I don't think the Tories will do nearly as badly as predicted?

[Kendodd]

What do you think?

Those accusing OP of being a Tory bot - she's really not. She's a long standing poster, especially on politics threads.

@Kendodd I really hope the Tories are obliterated, but I fear you may be right. I'm worried about Shy Tories and even Shy Reformers.

Why is everyone who doesn't support labour a bot? I never see anyone accusing labour supporters, I suppose that says more about them than everyone else.

I’ve been accused of being a bot. 🤷‍♀️

What do you think the conservatives have had for the last 5 years?

I remember Lab being 20 pts ahead in 1990. But that lead melted away when Major took over as PM from Thatcher. During the 92 campaign the Labour poll lead was tiny. At least one poll had the Tories ahead. Afterwards polling companies changed their methodology. They moved the Don't Knows to the party they previously voted for?
In some polls during the Major years many more people 'remembered' voting Labour than possibly could have. Must be hard to account for such a level of self deception.

I dont think it will be as bad as the polls say either. I think a lot of the more moderate of reform people will get in the ballot box and think ' I'd rather a tory opposition after all'. I think some areas where lib dems stand a chance have also been a bit spooked by this supermajority nonsense.

I hope they do worse. They've presided over the steepest decline in living standards since the Napoleonic era. Every major policy position was wrong and chipped away at the economy and British life. The only achievement they can herald is the improvement in measured reading ability for children. Fair enough. It's just a shame that many more of those children (about 900k) also now live in measurable relative poverty and have a shorter life expectancy. Every where you look, people suffering or struggling to one degree or another. And so much of it self inflicted for the sake of ideological sacred cows. Starmer will be Prime Minister tomorrow. It's not because he's flash. Or has charisma. It's because the country just wants someone who will focus on the job of delivery and looks like he might be able to govern well. Here's hoping for 5 years of stable governance and perhaps fewer children being fed by food banks come the GE in 2029.

@kitsuneghost you've drunk the cool aid. There is no such thing as a supermajority in British Politics. You either have the votes to control parliament or not. If you do, you can pass what ever laws you want. The Tories have been doing exactly that for 14 years with their own supermajorities (meaning 50% plus 1 or more of the votes from time to time).

But Lib Dems are of the TWAW ilk!

The cuts in public spending have been shocking. Remember all the police stations they shut down then sold off? All in the name of austerity. The public sector office I worked in was affected badly. We had to photocopy our headed paper because the budget had been cut. No water for the coolers. No paper hand towels in the loos. No pay rise in line with inflation. Soon found some cash down the back of the sofa during covid tho to line the pockets of their mates.

You have fallen for Tory propaganda: there is no such thing as a super majority.
Big majorities have served us well in the past I.e war time coalition and 1945 Atlee government, which established the welfare state.
Maybe read some history instead of the Tory press 🤷‍♀️

Yes, you are correct, but that isn't mutually exclusive to caring about women's rights. The Tory party has consistently over the past period of time trampled on all our rights, its time for a change.

Rejoice!

So is a fair proportion of the Tory party.

I’ve been accused of being a Tory bot as well and I don’t even support Tory. I think the “bot” accusation lacks critical thinking skills. It’s another example of herd mentality

I think the Tories will do as badly as expected

Agreed. And he has achieved that in the face of relentless right-wing media bias and outright Govt lies.

I'd hold off on that until the popular vote figures are in.

It's entirely possible Labour will end up with a thumping majority with fewer votes that Jeremy Corbyn got in 2017, which signals utter apathy for the incumbents far more than it suggests appetite for Labour, and frankly, would be a complete and utter embarrassment for Starmer.

In the UK electoral system the number of votes is not important, the number of seats won is what matters, and in particular whether or not one wins 326 seats or more.

If Starmer does manage that feat he should be praised for the achievement.

Rejoice!

It's not a question of "important".

For all the talk about how dreadful Jeremy Corbyn is, most of that has been coming from the Labour Party itself. Starmer has purged Corbyn and anything remotely connected with him with a zeal that would have made Stalin proud. He has been comprehensively unpersoned, and derided as responsible for everything that was wrong with Labour through two electoral cycles.

Given that the population of the UK, and therefore, the number of total electorate has risen, to demonise Corbyn and then return fewer votes than Corbyn himself managed several years beforehand would be hilariously ironic. Happy accident that the Tory vote has collapsed utterly and left the door wide open for a Labour majority, but it changes nothing about the fact that Starmer will have attracted fewer votes than Corbyn, and would therefore be inarguably less popular than a man derided as completely unelectable. 😆

Corbyn has been elected as an MP many times. Twice he led a party at a general election and was defeated, suggesting that he was unelectable as Prime Minister.
By way of contrast tomorrow Starmer will be Prime Minister.

Rejoice!

Yeah its an interesting proposiiton. I think that while people may be quite strident and opinionated on an anonymous forum, and even to their mates or at work, in private I think theres so much fear and self preservation going on, and when they step into the anonymity of the voting booth, they tend to stay conservative. Of course there are always massive surprises so who knows.....maybe labour comes in on a Boris Johnson style landslide. I did find it telling that he was wheeled out to scaremonger and appeal to voters to stay true - it shows that the Conservatives are aware that they are in real risk of losing their majority.

Great post!
If Corbyn had ran in a GE during the collapse of the tory vote, and the collapse of the SNP vote, Corbyn would have won!

The curious thing about Corbyn's Labour is that in blind tests where the policies were put to people, but without any indication that they were Corbyn or Labour policies, they were overwhelmingly popular.

What Starmer's campaign has shown is that Labour policy is really neither here nor there when it comes to getting a Labour PM elected. It's about not putting the absolute fear of god into the right wing media and Neoliberal establishment. If you can avoid that, they leave you alone.

The stuff people are saying about Corbyn is all entirely counterfactual. In general elections you have to be a lucky general. You have to deliver around 40% of the popular vote and hope that the other side fall apart. In 2017 we ended up with a hung parliament because May and Corbyn were both unlucky generals. They were unlucky, because the other side did not fall apart and both came out of the election with around 40% of the vote. It broke in favour of the Tories on that occasion in terms of seats and total votes cast. In 2019, Johnson was a lucky general because the other side fell apart (led by Corbyn). Hence Johnson's circa 40% of the vote delivered a healthy majority of MPs. You can look at every election since the war onwards and it has been thus. Wilson's tiny majority in the 70s was secured on more than 40% of the vote. You can guess why he was unlucky though. Starmer is set to be a lucky general. He is lucky that the Tories have fallen apart but he deserves credit for clinging onto his 40% of the vote.

Exactly. Hilarious seeing the Tories crying about FPTP and suoermajorities and lack if viable oppositions being undemocratic now, when they couldn't have cared less about it over the past 100 years.

Not really. As Prime Minister, especially under our system, you need to have broad apoeal over a broad spectrum of the country, as you have to govern a country, not your own personal fanclub. Corbyn stacked up tons of votes in areas of the country where Labour was winning, and in middle-class wealthy areas of densely populated cities . Starmer has managed to get people who didn't vote Labour across the country to consider voting Labour. Share of the vote doesn't matter. No government has had over a 50% share of the vote.