UK General Election thread

[ChrisB]

Sir Keir dreams of being Stuart Adamson's love child

[robertff]

Sir Keir dreams of being Stuart Adamson's love child

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[copehead]

We voted as a family bloc.
Our constituency is now the oldest continuously Tory seat. We’re now in East Exeter and Exmouth following the boundary changes.

The poling was a bit inconclusive and the tactical voting site suggested Labour OR Libdem. We got a helpful letter from Hope Not Hate which said Reform were actually ahead on 28 ish while Lab and Con where both on 24 ish.

So for that reason we voted Labour. All the other polls I’ve seen have the tories v in a narrow v lead.

Fingers crossed.

Who else is up all night?

You, me, Mum and Dad all still live in Tory constituencies. Depressing that after the clown show of the last few years there are some mouth breathers, the " I'm not really interested in politics" brigade, who will vote Tory.

They'd vote Tory if their blue rosette candidate came round and shat on their doorstep.

Stalin had the right idea about how you deal with these sorts.

Anyway; Green for me, the only national left of centre party in England.

[copehead]

And Labour are hardly doing better than in the last election. All that's happened, after 14 catastrophic years is that the right wing vote has split. If they merge before the next election we're in trouble.

Unbelievable isn't it over half a million few votes than in 2019 and nearly 2 million fewer than in 2017 and Starmer is an electoral genius with twice as many MPs in the next parliament.

He could have sat at home with his feet up for 6 weeks and the Labour vote would have been better because he is as about as popular as anthrax with the general public.

He picked the right time to be leader that's for sure. Napoleon always said that he wanted lucky generals not good ones.

[copehead]

I know we all know it but seriously - what a ridiculous system.

Labour receive just 1.5% additional share of the vote than last time (most of that in Scotland it seems), giving them fractionally over 1/3rd of the overall vote, and suddenly have a HUGE majority.

Lib Dems get 0.6% more votes and achieve a 700% increase in representation.

Reform get 2% more votes than Lib Dems and 67 fewer seats (although we all say TFFT of course).

At least the Daily Mail will become a strong supporter of PR now.

But you look at that result as a whole and it is fucking ludicrous.

It is no way to run a modern country.

If 15% of the MPs being Reform fascists is the price you pay to have proper representative democracy so be it.

Because they way I look at it when Starmer fucks it up, as he will continuing down the neoliberal path of trickledown economics, the fury in 5 years could see Farage with a massive majority on 33% of the vote and that won't be half as much fun.

[Rorschach]

My main worry is that, as a lot of far right Tories got reelected and most 'moderates' lost their seats, they'll be happy to merge with Reform.
The gammons who used to vote Labour but have followed 30p Lee to Reform via the Tories, didn't come back to Labour this time and they're not likely to in the near future. The constant anti-immigrant rhetoric from the Tories and right wing press have encouraged a single-minded hatred of asylum speakers etc. and any party that openly takes that line can command a huge support from them.

Unless this Labour government does something spectacularly popular I think the UK will be fucked at the next election.

[Rorschach]

At least the Daily Mail will become a strong supporter of PR now.

I'm not sure any of the parties want PR at the moment. The LibDems have done rather well out of FPTP this time and if Reform are planning on merging with the Tories they won't want to change either.

[copehead]

My main worry is that, as a lot of far right Tories got reelected and most 'moderates' lost their seats, they'll be happy to merge with Reform.
The gammons who used to vote Labour but have followed 30p Lee to Reform via the Tories, didn't come back to Labour this time and they're not likely to in the near future. The constant anti-immigrant rhetoric from the Tories and right wing press have encouraged a single-minded hatred of asylum speakers etc. and any party that openly takes that line can command a huge support from them.

Unless this Labour government does something spectacularly popular I think the UK will be fucked at the next election.

That is definitely a possibility

I Reform/Conservative Party they just call themselves Conservatives they'll lose a lot of socially conservative but fiscally left wing vote that Reform garner.

There is a reason that a lot of Reform's economic policies look more left wing than labour's. Nigel knows his Nazi playbook.

You cannot just add the Tory vote to the Reform vote and get a new hard/far right Party that has their combined vote. They will leak from both end, wet Tories from one end and fiscal "liberals" from the other.

They may well get a third of the vote though and that was enough to give Labour a 200 seat majority.

If that lot - Farage, Bad Enoch, Braverman 30p etc - do get in though it will be the end of democracy as we know it just like if Trump gets in in the US again, because centrists, when push comes to shove, have always punched left and jumped right when the chips are down, they'd rather have fascism than social democracy and there will be a national emergency and then suspended elections an... you know the drill.

[Santa C]

Stalin had the right idea about how you deal with these sorts.

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[copehead]

Stalin had the right idea about how you deal with these sorts.

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To be fair to Willie Johnson the worst of Stalin's crimes hadn't really come to light a that stage and we were all allies

And say what you like about Hitler, bu it looks like he had good taste in music:

Now Adolf got the notion
That he was the master race
And he swore he'd bring New Order
And put mankind in its place

[Deebank]

Stalin had the right idea about how you deal with these sorts.

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What's always bothered me about that song is that by anyone's standards Stalin did a massive amount of stallin' - to the extent that he signed a treaty with 'the beast of Berlin' and marched into East Poland. It is a somewhat blinkered view of WWII but perhaps one shouldn;t go looking for historical wisdom in pop songs

[copehead]

Stalin had the right idea about how you deal with these sorts.

.

What's always bothered me about that song is that by anyone's standards Stalin did a massive amount of stallin' - to the extent that he signed a treaty with 'the beast of Berlin' and marched into East Poland. It is a somewhat blinkered view of WWII but perhaps one shouldn;t go looking for historical wisdom in pop songs

It was written in 1943 by an American, so they were probably only considering events post Pearl harbour and by that stage he had quit stallin'

[Deebank]

My main worry is that, as a lot of far right Tories got reelected and most 'moderates' lost their seats, they'll be happy to merge with Reform.
The gammons who used to vote Labour but have followed 30p Lee to Reform via the Tories, didn't come back to Labour this time and they're not likely to in the near future. The constant anti-immigrant rhetoric from the Tories and right wing press have encouraged a single-minded hatred of asylum speakers etc. and any party that openly takes that line can command a huge support from them.

Unless this Labour government does something spectacularly popular I think the UK will be fucked at the next election.

That is definitely a possibility

I Reform/Conservative Party they just call themselves Conservatives they'll lose a lot of socially conservative but fiscally left wing vote that Reform garner.

There is a reason that a lot of Reform's economic policies look more left wing than labour's. Nigel knows his Nazi playbook.

You cannot just add the Tory vote to the Reform vote and get a new hard/far right Party that has their combined vote. They will leak from both end, wet Tories from one end and fiscal "liberals" from the other.

They may well get a third of the vote though and that was enough to give Labour a 200 seat majority.

If that lot - Farage, Bad Enoch, Braverman 30p etc - do get in though it will be the end of democracy as we know it just like if Trump gets in in the US again, because centrists, when push comes to shove, have always punched left and jumped right when the chips are down, they'd rather have fascism than social democracy and there will be a national emergency and then suspended elections an... you know the drill.

A couple of things. While my optimism is massively conditional, I have been pleasantly surprised by what Starmer has done so far - early days obvs.
Secondly, around 15% seems to be peak Farage - it's what UKIP managed at their zenith. Reform voters were massively motivated to get out and vote and they 'only' managed 14.3%. Quite impressive but you have to ask how many more are there out there that stayed at home? And also whether or not Farage can grow their vote?

Labour really need to focus on sorting out the places where Reform did well. Like Corbyn, but to a lesser extent, Reform stacked up votes in a limited number of areas. There's a bunch of bar charts (linked to from The Graun) that show how thingd would have panned out with the various PR approaches, given the same % votes (hard to do asses STV, but they ran the numbers and got a result). In all, Labour won although they may have needed help from LDs and Greens against a combined Reform/Con bloc.

What is scary is that they are unlikely to ever do as well again whatever the voting system

[Deebank]

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What's always bothered me about that song is that by anyone's standards Stalin did a massive amount of stallin' - to the extent that he signed a treaty with 'the beast of Berlin' and marched into East Poland. It is a somewhat blinkered view of WWII but perhaps one shouldn;t go looking for historical wisdom in pop songs

It was written in 1943 by an American, so they were probably only considering events post Pearl harbour and by that stage he had quit stallin'

He spent a lot of time hiding in his dacha as the nazi's came within spitting distance of Moscow didn't he? Anyway, I take the point but Robert Wyatt recorded his version in, what? 1980? So that's no excuse.