General Discussion for politics in the UK.
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Then those that don’t turnout can’t complain after the fact. “Sure, keep destroying my country!”
I am in a safe Labour seat but I'll be voting Green. Labour lost my vote when they continued drifting to the right.
At the end of the day they need to win the election.
At this point I’d 100% take a shitty labour government that’s compromising, because it’s the first step to moving things back to the left.
If we had a better voting system then go for it, but I just think it’s silly for someone to waste a vote (if they aren’t in a safe seat).
If you're in a safe seat then by all means.
But I'll say to everyone here the same thing I say to Americans. Yous need to be pushing hard for a better electoral system. First past the post shouldn't qualify as democracy, in my opinion. It's just that bad. IRV is the bare minimum that should be acceptable. But ideally, you should push for some sort of proportional system like STV or MMP.
Electoral reform should be every intelligent voter's highest priority, because without it you'll always be stuck with the same two parties doing the same dull shit.
Shame neither party are actually offering electoral reform (and why would they - the current form works perfectly well, for them)
With the right pressure, I think Labour might be convinced. The Conservatives only got a majority at the last election because of FPTP. The two elections before that were even worse for the Conservatives' overall vote.
This is especially true if Labour is only able to govern in coalition with LibDems and SNP.
@DessertStorms @GreyShuck @Fudoshin @Zagorath
That's why I'm hoping that no party wins overall majority. PR is the only way things will change.
Tactical vote, stop the Tories!
Check this site or risk splitting the left vote and letting the right wing in.
Doesn't matter get out and vote. Don't know if this article is part of it, but the powers that be want you to feel like there is no reason to go out and vote. There is every reason to get out and vote. Go vote. Do it. Kick the bastards out. I fucking hate starmer but anything is better than the conservatives. Move the Overton window further left. Vote. Vote. Vote.
That's how you get stuck with shitty RW government. That said, Starmer IS dull and politically milquetoast
we don't need another rock star PM like Jonson.
I was referring more to his political timidity than his lack of charisma
I find it frustrating, too, but after we lost the by-election in Johnson's seat over the obviously good but controversial policy of the Ulez, I can totally understand the timidity. We literally lost an election as 'punishment' for a policy that made the air cleaner and raised money! It's completely ridiculous, but that's the world we live in.
why make too many proposals now. don't give your enemies something to pin on you.
If they get a good majority I firmly believe it will be for the better. they can implement things that will change the UK for the better.
13 years of austerity have destroyed the country.
once things are a bit better than we can put the Tories back in to sell off the progress to their mates again.
once things are a bit better than we can put the Tories back in to sell off the progress to their mates again.
UK politics in a nutshell! Maybe one day we'll break the cycle.
Agree that Labour will make things better. Got my hopes up for better employment law, planning reform (=more houses) and green investment. If we do get a bit of growth, we should see some health and education improvements, too.
It isn't that they're "dull", it's that they offer the exact same bullshit and serve the same overlords, rather than the public.
This is deliberate of course, and trying to frame it as somehow the public's fault and not the systems' is gross propaganda.
Either way - we are not the US, and we do have the ability to vote "none" in protest.
DO.
vote against the conservatives. Why on earth would you want to risk another 4 years of this?
don't give in to apathy. the older conservative voters won't. it's always like this before an election. a concerted effort to increase apathy.
Well, if there's low turnout from the Tories, sounds like suddenly everyone else's vote matters more.
Be sure to still vote, and make sure your friends and (maybe) family do to. I mean, if your friends and family were pro-Brexit, and somehow still are/would vote for it again, maybe just leave them be; sounds like a lost cause politically.
I think Curtice underestimates how much people want the Tories out, to be honest. I think we'll see high levels of tactical voting among people who want the Tories out, which is nearly everyone, and that will drive higher turnout.
EDIT: Just saw this, lot of it about in this thread:
“If Starmer wants to win a general election, then he’s going to have to compromise and do things that I might not like to appeal to a broader cross-section of voters. Now, that might lead to improvements in the lives of the majority of people and remove the worst government in living memory, but is that worth me having to put up with him not doing everything that I specifically want him [sic] from a Labour government? Not really.”
Which is why voting should be compulsory. Even if you only write 'Shove it' on the ballot paper.
What would that achieve Vs just not voting? You're filtering out the population that don't want to vote either way. I don't think any party would suddenly care more if they could "see" people spoiling their ballot paper Vs just not filling it in.
You'd then also have to set up some sort of commission to fine people for not voting. Doesn't sound like an effective use of time.
What would that achieve Vs just not voting?
Actually a great question, and the answer isn't necessarily obvious for someone who hasn't had experience with compulsory voting.
The effect of compulsory voting is that voter suppression techniques (discouraging people from wanting to vote, making it hard for certain people to vote, etc.), like the ones being discussed here become impossible. The AEC has to make it easy for every Australian to vote, and the government has to fund them appropriately to be able to do that. Elections are always held on a Saturday, to ensure the maximum amount of people can vote on the day. Prepolling is also extremely easy for people who can't make it on the day. Most people do have a preference one way or the other, even if that preference isn't enough to get out and vote normally. By making it compulsory, even those people will have their say. You can't run a campaign designed less to make yourself seem good than to simply make people think it's not worth the effort of voting. You have to actually convince people yes, you are the better option.
Yes, some people still choose to give an informal vote (often unofficially referred to as "spoiling" their ballot). Putting a blank ballot in the box, or writing something you think is funny, or drawing a penis on the ballot, are popular examples of deliberate informal votes. In 2022, we had a voter turnout of 89.82% of enrolled voters. Of those, just 5.19% ballots were informal. It's impossible to know how many of the informal ballots were mistakes by the voter versus deliberately "spoilt" ballots. But that's a total formal vote of 85.16% of enrolled voters. Compare that to the UK's 67.3% turnout at the last UK general election and the difference is stark. Think also that the percentage of eligible voters who are enrolled to vote in Australia is much higher than in the UK, again due to the compulsory vote, and the difference becomes even more significant.
I was not expecting this answer. Thanks, it's actually made me rethink my views on the matter. 🙏
Well, spoiled ballots are tracked and when there's a higher than normal proportion of spoiled ballots its clear there's something wrong, which can be the basis for various courses of action.
Calling it a spoiled ballot is usually fine, but from my time doing work for the AEC I wanna point out that technically, what @baggins@beehaw.org described above isn't what would be classified as a "spoiled" ballot. It's an informal vote. Officially, spoiled ballots are when a voter brings it back to the polling official and says "I made a mistake, can you give me another one?" They go in a special envelope and never go in the ballot box, unlike informal votes.
TIL!
This is good. One of the reasons we get such shit governments is all the people just voting for the celebrity leader not thinking about the actual policy. If those people can't be bothered to turn out then we might get more of a percentage of votes coming from people that actually know what they are voting for.
Yay! That makes it even easier for the Tory party to get away with rampant breaches of election campaign laws - just like they have since 2009!!
This is why compulsory voting is so good!