival if Labour win despite Tory Brexit, Tory austerity, Tory cronyism, life expectancy falling because of a whole scale drop in living standards, children becoming fatter and sicker. It’s just all very odd and I’m struggling to understand it …

YANBU. Some are genuine but many seem like the pro-Brexit posters who mysteriously appeared just before the referendum campaign and disappeared the next morning.

I do not know how anyone could look at the last ten years and think they want more of the same. We have had five Conservative PMs since 2016. Five. The economy is flatlining, nothing works, the Tories are arguing among themselves, immigration is at a record high, public services are terrible despite record spending and debt.

What have the Conservatives done to deserve another term?

Being worried about a Labour govt does not mean you are happy with the Tories though does it?

@Swiftea bugger all in my opinion. Let someone else have a go they can't do any worse

Why would you be worried though ? It is what it is. Like I went along with Brexit. Had no choice, will of the people etc.

Quote frankly (yet another thread about the GE) it is time for a change. Whether Labour are worse or better than their Conservative counterparts remains to be seen but after 14 years the Conservatives are all out of ideas.

This. Heard all if this. Bizarre. It's as if the Conservative voters don't realise who's been running the country for the last 14 years.

There is much truth in this and I think sums up why people are voting Labour. Not for Starmer but against the Tories.

Just because the tories have been clowns, it doesn’t mean Starmer is the answer. There’s plenty of scope for things to get even worse.

The choice faced is very bad or even worse. It’s very bleak either way.

It reminds me of an angry soon-to-be-ex claiming that you won't be able to ever find anyone better than him.

We’ve had charismatic (Johnson allegedly), we’ve had decisive (May)
Blair lite (Cameron), Technocrat (Sunak), Thatcherite tear it up and start again (Truss). None of them vaguely honourable or competent in retrospect.
I feel sympathy for Starmer tbh. He’s not that bad in comparison to the others.
No other party other than the Tories would get away with what they’ve done and the chances they’ve had and yet folk are still saying ‘don’t think we’re voting for you mate, we just hate the Tories’.

Yanbu. Look at the state of the electoral system.

Sorry the n got in there by mistake.

You ARE being unreasonable. The electoral system is a pile of crap, hope that clarifies why.

May was ok- she had a poisoned chalice.

I haven't voted Tory before, but weirdly don't blame them for the current mess- I'm not convinced the others would have done any better.

Whoever gets in next people are going to be very disappointed- there's no easy solutions. No one will like any of the policies that might actually dig us out of this mess.

YANBU-it’s crazy. All I can hear from Conservatives is them shouting threats of what Labour might do. The talk of a ‘super-majority’ was just laughable, they are shit, desperate and completely out of ideas,

Russ Jones nails it

It's so weird. Also the posts encouraging people to spoil their ballot baffle me too. Noone cares. You might as well go the whole hog and abstain. It appears to be a tactic to reduce the scale of the Conservatives loss by encouraging voters to feel active by doing "something" that does not involve voting for someone else.

Absolutely agree. The tories are blaming labour for the state of the country. It would be funny if it wasn't so fucking pitiful.

At least you get to choose who to vote for from the main parties. In NI we're stuck with the same sad useless dinosaurs!

A lot of people will be voting Labour, not because they want Labour but because they just want the Tories out

The Tories have made a huge mess the last 14 years and Labour are basically shooting at an open goal. Yet the best people can say about them is that they aren't the Conservatives, not that they have great policies or were great in opposition and could show good Leadership, just that they aren't the Tories.

What a stunning indictment on them (and the whole system). Frankly even when they win they should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves for being voted in as the least shitty option out of a giant steaming pile of shit

YANBU OP.
I'm voting Labour because I want change, because their manifesto and ethics most closely match my own views and take on the world and because I remember how much better every single public service in this country was the last time Labour were in power.

Because that’s what always happens. Hence the old adage that oppositions don’t win elections, governments lose them. This one appears to be going for the biggest loss in history.

Yes. Your next will be worse do don't break up (even though they are abusive in many ways)

Frankly the tories don't want to win this election because the situation they have got us in is so dire that the getting out of it has to mean higher taxes, and the tories don't want to be associated with that.

Labour get in. Have to raise taxes to start restoring the appalling mess the tories have made with "austerity", never mind anything else.

5 years later the tories will get back in because "oooh look labour raised your taxes the big bad villains". And they'll start hacking things to bits again.

Hard agree, OP. But it’s how Sunak and co talk too (“I’m starting to make progress…just need more time”) as if they haven’t been in govt for the last decade and a half! It’s a technique and people are falling for it.

If it’s any consolation, I’ve been out canvassing this month (first time in my life, I’m not a rabid activist, just a normal mum/teacher/human who can’t take any more of the destruction of our nhs/schools etc. And people on the doorstep are largely not spouting this nonsense. They want to talk about how they had to travel 40 mins for an appt to get their kid antibiotics, or how their mum died during covid and they couldn’t see her, or about their kid with SEN being placed with an unsuitable school. And lots of them tell me that they’ve always voted Conservative. But enough is enough. And they are nervous/excited to vote Labour for the first time.

It was ever thus.

I think you may be right.

They're in a big pickle, a financial mess. Labour won't be able to do much and then 4 years time the tories go for another shot.