A place to discuss what is happening in British politics, from Westminster down to local parish councils.
Great. Now the Labour party wants the Green Party to stand aside in Oxford East, as part of the anti-Tory coalition which they are both trying to form.
I don’t care if the Green party don’t have a candidate here, I’m not voting Labour (or Lib-Dem, the other party involved in the discussion). Too many betrayals, and the Tories or Ukip don’t have any hope of winning here.
(I haven’t removed myself from the Oxford Labour party mailing list yet, and I don’t intend to until after the general election. I’m waiting to see what happens before I join the Green Party. There’s nothing on those mailing lists that isn’t public anyway.)
3 Likes
It’s going to be an interesting election. This is what I’m expecting to see
Tories - slightly increased majority but not nearly as much as they hoped, gains against Labour are offset by losses to Lib Dems.
Labour - Not as many losses as predicted, but a lot of Labour voters stay home. Any losses are blames on the Blairite scum and the party starts to purge moderates (it’ll be interesting to see how many moderates don’t stand)
Lib Dems - Regain many seats lost to the Tories but don’t make a lot of impact beyond that but good turnout
UKIP - disappears down a dark hole as it’s voters either return to the Tories or stay home
SNP - keeps hold on Scotland, maybe losing a seat somewhere to the Tories or Lib Dems. Labour still dead north of the Border
Disclaimer - I’m a Lib Dem.
3 Likes
Sounds like Canada, man. The Liberal Party here won its majority through strategic voting, not because they have the best track record. (They don’t.) NDP ran its last campaign on staying the course rather than pitching a vision of the future like their previous leader, the late great Jack Layton did.
Fuck Theresa May and the whole lot of her Big Brother party. The Great Firewall of Britain can go fuck itself, too.
(For yanks: The NDP are the socialist party, Liberals are centrist-corporatists, and the Conservatives are theocrat-corporatists. Greens have only one seat here, though the Pirates have invaded and imposed copyright reform onto the Green platform.)
3 Likes
If the Lib Dems were to go back to being like they were when Charles Kennedy was leader I would seriously consider voting for them. I disagreed with some of their economic policies then but felt there was enough in their manifesto that I could support. I can’t see that happening though.
I had hopes that Jeremy Corbyn would change things, but I feel like all that has been changed is how they have betrayed me. I don’t like Momentum either, they are far too authoritarian for my liking.
That leaves the Green Party, and without them I don’t know who I would want to vote for. Maybe another SPGB semi-protest vote?
2 Likes
The problem is that to go back to the Charles Kennedy days would require the party to never have been in coalition with the Tories.
Outside of that I don’t think there’s a good choice for the protest vote. The problem with the Greens is that they overlap too much with the Lib Dems and parts of Labour.
A vote for the Green Party is almost always a vote for the Conservatives. It’s the Ralph Nader effect.
My grandfather was a communist; my father is a left wing socialist; I am nonpolitical, I vote on the issues and how the different parties approach them. And, looking at the present mess that is the Conservative Party, willing to bring down the country as part of its eternal internal battle over free trade versus protectionism and paternalism versus sociopathy, that means voting for who might win against them. Except in Brighton, that is not the Green Party.
Apart from times like now, I always try to vote for whoever seems to be the best of the two candidates who might actually win. Best is a complicated multivariate function; at the last election our constituency had literally no good candidates.
Looking at France, Italy and Iceland, where new parties do arise and gain traction, the Green Party has failed to gain traction in the UK. My own belief based on meeting its members is that it is far too upper middle class. UKIP got so far and then attracted people who, for very obvious reasons, couldn’t get anywhere in the saner parties. But after the election things may change.
3 Likes
First of all I am not voting Labour. There are still too many ideological differences between us (although the differences have changed since 2015).
I am not voting Liberal Democrat because, as @strokeybeard points out, the coalition with the Tories has moved them away from Charles Kennedy’s policies, again too many differences for me.
If the Tories win in Oxford East we are basically looking at a landslide victory for the Conservatives. It would require a 30% swing away from Labour, the Lib Dems to not make any significant gains, the Green Party to not get most of that 30% and for the Conservatives to gain 15% of the vote.
Under those circumstances, I am considering voting Green (who have said that they won’t stand aside here). I wouldn’t recommend it anywhere else, except Brighton Pavilion, Bristol West and Norwich South. Going by local politics, Oxford East is a contest between Labour, Lib Dem and Green. The Conservatives may have come in second place in 2015 but they only gained 300 votes (3000 votes more than 1997), they only got second place because of the collapse of the Lib Dems.
I agree with what you say about the Green Party seeming too upper middle class, yet I don’t see any better options other than a protest vote or spoiling my vote. I have enough anarchist sympathies as it is without other people effectively encouraging me not to vote.
4 Likes
Any thoughts on this?
Labour have selected their candidate for Oxford East
At least the NEC seem to selecting candidates who are reasonably local. I’m still not voting for them.
1 Like
I don’t tell people what to do; I just give my opinion, fwiw. As I say, I don’t follow parties but individuals, but I make exception for the two right wing parties and the Conservatives do occasionally manage to elect people who are natural centrists, like Clarke or Heseltine.
If the Labour Party could be purged of its Stalinist tendencies - which is not a left/right dichotomy - it might be a different matter.
1 Like
Having said all of the above I do buy into the narrative that we are into Thatcher II territory; do something disastrous (the monetarist recession in her case) then frighten the electorate into voting for her by telling them that she’s the only chance that things won’t get worse.
Much as I detest Plato and his special pleading for his aristocratic supporters, he had a point.
1 Like
Same here.
I am the same, just very distant from the politics of four of the five main English parties. The green party could still lose my vote if they select a hair shirt candidate.
I suspect if I started purging the Labour party, I would be the only remaining member (assuming that I would be a member to purge the party). The Lib Dems would be the same story.
If you are at that point, it’s better to distance myself from them and find someone who is closer to your beliefs
3 Likes
I thought that was what you had to believe to join the Labour Party in the first place. Everyone diverges from the true socialist path except me and thee, and I’m having doubts about thine orthodoxy.
(Apologies; I know this is a serious subject and possibly more serious than at any time in my life. Ride si sapis seems the only motto for these times.)
3 Likes
Tories committed to first-strike use of nuclear weapons.
They really are trying to be just as crazy as trump, aren’t they?
10 Likes
They do this, The party of strong, stable government goes berserk when near a militarised phallic symbol.
During the Falklands War, Mrs. Thatcher demanded “Unconditional surrender” and military chiefs tried to explain to her that you only get that when, as in 1945, you are actually occupying the capital city and the government no longer exists. In the Falklands the British Armed Forces were in control of a few islands nowhere near the Argentine mainland. But the crazy old bat kept on until the head of the expeditionary force simply took the Argentine surrender on the usual terms, ignoring her, because he was starting to run out of ammunition.
Unfortunately Thatcher and May are not good arguments for women as head of government. The only thing you can say in their defence is that they were/are no worse than the men. May is slightly better than Johnson, Fallon or Fox would be. But you wouldn’t want to see that on your reference if you wanted another job outside politics.
4 Likes
This tory homophobe won’t be in the election, but others will be.
7 Likes
Some fucker removed me from the electoral register.
At least I found out today and not next month. I still don’t get to vote in the local elections though.
7 Likes
I’m liking this in sympathy, not because I don’t want you to vote.
Sometimes the like button is confusing.
10 Likes
They’re currently announcing on the radio that Ukip have lost every seat they contested​ in the local elections.
Good! 
7 Likes