If there was a GE today who would you vote for?

[87SPD]

Bit cheeky but I’m curious to see if there are genuinely any Tory voters out there at all following another disastrous week for Rishi Sunak.

So who would get your vote?

I‘ll go first, I would vote Labour. As much as I would love to hear more on policy and a firm grittiness from them, I do understand that Keir Starmer is doing the best he can, in that he can’t alienate a large proportion of the electorate so needs to toe the line.

Honestly? You hold your nose and vote for whoever gets rid of the party with a 13 yr proven record of utterly destroying our country and exponentially increasing the wealth of the richest within our society. A vote for no one is a vote for the status quo. With people literally starving in this country- I'm seeing it first hand- and our public services in ruins, we need change.

What?

Income tax thresholds have been frozen for far more years than they ve been increased, currently frozen until 2025.

Do you also believe Rishi scrapped the 7 bins laws too?

I'll look at 14 years of Tory rule and what they ve done to improve the country and atm its nothing, nothing at all, everything is worse than what they inherited in 2010.

Yeh they’re not. The U.K. isn’t the centre of everyone’s thoughts for a start. As Starmer recently found out from EU response. Eg You’re deluded we’ve got our own issues.

And the whole world is starting to face up to reality of climate pressure and what it means for their citizens

Hence the shift to the right already in countries seeing strain.

@hattie43

"I cannot believe all the people thinking labour are the wholly grail (sic). The country is broke , no party has any money to do anything with ."

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Yep - this is good summary. Yet people will still vote for Labour on the basis of "I'm going to vote for Labour because they are not Conservatives and they can't do any worse than the current Government".

Well what if they do? Scroll forward 5 years and posts about how Labour got it so wrong, had so much hope now feel let down etc etc.

The reality is that to recover the economy from the current debt spiral we need to see higher taxes and cuts to Government spending. However no party is ever going to get elected on a policy of "I'm going to charge you more in order to give you less".

@Howpo
@jgw1

I understand and agree with you that the current situation of the UK on various metrics whether that be the economy or migration or public services are worse now than they were 13 years ago.

But I am interested to hear what you think that Labour or any other party could or should have done that would have made it better.?

Because people who post topics on discussion boards (particularly Mumsnet) don't normally start from the conviction that they're right?

@meditrina Even a collapsed Tory vote i still a huge number of people, and as constituency boundaries mean that Tories need more votes to get same number of seats as Labour (but they have won far more elections), I think the country is, generally, right leaning (Blair was of course centre-right heir of Thatcher)

Not disagreeing with your general point but our constituency boundaries mean the opposite of that. The Tories need fewer votes than Labour to get the same number of seats because their support tends to be more spread out, whereas Labour's is more concentrated in cities. So with X number of votes, the Tories might win 10 seats with 40% of votes to Labour's 30%, whereas Labour would win 7 or 8 seats with 60% of votes to the Tories' 20%.

What is true is that there is a certain, quite large, portion of the British population that will ALWAYS vote Tory no matter what - it literally doesn't matter how bad they are or how bad things get. They see socialism as the worst possible disaster, Labour (even under Fuhrer Starmer) as irredeemably socialist, and the Tories as the only way of preventing it. That's as far as any thinking about the subject goes and there's little point digging for anything else.

This election will be interesting because with thinking Tories deserting the party in droves (and a Labour "alternative" available that is practically identical) we'll see exactly how large that demographic is.

I would love to vote joyfully and with confidence. However, sometimes the least worst will have to do. And that's Labour. I know that people vote Tory for many reasons, including conviction. But currently it seems to me to be largely tribalism and media induced fear among the less well off and unenlightened self interest among the better off. Anyone who can look at the destruction of public services and still vote for the party that will maintain charitable status for elite institutions needs, in my opinion to consider their moral compass.

@LyndaLaHughes

1,000 sure start centres closed.
780 libraries closed.
700 football pitches closed.
Food bank use up 2,400%.
Homelessness up 1,000%.
Rough sleeping up 1,200%
Bedroom tax caused mass evictions.
Evictions are running at record highs.
35% of U.K. kids live in poverty.
Student fees up 300%.
Student debt has risen 150%.
Eradication of EMA (education maintenance allowance).
National debt has risen from £850billion to £2.25trillion.
Emergency Brexit styimulus from BoE in June 2016 of £175b.
Brexit related fall in national revenue £500b.
GDP fallen to -0.1%.
GBP fallen by circa 15% versus EUR and USD.
Manufacturing in recession.
Construction in recession.
Services close to recession.
25-30% cuts to all govt departments.
25-30% cuts to all councils, mainly centred on Labour councils.
Half of councils facing effective bankruptcy.
185k extra deaths attached to the political ideology of austerity.
25,000 less police.
20,000 less prison officers.
10,000 less border officials.
10,000 less firefighters.
10,000 less medical professionals.
25,000 less bed spaces for mental illness.
OECD calculate 3 million hidden unemployed, rate is really 13%.
Creation of 1.3m jobs, mainly temporary, self employed, gig economy and ZHC.
Only 30k full time work positions created.
Close on 50% of workers are self employed, ZHC, or part time precariat.
80% of the 5.3 million self employed live below the poverty line.
35% of self employed only earn £100 a month.
25% cuts for our disabled community.
80% cuts to Mobility allowance.
Closing Remploy.
40% of working households have practically no savings.
70% of households have less than 10k savings.
60% of households can only survive 2 months without a wage.
Household debt reaches new peak, despite emergency base rates.
Increase of 50% in hate crimes.
Increase of knife crime by 150% to 22,000 per year.
Increase in teenage suicide by 70%.
Suicide up 12% in the year 2018.
Self harm among young women up 70%.
Life expectancy down 3 years.
NHS satisfaction level at lowest recorded rate.
Council home building down 90%.
200k social homes lost since 2010.
Zero starter homes built, despite Tory flagship programme.
Council home building down 90%.
200k social homes lost since 2010.
One million families on council home waiting list.
100,000 increase on the council home waiting list since 2010.

I'd be delighted to see a list of their successes.

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Ooh, I can answer that! They GOT BREXIT DONE!!!!!

😂😂😂

Oh goodness that’s made me laugh. I wonder how he had time to do all that while he was busy reneging on his own promises.

as an example, in his first week in power, Cameron scrapped the Schools Improvement Programme. Within I think it was 36 hours. Gordon Brown’s removal van was still on Whitehall and that was scrapped. The results are now plain for all to see. What did Clegg do to mitigate that exactly?

Yep

I also think people will ask why U.K. shifted to less hardline policies when most other countries are shifting right and more hardline, given world changes and pressures

The answer is likely they thought there’d be more money. I haven’t heard anything from Labour to show that will be the case though

That's the point. The fact that we need change is precisely why there's no point voting for a Labour party that doesn't promise any.

On what grounds do you make a claim they don't suggest any change? That's not true. Have you actually looked at their policies? A simple read here suggests many welcome changes.

labour.org.uk/buildabetterbritain/

I've voted conservative all my life. The last 5-10 years have been heartbreaking though. The scandal, the deceit, the corruption, the attack on the most vulnerable, the collapsing NHS and education, the dithering, the waste

My local Tory mp is great. A real constituency MP who gets things done and who cares about his community.

I'm torn. I'd vote for my current MP, but I don't think I can vote for a Tory government.

I can't vote LD because I don't believe any so many of their policies.

Which leaves me with Labour. I've never voted for them before and I might regret it. But I think it's the best of all my options.

*Oh goodness that’s made me laugh. I wonder how he had time to do all that while he was busy reneging on his own promises.

as an example, in his first week in power, Cameron scrapped the Schools Improvement Programme. Within I think it was 36 hours. Gordon Brown’s removal van was still on Whitehall and that was scrapped. The results are now plain for all to see. What did Clegg do to mitigate that exactly?*

You misunderstand me- I'm no fan of Nick Clegg! I'm merely stating that they would have been even worse and there were many Tory policies the Lib Dems did put a stop to or temper. There are indeed also many they lay down and accepted. The fact they went into coalition with the Tories is a whole other matter and I'm sure disgusted many Lib Dem voters- something they have never recovered from.

It's reassuring to see a Tory voter being wise to their failings and thank you for being honest enough to admit it.

I'll vote Labour but I think Cons will get in again. I don't understand how or why but it seems no matter how low they go, people would still rather them to Labour.

Many? I see three, one of which (cutting crime) is conservative rhetoric I don't care about, and only one of which (addressing the CoL crisis) mentions how they will pay for it. Click on any of them for more information and they take you to a page saying that campaign has ended. Is that it?

My skepticism is partly based on the fact that they have ruled out meaningful tax changes or any intention of rebalancing the economy away from the rich. You can have all the aspirations you want, but without the means to pay for them they don't mean jack. They talk there about windfall taxes on the oil and gas giants "raising billions", but even if they see that through, it's only relevant as long as current conditions delivering exceptional profits to those companies continue.

Partly the fact that they have made no commitment to reverse the attacks on democracy made by the Tories, so they are clearly happy with increasing authoritarianism as long as they can be the beneficiaries of it.

Partly the knee-jerk pandering to both social and economic conservatism they seem to have gotten into now. There was a brief moment, after the last Labour conference when Starmer announced the ambitious green energy initiative, that I thought I'd swallow it all and vote for them, as that's obviously the most important issue. Then the ULEZ thing came up and hey presto: a bunch of Tories object to anyone attempting to actually save the world from extinction and of course Keir has to compete to out-Tory the Tories, utter all the same rhetoric and immediately water down his policies. It's crap - that should be precisely the cue to make those policies stronger and more ambitious.

And partly, having seen how Starmer has behaved within the Labour party, I wouldn't trust him to run a f*ing church fete let alone the country.

Bear in mind that leaders elected from the left ALWAYS drift to the right after being elected, as they come into contact with the realities of vested interests and have to compromise with them. So what does that mean for one with barely a cigarette paper between him and the right to begin with? I see people projecting all kinds of wishful thinking onto Starmer: he's going to make us richer (despite refusing to address growing inequality, and despite the unavoidable global factors determined to keep reducing the size of the pie); he's going to come round to PR (despite having explicitly ruled it out); he's even going to take us back into the EU (despite having refused to admit that Brexit was a mistake and focusing his entire appeal towards people who voted for it). It's understandable, given the size of the calamity we face and the lack of a real solution, but it flies in the face of both history and any serious analysis.

Honestly, we're fucked.

I think it's far too soon to make assumptions or judgements about what parties will offer until we have full, costed manifestos released closer to the election. The last Labour manifesto was excellent but sadly, the media did such a hatchet job on Jeremy Corbyn that it was never going to happen and most people did not bother to read it. Personally, I feel that we missed out on the greatest chance we ever had to have real change and a decent, honest politician in charge. But a party is more than its leader and whilst it's understandable that anyone has reservations about Kier Starmer, votes should be about policies and not personalities. The Conservatives can say whatever they like in their manifesto but they have spent 13 years lying and proving their incompetence and willingness to say whatever it takes to retain power whilst lining the pockets of themselves and their mates at the expense of ordinary people. Labour is the only party that stands a chance of beating them and if people aren't happy with the Tories, they need to hold their noses and vote wisely. Will Labour be able to clean up the mess? That remains to be seen and I suspect the Conservatives will blame them for not being able to fix their mess- much like they have tried to blame the Labour government of 13 years ago for all their failings since in power. The current situation is untenable and seeing first hand the damage they have done to families- damage I never saw under a Labour government, it's an easy choice for me.

Are you saying there is nothing we can do about migration so we should vote Tory because they keep telling us they are going to stop the boats, which isn't possible?

@Gazelda

"My local Tory mp is great. A real constituency MP who gets things done and who cares about his community.

I'm torn. I'd vote for my current MP, but I don't think I can vote for a Tory government.

I can't vote LD because I don't believe any so many of their policies.

Which leaves me with Labour. I've never voted for them before and I might regret it. But I think it's the best of all my options."

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I think this is an honest account of how many voters are currently feeling. But it is a truly sad state of affairs and a questions the point of democracy that the only reason you are considering voting Labour is that they are not the Conservatives even recognising that you might regret it.

I genuinely don't think that Labour would have done a better job than the Conservatives over the last 13 years, at best the same. I would consider voting for the LibDems but is that only because they are not Conservatives or Labour?

The key issue for me is that voters will always vote for candidates that promise them what they want to hear even if it not possible. Typically more spending on this or that without detailing where the money is coming from. So who is at fault here the politicians or the voters.

Firstly Labour then the Conservatives just borrowed more and more. We now have the highest debt percentage per GDP since WW2 at 105% of GDP (in 2010 it was 35%). I truly believe that Labour will fail to deliver on the hopes of the many that will elect them to power.

If I was in your position then in the abscence of any good argument to vote for either Labour or the Tories on a national level then I would vote for your incumbent Conservative MP on the basis that you say he does a good job at a local level and quite frankly that is where you will feel the most impact

@jgw1

"Are you saying there is nothing we can do about migration so we should vote Tory because they keep telling us they are going to stop the boats, which isn't possible?"

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There really is nothing we can do about migration. At least not anything we can do that is politically acceptable in a western democracy. So on that basis what's the difference between voting Conservative or Labour?

Vote for who you like, I doubt you’ll switch from Labour going by numerous posts on threads

It is possible to use another location though, in accordance with international law. Other countries have done this so your post isn’t quite right.

Reading pp, this is in western democracy too, and now bi partisan in approach.

France also is already suggesting alternative non EU safe countries for Lampedusa issue, which I quoted below

@MadderthanMorris

"Then the ULEZ thing came up and hey presto: a bunch of Tories object to anyone attempting to actually save the world from extinction and of course Keir has to compete to out-Tory the Tories, utter all the same rhetoric and immediately water down his policies. It's crap - that should be precisely the cue to make those policies stronger and more ambitious"

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Actually it wasn't a bunch of Tories objecting to ULEZ but ordinary voters objecting to the additional cost this measure would place upon them.