WDB
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Post by WDB on May 23, 2024 7:14:46 GMT
Well, this should be fun.
I missed the announcement on Wednesday. I was in London for MrsB1’s graduation event — and happily not getting as wet as Sunak appears to have done. Which, we may hope, is nothing to the soaking he has to come. (It’s just occurred to me that Sunak is the kind of, erm, slight person about whom people say, “He weighs n wet through.” Perhaps there was a secret scale under the Number Ten doormat — no, not Grant Shapps — and a staff sweepstake on the outcome.)
Our deadweight Tory, who voted with his career in favour of all the toxic nonsense since 2016, is among the legion of Tories retiring. The redrawn boundaries may secure this bit of the Blue Wall a little longer, but we have a lot of Thames here and the non-boaty stuff floating in it is causing more than one kind of stink. There’s an outside chance of getting the excellent LD candidate elected here instead.
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Post by bromptonaut on May 23, 2024 7:22:32 GMT
The Sunak/Sunk joke is already out there along with Things Can Only Get Wetter.
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Post by EspadaIII on May 23, 2024 8:21:19 GMT
My seat is solidly Labour, so I may register a protest vote and go Reform. The back benchers of Labour and the front bench of the LDs worry me in terms of thinking like student activists rather than adults (politics should be the Art of the Possible I recall) and I think Starmer will be kicked out of No.10 by Corbynites before he has got a chance to get comfortable unless he gets a larger majority and can operate sensibly without interference from the loonies.
I don't think I have voted negtively before rather than for a candidate.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on May 23, 2024 8:29:45 GMT
Oh my God. Just speechless EIII. You must be joking. There has to be some better way of protesting than actually registering a vote, which will be taken by them as explicit support for their revolting, neofascist policies and uncosted, economically illiterate doggerel?
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WDB
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Post by WDB on May 23, 2024 8:38:34 GMT
Your assessment is one I’ve seen nowhere else, Esp. Labour has always had a lunatic fringe, which had a moment in the sun from 2015-17 (aided, you may remember, by rightwing pranksters, egged on by The Sun, who paid £3 for the right to vote for him) and combusted in 2019. The individuals will remain but nobody outside the Tory press is suggesting they’ll have much influence.
But Reform? When you know what it stands for and who else votes for it? They’re the party of ‘England for the English’ and I suspect you wouldn’t be be English enough for many of them. Isn’t there a Count Binface you could vote for instead?
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Post by Humph on May 23, 2024 8:53:19 GMT
Good Lord Esp! They would be the last people I’d expect you to favour, even as a protest.
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Post by Humph on May 23, 2024 9:03:20 GMT
I suspect I’ll end up voting for the fire party, I’ve had my fill of the frying pan lot.
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bpg
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Post by bpg on May 23, 2024 9:16:55 GMT
Looking in from the outside I find it very difficult to see how any party of whatever background is going to fix the current situation in the UK.
The family silverware has been sold, the treasury is living hand to mouth with monthly tax revenues, public sector pension commitments are at or near GDP and there is unsustainable demand for public services for which there is no funding. Talk of tax cuts is pure fantasy. There are some serious tax rises coming which no one will want to fund. Labour will most likely win the next election and be branded yet again as the party of taxation because the current government has kicked the can for over a decade with austerity measures.
I don't think we have seen peak final salary pensions yet.
All a bit depressing really.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on May 23, 2024 9:31:08 GMT
You're not wrong, BP. All I hope to get from Labour is an end to the culture war bullshit, and a return to the norms of political behaviour, and the repealing of some of the governmental over-reach the Tories have introduced to try to shut out scrutiny and opposition in Parliament and in the Courts. I'm not hugely confident of that, but it's worth a shot. A better relationship with the EU is needed too, of course.
I won't be voting Labour though, I'm 99% certain they'll win our seat, which is a new one as a result of boundary change and will probably become a Labour safe seat, as opposed to the 2-way marginal Tory/Labour we used to be in. I'll be voting LibDem and it won't count a jot because of the electoral system.
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WDB
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Post by WDB on May 23, 2024 9:41:40 GMT
There’s a reasonable chance that this will be the last conducted under the ancient and unfair Belarusian system. Then we can vote for the candidate we most want rather than to stop the one we least want.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on May 23, 2024 9:55:34 GMT
There's zero chance Labour will implement any kind of meaningful electoral reform. Which is the biggest reason I vote LibDem.
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Post by bromptonaut on May 23, 2024 10:22:04 GMT
My seat is solidly Labour, so I may register a protest vote and go Reform. The back benchers of Labour and the front bench of the LDs worry me in terms of thinking like student activists rather than adults (politics should be the Art of the Possible I recall) and I think Starmer will be kicked out of No.10 by Corbynites before he has got a chance to get comfortable unless he gets a larger majority and can operate sensibly without interference from the loonies. I don't think I have voted negtively before rather than for a candidate. As a (twice) former member of the Labour party I think the idea of a Corbynite takeover in the style of Livingstone at the GLC is a fantasy dreamed up by people in the right wing press. There's neither appetite nor mechanism by which Starmer can be defenestrated after winning a GE. , As others have said Reform is likely to include people for whom you would be regarded as not English enough. In fact I'd be surprised if, after anti Islamic stuff, Antisemetic social media etc posts are not amongst reasons why Reform will have to disown candidates during the campaign. |
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Post by Humph on May 23, 2024 11:17:19 GMT
Our constituency flips between Con and Labour. So I guess I’ll have to vote Labour as a least worst choice. Not sure if I want either of them but I’m very sure I’m not going to vote for the incumbent incompetents.
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Post by EspadaIII on May 23, 2024 15:21:12 GMT
It is a protest vote which will have no effect on the MP in my area.
I am so disillusioned with the Tories. The Tory candidate in the constituency next to me is a buffoon who makes Boris look intelligent and sensible - so glad I no longer live there. Someone needs to get a grip but I'm not sure Labour will do it any better really than the Tories. I like that guy from Argentina.. can we have him please??
The Greens have always been total lunatics but to accept a clearly anti-Semitic candidate for the local elections was beyond the pale. I understand that Labour are a far more mixed crowd but there are too many who just get on a bandwagon to suit their constituents rather than thinking for themselves. I wish Frank Field was alive. He was one Labour MP I would have voted for.
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bpg
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Post by bpg on May 23, 2024 15:45:59 GMT
I think Sunak must be smoking something. I caught the news with a soundbite of his speech today in South Wales asking the locals if they were looking forwards to a tournament Wales has not qualified for then going on to claim "Inflation was at 11% when he took the job as PM and it is now 2%, something he has delivered."
He glossed over the fact it was his party that got it there, while he was chancellor 2020-2022, with a little help from the economic genius that is Liz Truss.
I'm not sure if they believe the electorate are morons or just have utter contempt for them.
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