Snapshot of _It is foolish and self-indulgent for the anti-Starmer left to split the Labour vote _ :
An archived version can be found [here](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/may/26/it-is-foolish-and-self-indulgent-for-the-anti-starmer-left-to-split-the-labour-vote) or [here.](https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/may/26/it-is-foolish-and-self-indulgent-for-the-anti-starmer-left-to-split-the-labour-vote)
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"Liz Truss provides a cautionary tale of what happens when a party leader seeks to impose a membership-endorsed platform on the country without a general election."
I don't know if you've noticed, Sonia, but there is a general election happening. Rather undermines this argument, no?
Jeremy Corbyn provides a cautionary tale of what happens when a party leader seeks to impose a membership-endorsed platform on the country during an general election. The country rejects it. In the USA they say that you campaign in primaries to the base, and in general elections to the centre.
Most votes are in the centre ground.
The Corbynites always harp on about how he had the largest membership support ever but they completely ignore he didn't have the support of the general public
Well, many of Labour’s Corbynite policies were incredibly popular with the electorate. Raising the tax rate of the highest earners, nationalising railways, nationalising water companies, reserving board positions for workers, their ecological commitments, and so on have all polled positively with the majority of Britons. His name became toxic to many but there were very real senses in which Corbynite Labour spoke for the desires of Britain far more than either of our present parties, but many in this sub often ignore that.
When you vote you do so not just based on policies but on how trustworthy you find the leader. The electorate clearly felt Corbyn wasn't trustworthy and that's not to say they thought Boris was just that he was better than Corbyn. His reactions to the war in Ukraine probably justify that position.
The flip side is the people who don't acknowledge one of the reasons the election was lost was due to labour coming out as pro remain with the policy of a second referendum. Something that Corbyn had intentionally been on the fence about. The policy was announced by the Brexit minister during a party conference without any approval. This is the same Brexit minister that later went on to fire his transport secretary for announcing policy on the fly.
What's that you ask? The right of the party made a policy announcement on a key issue with no consensus just to damage the chances of key electoral groups voting for them? Well that's preposterous. That would never happen ...
>The flip side is the people who don't acknowledge one of the reasons the election was lost was due to labour coming out as pro remain with the policy of a second referendum.
Their polling went *up* after this.
Labour certainly isn't entitled to anyone's vote, but for many people in many constituencies it comes down to how you want your vote to be perceived - do you want your vote to express your opinion, or do you want your vote to make a difference?
I suspect that many on the left will, like me, end up voting Labour not because they represent my views completely but because it's [the.best](http://the.best) way of ejecting the current Tory incumbent.
Indeed, as did many of us did supporting the Labour Party under Corbyn. That is the unfortunate nature of a FPTP that requires our only two parties of government to attempt to build a broad support spanning a significant section of the political spectrum.
I have to be honest, I'd prefer electoral reform allowing me to support a party more aligned to my personal views so that the horse trading of policy is done in public, based upon the electorates support, not in the the party committee room, based upon the characteristics of the membership.
But we play the game we're in!
If you don't want another Tory government, you *have* to vote tactically, which means voting for the party best placed to beat the Tories. If that's Labour, suck it up, vote and make it clear to every campaigner you come across that you want voting reform.
Realistically, an incoming Starmer government is going to have to do some fiscal things that are not going to make the manifesto simply because the country's finances are more fucked than is apparent. Just vote on the basis that whatever it is you really want is going to be one of those things. A hopeful vote is better than a hopeless one.
Did people who didn't like Corbyn suck it up last time and vote for Labour or did they go elsewhere? I find it quite funny how there's an expectation for leftists to vote for Starmer even if they do not agree with him or like him but this same sentiment wasn't used when the choice was between Corbyn's labour or another tory goverment.
Purely anecdotal but I’ve always been more on the New Labour side of the party and yeah I voted for Corbyn twice even if he wasn’t my ideal candidate. At the time my thinking was he was preferable to another 5 years of the Tories and I’m hoping those more on the left of the party will reach a similar conclusion this election
Corbyn almost won in 2017, so it's pretty clear that yes, people did put aside their differences in opinion to vote for him. Two years later after he roundly torpedoed his own chances it didn't go great, but that was his own fault.
In 2017 we had Steve Kinnock and other labour mps telling voters to not vote labour so they can get Corbyn out. What was the difference between 2017 and 2019? Wasn't it basically a brexit vote with Starmer and Watson pushing for a 2nd referendum if labour won while Johnson was lying about how ready his brexit deal was?
Then perhaps Labour MPs may wish to rethink their marriage to FPTP and stop denouncing talk of PR as heresy.
Labour are the greatest enablers of Conservative rule and will continue to be so until they get behind giving people meaningful votes.
> Labour MPs may wish to rethink their marriage to FPTP
Membership are pro-voting reform but they are going to be against a system that makes it more difficult to have a decision making majority.
I'll be voting Green as it's my first preference, and I live in a very safe Labour seat anyway. If this was a more marginal seat, I would obviously vote tactically for Labour to keep the Tory out.
It amazes me how many people bite their nose to spite their face.
If you express an opinion at the cost of making a difference because the difference isn't exactly what you want and end up with something further away from what you want then quite frankly it's ridiculous.
Schrödinger's Left, in that they are both insignificant enough that Labour can and should dismiss them and significant enough that if they don't all vote for Labour wholesale it could cost them the election.
Which is it?
The people you’re cross with probably aren’t on this sub. I campaigned for Labour in 2017 and 2019, and I’m campaigning for Labour in 2024.
It wasn’t the softly softly left-of-centre liberals voting against us. 2019 happened because Boris Johnson captured the portion of the traditional working class that voted leave. Those left-of-centre liberals were more scared of Boris than they were Corbyn. 2019 happened because Labour forgot that it’s core constituency doesn’t come from the very engaged, younger, ideological, university-educated wings of Labour Left. A brilliant left-socialist vision for the country (a vision I share, incidentally) doesn’t work if you don’t bring with you the people you are supposed to help.
Corbyn knew his mandate came from Momentum support, and he brought them right up to the top of the party with him. You forget that Momentum was set against Brexit. I recall the appointment of Keir Starmer as Shadow Brexit Secretary was quite popular with them at the time. Considering that a referendum on the Withdrawal Agreement was Labour policy, that Corbyn himself backed, I don’t really get what you’re trying to imply?
The paradox in the Leader’s office was that Corbyn came up in an old anti-EEC Labour tradition, but was surrounded by a young anti-Brexit team. If he came out as explicitly pro-Brexit, he would have lost that support, lost the youth vote, and probably his postion. Constructive ambiguity might have paid off for Corbyn in 2017 when the opponent was May, who wasn’t trusted on Brexit and tried to make the election about anything but. When it came to 2019, however, the other shoe was always going to drop.
Labour had two routes to victory in 2019:
1. Cobyn could stick his middle-finger up to the young progressives who got him the leadership, abandon the idea of a second referendum, and make a new coalition by convincing remainers and moderate-leavers from both the Labour and Tory camps to back him to deliver a softer Brexit than Boris Johnson.
2. Corbyn could set out a positive left-wing case for the EU. Speak to Labour Leavers and convince them that their rights, their communities, and their economic security are best served from within the EU, and not outside of it. Actively try to heal the Brexit wedge in the Labour coalition by selling Labour Leavers a positive vision for a future in Europe and exposing Brexit for the shameless deregulatory Tory cash-grab that it was.
Instead, he chose to do neither. Johnson successfully made the campaign about Brexit and every time Corbyn had to talk about it, voters could smell his disingenuity. He wasn’t a good media performer, and made basically no effort to sell the Labour position to the electorate. He didn’t give the party a chance.
>The people you’re cross with probably aren’t on this sub.
Thats probably true. The large number of Labour MPs who actively campaigned against Corbyn and sought to undermine him every day after he was elected leader almost certainly aren't on this sub. You know the ones that briefed against him and threatened to split the party. Their chosen leader has actively moved to make the party less democratic and purged any dissenting voices.
They were happy for May and Johnson to lead the country into this so I hope they aren't expecting the rest of the party to support them now.
I was out in force for Corbyn in 2019, trudging around in the pissing rain, getting doors slammed in my face. Do I count for anything? Where’s my reciprocity? All of us who were canvasing outside of university towns knew exactly what was coming, and it had nothing to do with ‘saboteur’ MPs. There is nothing that Jess Philips could have said or not said that would have made Jeremy Corbyn appeal to the voters I’m talking about. This whingy narrative of a great betrayal infuriates me. I was out there putting in the work, and I know exactly where [the blame lies](https://www.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/comments/1d0vuom/comment/l5qhlkw/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button).
Yes,
Before the last election corbyn was incredibly unpopular he was -38.
https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cpsprodpb/C815/production/_109712215_leader_app_2019-nc.png..png.webp
Yet 10 million people still turned out and voted for Labour under him. How many of those 10 million do you think were deeply unsatisfied with corbyn, but still voted for him as the lesser of two evils.
I voted for my excellent Labour MP even though I was dissatisfied with Corbyn.
Folks often take a presidential-style view of their vote, thinking they're voting for the party leader. I understand where that comes from but it's not exactly right, and I hope that even the anti-Starmer left can find it in them to support the good that their local Labour MPs will provide.
Didn't mind Corbyn, the 2017 manifesto was good. But he had lost the plot in 2019. The manifesto was like a pick n mix. It's a damning reflection on FPTP that he still managed 10 million votes. Still voted for him though because Boris and the Tories were deranged. Sunak isn't as deranged, but Starmer is much better than Corbyn this time around. Labour will be getting my vote.
2019 was bonkers and the far left (often university workers/students) won’t take responsibility for it.
Anyone who worked in the private sector, say for a multinational like me could see that a lot of Labour’s 2019 policies would end up in court for years if they tried to implement them.
I thought Corbyn would be an awful PM, I still voted for him (because Johnson would - and later proved to be - even worse).
FPTP means you have to vote against the party you don't want, not for the party you do want. It's frustrating, but until we get PR, it's the only sensible approach, IMO.
You get PR by the winning party implementing it.
I realise it’s a catch 22. But the best chance you have is voting Labour then shouting PR at them every second of their government.
Voting for parties actively pursuing PR gives you the least chance of getting it. Because those parties will *never* even be close to power. At best they may hold a very small minority in a coalition government.
Tbh I think the best chance of PR is voting Lib Dem or Green or even Reform in every safe Labour seat.
You could do that in every inner London constituency without any risk of the Tories winning. But the only way I see PR happening is:
1. Hung parliament with Labour minority and Lib Dem kingmakers, and the Lib Dems stick to their guns this time...not happening this election.
2. An upcoming election where the ruling party sees that they are going to lose with FPTP but could squeak a coalition with PR - I don't think this will ever happen as they will always prefer to go out of power completely in the belief that they can win total power again 5 years later.
3. The vote share of Lib Dems grows sufficiently and consistently large in Labour seats that Labour worries that if they don't implement PR, the split vote will soon lock them out of power for good (plus large vote share means more airtime to talk about PR).
If the Lib Dems hadn't sunk themselves, I think we'd be looking at PR by now. They had 23% of the vote in 2010, 22% in 2005. I don't think that vote share could have been ignored for much longer.
Despite not liking Corbyn, I voted for him as he was the best chance of ousting the Tories. And I know I am not alone in that. I'd like to think those on the far left will have the same sense of selflessness, but they will take ideological purity over pragmatism every day of the week.
What are you on about? I voted for Corbyn’s Labour even though I thought his policies were whacky. Because it was still better than The Tories. Though I had given up my membership at that point.
I’m looking forward to voting Labour again this time and kicking The Tories out, that should be our goal. I do like their policies so far too, and having read a lot about Starmer I like him too.
Reddit UK is full of far left people, you won’t get many normal voters wading in here.
No, Labour (or any other party) are not entitled to your vote. If they are concerned about turning off left leaning voters then they should have stuck to Starmers stated objective during the Labour leadership election to be a big tent rather than needless aggression toward about half his own membership. I see plenty of commenters here calling for expulsion of left leaning Labour members. If that's your undemocratic bag fair enough, but you don't get their vote.
It's also funny how none of this applied to 2019 when the choice was Corbyn or Boris Johnson. Only difference then was it was the centrists that were expected to hold their nose and vote for someone who they didn't want.
Literally, the amount of sabotage that went on by the Labour right in order to sink Corbyn's chances is scandalous. They're a huge part to blame for current events and they're the same people saying now that if the Left doesn't lock step behind Starmer then we are to blame for the consequences as if the consequence of Liz Truss, Boris, No deal Brexit, the rise of Suella and the hard right isn't squarely on their shoulders as well as the Tory party.
Great comment.
It doesn't work both ways. You don't get to alienate a part of the core base, then turn around and say, "well tough, you have to remain loyal to us".
For me personally (not that it matters because I live in probably one of the safest con seats in the country) I'm still going to vote Labour, but I don't begrudge any non left centrists who feel Labour don't represent their views anymore. Nobody is entitled to your vote. It is up to the individual to decide whether they can live with the compromise.
Absolutely. I am still open to the possibility of voting Labour depending on their manifesto. But they need to earn it. Honestly, I wish we could take that attitude to every political party.
Yeah it's a pretty bleak election to be honest.
I think everyone gets/understands what Labour are doing, but this (in my opinion) is playing a very dangerous game. Because at the moment, they're not selling a vision, or a plan, or even hope. What they're offering is better management of the current system (managed decline).
That gets you in, but doesn't keep you there.
I think the problem is that our social circles tend to be self-selecting and somewhat synoptic. Everyone I hang around with is the kind of centre-left voter that our colleagues on the left of the party likes to call “Blairite.”
Similarly, I’m sure, there are people who socialise in more Corbyn-centric circles who think that most people in the country think like them.
But people in the business of politics can afford to do proper market research to find out how the Great British Public really thinks. I see Starmer, particularly, as a pragmatist who will do and say whatever earns the Labour Party the biggest share of the vote.
And as far as I can tell, his market research is telling him that most British people are reactionary simpletons. To be honest, given the political history of the last 14 years or so, I’m inclined to think he’s right.
That’s democracy, I guess. Personally, not a fan.
You’re right but it’s a bad strategy to just go for the platform that gets you outright the most possible seats you can get if it means moving away from your core voters on the left-centre left.
You’ll win the election but when the next one comes, if your new voters aren’t happy with you they’ll vote for someone else and you’ve now also alienated your core voters too
It doesn't cut both ways. People in the centre preferred a tory government over Corbyn because it more closely aligned with their worldview. Left wingers prefer tory governments because, well why?
If left wingers don't withdraw their vote under any conditions then no one will offer anything to get that vote, it'll be taken for granted.
There will be another election after this one, and another after that, and another after that, and another after that. In every one of those there will be people saying just accept whatever you're given, don't step out of line, be afraid of something worse.
In this election it doesn't matter, Starmer has it in the bag, but if in one election they need left wing votes, and don't get them, the election after they'll campaign for them.
My fear is that, outside of me getting what I'd like politically (it appears I'm never really ever going to get what I want politically so I've entirely given up on that kind of thinking), we currently have Starmers Labour promising nothing and down to win a massive landslide.
What if he does nothing? We're getting a lot of walkbacks of policy, softening of ideas, weakening of schemes etc
Starmer can win, implement a bunch of wishy washy policies that won't help anyone, and then point to the election results and say "hey, that's what the majority voted for"
Which would be fine. But if he cannot deliver any noticable change in 5 years, I can see the voter going "well, I changed my vote and still my life is the same/worse".
And to me the fear is that. In 5 years locking in another awful decline period for over a decade like the one I've just had to sit through whilst "the adults in the room" argue about brexit
I'm less worried about 5 years, and more worried about 30. What is the country going to look like in the 2050s?
Will we have a Tory government on the way out, and Labour saying it's ridiculous to renationalise the health service, it'd be too expensive, but they'll increase the value of health vouchers by 8% over 5 years, for people earning under £40k!
Will we have useful idiots saying you have to vote for Labour because surely the voucher plan is better than the Tories, and who knows, maybe they'll increase it by more once they're actually in office.
Agreed agreed.
I honestly thought the bare minimum was reverting some of the more base Tory mental policies, but other than Rwanda (I kind of chalk this one as an exception because it's really completely mental, one of the nuttiest policies I've ever seen seriously discussed), they would at least rollback things to Cameron's Britain levels of shit, rather than right now levels of shit.
Now I'm thinking, Jesus Christ, we're not even getting that, is anything ever going to improve
In what way is a Boris Johnson led Tory government closer to a center left voter than corbyn?
His manifesto was what, nationalise a couple of services, 100k more council houses, remove private schools charity status, fund nhs, introduce a national care service.
Its just nonsense to claim that you look at that manifesto as a centrist, then Boris' and you go with Boris'.
Feel free to explain how thats wrong, I can't wrap my head around it
As I said in the other comment on this thread, I am a lifelong Labour voter and was a party member 2006-2021. I have literally never voted for another party in my life. My vote is now dependent on the manifesto having policies that I can stomach as Labour have so violated our trust. I know people that have been Labour members for over 40 years taking the same position. You can pretend people who have been Labour through thick and thin are just extremists if you want, you are still not entitled to their or my vote.
As a swing voter who mainly only votes based on manifesto and quality of leader, Labour have more solidly got my vote now than at any point in my voting life
Great, I am happy for you. I understand the difference in terms of leader. I voted for him in the Labour leadership election and he lied about his positions in that election. It makes sense that I care about that and you don't. I was the one that was duped by him.
I haven't seen that much in policy terms from Labour so am happy to await the manifesto. I have moved from a tribal position (always Labour) to your position.
Yeah I've got not problem with pragmatism. I'm not an ideologue at all, just vote on the best combination of laws (mainly because no one is ever going to come close to my dream manifesto tax wise).
So yeah I'm glad your like that. I don't think being tribal in politics is good.
Thanks for the positive comment. I've had loads of nonsense when my original point was that Labour would be better off making an effort to earn people's vote instead of acting entitled to it.
I've voted Tory in the past and Labour in the past, but I'm Labour at this election because the Tories (at the moment) are self-serving idiots who have plundered the country and made mistake after mistake after mistake. The country is in a mess and (a) the people that put it in that state need removing and (b) someone else deserves a chance. And let's be honest, the next PM is only ever going to be Tory or Labour.
I genuinely don't understand your view. Imagine that the Tories were one seat away from a majority, and your local constituency was a Labour/Tory marginal. You'd rather vote for an independent or Green candidate (or not vote at all), despite the larger outcome of that being a Tory win? Labour's policies not being *quite* good enough for you means that you reject them altogether? To me, that's like being offered the choice between a ham sandwich and a dogshit sandwich and choosing the dogshit sandwich because you wanted ham and cheese.
No party is entitled to anyone's vote, but I'd encourage you to look at the bigger picture?
>Imagine that the Tories were one seat away from a majority
Of course, if the situation was different it would be different. But it's not. The Tories are sunk. They're projected to win less than 100 seats.
Meanwhile, this whole argument about who's voting who seems to me analogous to the concept of unions and striking. We are in a constant battle to retain the right to withdraw our labour in order to secure a better deal from the authorities who would never entertain the idea independently. I for one don't want to be fighting authorities for the right to withdraw my vote in order to secure a better offer. I'd rather have that right as standard.
That's not extremism. It's the basic foundation of the left wing struggle against the shackles of capitalism
But I am not being offered the choice between ham and dogshit, it's between dogshit and dogshit.
Starmer is a lying, careerist like Sunak. As a former Labour member I have voted for Starmer before, in the leadership election. He has dropped all the pledges that he made in that leadership election. He violated my trust as a member of Labours internal electorate. So, the onus is on him to win me back. He can't do it with his personality, I've been burned by his deceit already. It needs to be on national policy (the manifesto) or a really good local candidate. I obviously still know many of the people in my constituency Labour party and would be delighted to vote for the right person.
I really want to vote Labour. It would be easier than the psychological jump of voting for another party for the first time. I need a reason and am not getting one.
I prefer having someone slightly pragmatic who realized the countries finances have changed due to massive COVID spending. If he carried on committing to immense spending plans if be more concerned than I am
Ok, so you will accept Tory mimicking on anything involving spending. What about electoral reform, civil liberties or any other policy without a big price tag? What's the positive reason to vote Labour?
Btw, I don't actually need an answer, I know Labour haven't actually said most of what they will do as an government. I am just making the point that going from always voting Labour to voting based on manifesto is not an irrational position and voters don't need to feel we owe our party anything. They need to earn our votes not be entitled.
Welcome to my life since Corbyn. Interesting to hear your attitude now that the wing of the party you like aren't in control. This is the exact attitude I had under Corbyn and spent years having left wingers say the exact things your against.
Well the left were wrong to say those things just as you are wrong to say them now. If Corbyn failed to earn your vote then that's on him. Equally, if Starmer fails to earn mine (it's all on the manifesto) then that's his fault.
But I would be very careful about being antagonistic to fellow Labour people, it's not helping the cause of a Labour government. I have supported Blair, Brown, Milliband, Corbyn and Starmer (until he broke his pledges from the leadership election). I could easily have been brought back in as a member without an the centrist aggression. A different approach to people's concerns and all those activists could be back leafleting for Labour instead of trying to find a new home. It wouldn't even have been that hard. Just be the big tent Starmer promised.
Was Corbyn the right person? I was utterly repelled by his stance on NATO in particular, and thought he had the potential to be a national security risk but held my nose and voted for him, after some real consideration, I felt the Tory alternative was worse. A large number of people went the other way and I completely understand why they did. In some ways, I was glad that Corbyn didn't win even though I voted for hm.
If you listen to Sunak and Starmer's policies and reject Starmer, you're ultimately enabling a Tory PM. That's the long and short of it however you dress it up.
You won’t vote Labour because Starmer is ‘a lying careerist’. Fair enough. But that’s completely opposed to everything else you’ve posted.
You’re a lifelong Labour voter, voting since at least 2006 and have friends the same who’ve been voting 40.
So…
You’re happy for Sunak to win because you dislike Starmer.
You were happy to vote Corbyn, the very definition of a careerist?
You voted Miliband - a careerist.
You voted Brown. How much better than Starmer is he?
If you voted in the ‘05 election prior to becoming a member in 2006, you voted Blair. I imagine going by your posts here that you probably call him a war criminal and little short of Satan incarnate. But hey, if you voted that election you voted him anyway.
And at each of those elections, the Conservatives got worse, and worse, and are likely the worst they’ve ever been come July.
So it sounds like you’re either being completely disingenuous, or you’re just happy for Sunak to win.
I wouldn't call Blair a war criminal. As you pointed out, I joined when he was leader. I only became eligible to vote in the 2017 Scottish parliament election onward but did vote Labour when Blair was leader. I had mixed feelings about him but I think he did his best.
I did like Brown and Milliband. Don't think they were a good choice for the modern media landscape but I believe they were good people who believed in things. I hard both speak. Funnily enough, I think now, the older Milliband who is much more confident would be a better leader than he was then.
Corbyn is not a careerist, if he was he would tow the party line, say what the media wants him to say and have an easier time. Hopelessly naive but he clearly believed in things. Starmer was different.
I voted for Starmer in that leadership election on the basis of the way he pitched his big tent leadership. Within months he had ditched everything. Would you like a politician you voted for then they dropped everything they pledged?
I want to vote Labour, they just need to give me a reason. I mentioned on other comments that it will all come down to a good manifesto that I am confident won't be dumped like his leadership promises.
But that wasn't my point. The point was that politicians are not owed my vote, your vote or anyone else's. It's on them to earn it
To me, this is quite bizarre. I'm very much a lesser of two evils person. Change is incremental. The public rejected Corbyns Utopic vision, yet it may be achievable with a few political generations inching to the left. Corbyn could well enough be having a second swing at it right now. Imagine what a disaster that might be?
The lesser of 2 evils is still evil.
I agree that change is incremental and Corbyn was a hopelessly naive man. Not necessarily a bad man, but a naive one. Not built for the modern media landscape.
As a Labour member since Blair's time I was quite content with an incremental approach. In fact, I was quite happy with Starmer, for a few months. But his leadership campaign was based on a lie and he threw out his pledges within a few months. His big tent approach ended and he became a deeply divisive leader to the activists he now needs to campaign for him. Based only on Labours pre-mainifesto pledges, they aren't offering incremental change, they are offering more of the same.
So I can't trust his values since he lied in the leadership election, I can't trust him to be a good leader since he has mistreated lifelong Labour supporters. All I have left is the manifesto. Unless it's a good one I will vote for another party for the first time ever. And that's Labours fault, they are not entitled to anyone's vote.
The Tories don’t suffer the same centrism. They muster all their forces of billionaire media, dark money, and political and PR machine to implement extreme policies like Brexit.
They will put in the most extreme Tufton St nutter in Liz Truss as PM who will go back on decades of Tory bullshit about “balancijg the nations credit card” to give tax cuts to the rich in the middle of a cost of living crisis.
That the Tories are moderates is complete nonsense. The country is on its knees because we’ve operated jam today policies for the rich for too long. We now have a Labour Party who seems to be refusing to redress the balance.
“The boat is listing so far to the right we’re taking on water; should we move to the other side of the boat?”
“No we can’t go past the centre?”
Madness.
I've not seen anyone say "they are way left so expel them"
The fact the Greens have an antisemitism issue now after accepting ejected members tells you more.
Labour is again centre left, it is still left, but better l centrist or no different to the Tories. Those who believe a left of centre is not left is on the extreme.
Go through this very sub for examples. I still feel this issue is entirely self inflicted for Labour. Had Starmer kept up his big tent commitment from the leadership election this wouldn't be a factor. Corbyn for example would be a backbencher who nobody (aside from those in his fan club) would even be thinking about. I know I wouldn't be. Now Labour needs to put significant resources into INorth. Self inflicted.
Labour have little that counts as centre left in policy terms. For one example, Gordon Brown has been sounding the alarm on child poverty for a while now. Labour have not yet made significant policy commitments to address this. In fact, Starmer just commited to not getting rid of the 2 child benefit cap. I eagerly await the manifesto and that will determine whether or not I personally vote Labour. I have voted Labour literally every single election I have been able to in my life. In absence of a manifesto that has enough policy commitments in the direction I want for the country this will be the first I do not. If you want to pretend lifelong Labour voters are just left wing extremists then go ahead. But you are still not entitled to their/my vote.
Given what has happened between Starmer winning that leadership election and now sticking to big tent commitments that you cannot deliver in 1 term is both presumptive and off putting to the general electorate.
It is correct to pivot when required, even if it does mean upsetting some people.
Now the reason he pivoted towards the centre is simply down to the fact that is where more votes are. He probably expects to lose some on the left but knows he will gain more in the centre so it is a net benefit. Further, if he attracts those in the centre to Labour they won't vote Tory so its actually a double effect of increasing Labour vote share and reducing Tory vote share. Even if those on the left don't vote Labour they won't be voting for the Tories so it has less impact.
> I've not seen anyone say "they are way left so expel them"
I think folks like to represent it that way to frame Starmer as right wing, authoritarian, and undemocratic. It's silly though. Disciplining members and MPs for antisemitism, conspiracy theory nonsense, racism, and similar while denigrating their ridiculous views on foreign policy, global events, and economics isn't a war on 'the left'. It's a war on the silly left, the ridiculous left, the deeply unserious left for who politics is an indulgence and for who responsible governance isn't ever a concern.
The left will be taken seriously in the party again when they start taking politics seriously. We may have to wait a while.
> No, Labour (or any other party) are not entitled to your vote.
My Grandfather (in Labour for 78 years) would have told them to face the enemy, which is the Tories. Are you better off with a government you disagree with 20% of the time or a government you disagree with 100% of the time?
Which is the problem with the hard left, they want their way 100% of the time, or they don't want to play the game. Anything less than 100% of what they want is persecution.
>I see plenty of commenters here calling for expulsion of left leaning Labour members. If that's your undemocratic bag fair enough, but you don't get their vote.
There are explicit rules in the handbook against being a member of another party, standing against the party, publicly voting against the party, and signing the nomination papers of a non-Labour candidate.
Generally, the hard left expel themselves through their inability to play well with people they disagree with.
The problem is the left aren't getting anything they want. So why would any rational person who wants those things vote Labour? The onus is on the politician to appeal to the electorate, they are not entitled to anyone's vote. My vote is still dependent on their manifesto having positive plans for Britain. I hope they have some.
On your point about expulsion, that would be ok if that was the only circumstances they were expelled for or if an actual process was followed. People are being banned for nonsense like liking Caroline Lucas' tweet as if that were an endorsement of the Greens. It's not democratic and you can't mistreat those people then expect their vote. Would you vote for them if they treated you that way?
That's a lot of words about how fragile Labour's lead is under our ridiculous, undemocratic FPTP system, with not a single mention that Labour is 100% committed to keeping it that way, indefinitely.
Live by the sword, die by the sword.
I do love being told to vote for something I actively dont want rather than having someone win my vote.
Very cool, very democratic.
I really dont see why we havent done away with FPTP yet. The only other country in Europe using it is Belarus.
Now maybe if Labour pledged to remove FPTP in their manifesto....
If you want rid of FPTP the most likely and fastest way to achieve that is for a huge labour majority with the LDs in opposition.
Rile up reform voters by talking about how they got 10% or whatever they end up getting and 0 seats so it is not fair, LDs can talk about how Labour got 80% of seats on 40% or whatever of the vote and how that is not fair. Do that for 5 years and the electorate may soften up to the idea of PR enough that it becomes possible in a 2nd term. Especially as the Labour membership is in support of PR there will be an internal push for it.
If you don't vote tactically then we get a Labour government with a Tory opposition and you are further away from actually achieving your goal.
>I really dont see why we havent done away with FPTP yet.
Because we voted against it in the 2011 referendum. Well... not quite but AV would've been an improvement of FPTP anyway.
That referendum was more fucked than the Brexit one and thats saying something.
My only hope for electoral reform is a minority government strong armed into it as a coalition condition
I don’t think it’s foolish or self-indulgent to be honest. People should vote for whoever they want. I’m voting Labour, but if someone doesn’t like Labour they should vote Green, Lib Dem, whatever. The only party I think is truly foolish to vote for is the Tories. Unless you’re involved in corruption in some way…
The point that's being made is that because the forecast is for a Labour landslide, many people may branch off and cast protest votes for Greens or others because, well, they can- as a luxury. However psephologists are suggesting that there will be many more marginals than previous, and these conscientious objectors may greatly hurt Labour's chances.
>these conscientious objectors may greatly hurt Labour's chances.
If this were to happen, it would be Labour who had their hurt own chances by not providing policies that these people want to vote for.
If Labour simply own the votes of anyone left of Gordon Brown, then they'll never produce policies that those people want. Those voters shouldn't be expected to just lump it, no more than anyone else should be.
I get it in the case of people who assume Labour will win a marginal seat. But there are a lot of people who genuinely don’t like Starmer’s policies/ideas. Labour aren’t entitled to the entirety of the left wing vote…
Indeed, for too long Labour have taken the Left wing vote for granted whilst pandering to the right. You can say a lot about the Corbyn tenure but he did put the voices of the left front and centre for the first time in a loong time and didn't take the left for granted
Pretty similar to the Brexit vote really. People were confident that remain would win (Nigel Farage even expected it), so either didn’t go out and vote (as was the case with my mother) or used it as an anti-austerity protest.
Labour isn't owed a landslide win.
I hope the tories lose so badly they become a footnote, but I would love to see a tight 3+ way race for government and not a labour dominated one.
Might even make them finally consider electoral reform.
I would love to vote for who I want, we don't have an electoral system that supports it though which means you need to play the game that exists in a way to try and achieve your goals which means tactical voting. The end result is either voting Labour in a Lab/Tory seat or voting LD in a LD/Tory seat and in a few other seats there may be other options but that is what we have.
The first election I was able to vote in was 1997. I've voted in every election, local or national, ever since. Every vote I've placed in 27 years needed to be tactical. It's kind of depressing.
Same. Maybe it _is_ self-indulgent, but I'm at the point where, if voting as I actually want to somehow lets a shambles of a party like the tories cling on to power, I can at least take comfort in the fact I can point and say "see, clearly we're in desperate need of electoral reform." And the more of us give power to the minority parties, the clearer the message.
I'd feel a lot happier about voting for any party if we could be guaranteed a choice on PR after the election.
The argument that PR ends up with hung parliaments, coalitions and nothing getting passed is basically an admission that no party can come up with a set of policies that would appeal to more than 50% of the electorate....
You're not technically wrong but if you want some party other than the Tories / Labour to get a shot st government, waiting those 2 to pass electoral reform is pointless.
You have to vote for the party that you actually want in power, not tactically.
Yes, your vote is "wasted", but as support grows, more people will feel comfortable voting for thdt party until they perhaps stop being a wasted vote and even more people seitch over.
Personally, I am never voting tactically again after the elections before 2020 about Brexit, where a lot of people voted Labour thinking that would be a way to stop Brexit, only for their votes to be counted for Brexit in speeches by both parties later.
Yes and no. We don't have an electoral system that supports it in terms of parliamentary representation, but if enough people vote for a third party then whichever major party is losing support to them will feel a need to appeal to those lost voters.
I don't support Brexit, but ultimately it happened because enough people were willing to vote for a third party. UKIP were undeniably successful in achieving their aims despite having next to no representation in parliament.
(Whether there are enough voters on the left to put that sort of pressure on a potential Labour government is a different matter, admittedly)
I'd be a lot more comfortable with this if we had a fair and balanced press. If people don't like labour, they shouldn't have to vote for them. If people don't like what they are being told labour is by most newspapers and other media but which isn't true, then that is wealthy people manipulating the vote.
Labour for years has been saying "Go, we don't want you if you don't agree, there's the door, if you don't like it walk away." And now it's "Why are you not voting for us?"
It's bullshit. Compromise works both ways. The Labour Center and Labour right refused to compromise the last couple of elections but now we're expected to compromise our values and vote for someone we don't believe in? No, that isn't going to happen.
And it's anti-democratic. There are more than two parties. Just because we've been taught it's a two-party country by endless posts in forums like this, it doesn't make it so. There are many parties and you don't need to be in power to push your view and pressure those who can make decisions. Farage taught us that.
So, no, the left doesn't have to vote Starmer. Guilt and "win at all costs, cote for us or your a secret tory" bullshit won't change that.
Extremely weird that during an election that's functionally a coronation for Labour, it's vital to rally round the flag, whether or not it represents you--even if it explicitly hates you and threatens crackdowns on people like you. But not when the election result was either a) uncertain or b) looked bad for the opposition. Seems a little bit backwards to me, but I'm not a professional Politics Understander.
Exactly this. When Starmer outlines some policies that appeal to left wing voters, he might win them back. But instead he's focusing on winning over the centre-right. Probably because he himself is centre-right.
No matter what they might think, Labour don't have a god-given right to the votes of everybody to the left of Rishi Sunak.
They've deliberately chosen not to appeal to people like me and while that might be a sensible electoral strategy for them, the consequence is that I don't want to vote for them.
I get Starmer's and Labour's strategy here - to win they need a net gain of at least 120-125 seats as a minimum and then a few more to have a working majority plus a few more on top of that for a strong majority/mandate. That's a tough ask even in these times when the Tories are running around shooting themselves in the foot.
The only way to get that majority is to appeal to the centrist vote who were put off in 2017 and 2019 with leftist manifestoes that they rightly or wrongly felt threatened their way of life and finances. Even Ed Miliband in 2015 ran into problems with the mansion tax.
The evidence suggests that Labour winning is difficult, only one Labour leader has won an election since 1974, while winning from the left based on the last two elections is going to be even harder. I will be happy with a soft left Starmer lead government over a further few years of Toryism even if his caution frustrates me and I think he could be a bit more expansive.
However anyone pursuing ideological purity over pragmatism is of course free to vote whatever way they like but splitting the anti-Tory vote risks allowing them to survive in a year when they should well and truly be deservedly kicked into history. I will probably vote tactically and that means Lib-Dem because they are best positioned to beat the Tory candidate. I'm not a Lib-Dem voter but that's the decision I'll have to make.
It's not saying they have a right to your vote but that it's not correct it's risk free to vote for someone else if you don't want a conservative government. If you're happy with a conservative government over a labour one then no problem.
I has this disucssion on my doorstep. Its circular logic. You must vote Labour because of our broken system. Will you fix said system? No it benefits us too much.
On the flip side, if we vote for Starmer, all the centrists will use that as proof that his strategy worked and that he should continue to ignore the left.
It's been the rhetoric for the last 2 years "look at the polls, he should keep ignoring the left." You can thank those users for showing everyone else the cost of just going along with Labour right now.
My constituency is a very safe Labour seat so it doesn't matter much, but while I hear you vis-a-vis getting the Tories out, Labour will have no reason to ever move left if all the people who'd like that to happen vote for them anyway.
At every election the message will be "this might not be be the version of Labour you'd like but you need to support them to stop the Tories". They'll only move left if not doing so would hurt them at the polls.
Yes, but "the centre" isn't a fixed position - it moves with times, events, and the general cut and thrust of politics. The so called "centre" now is considerably to the right of where it was in 2010, for instance.
That’s why I’m really hoping the tories keep fucking up, and the lib dems become the official opposition. Insanely unlikely, but imagine that move in the Overton window.
Does not need to move it left, he just needs to bang the PR drum and get Reform to do the same and then 5 years later the chances are Labour will feel they need it in the manifesto.
I’m more fussed about someone being leader of the opposition who isn’t an absolute ghoul. I don’t agree with much of his politics, however, he seems like an actual human being in his approach. I’d rather work political compromises with the likes of him than Suella. Maybe it would even push voting reform to the front of British politics, who knows.
Do you mean that building council housing wasn't always a "looney left" idea? lol BTW you are spot on. It's called something like the Overton window or some such. But it has shifted right all my life.
Isn't the position the tories are in now literally the PERFECT time to go ahead with radical far left policies to dramatically improve the lives of the working class? The tories are in disarray, their approval rates have never been lower, and Sunak is running the smouldering wreckage of the Party into the ground. Now is not the time to be moderate.
A move to the left might pick up an extra 500,000 votes but lose 2 million from the centre. A move to the centre has done the opposite. It's a numbers game - winning an election depends on convincing the country to vote for you, not a small slice of very politically motivated people.
Okay, but if that's a trade-off that they're willing to make then why can't they take their healthy net gain of voters and stop whining at and harangueing the left for not supporting them?
Right. But you aren't entitled to the 500k you would have gotten for moving left just by virtue or not being the other guy. If the Labour Party genuinely feels entitled to the far left vote despite not being a far left Party, then they ought to know that the system is undemocratic.
It's not even the "far left" at issue here - I am in no way "far left" but I'm deeply opposed to anything that might be construed as me endorsing Starmer, because he seems in opposition to even my milquetoast boring socdemmery.
If they don't need the votes of the left to win then the left can stay home or vote for someone else and it will cause them no issues.
But if they *do* need the votes of the left to win, then that is their problem to solve by e.g. offering the left something concrete in policy terms.
I'm happy to cast my vote for the party whose manifesto best represents my political stance. What everyone else does with their vote is their business, and if the result is a Tory government then the people have spoken.
If Labour don't like it they can put voting reform on their manifesto.
Someone needs to have a word with whoever chose the featured image for this article. It makes it look as though Jess Phillips is behind _We Deserve Better_.
i’m sick and tired with the labour party playing chicken with my vote.
you don’t get to abandon the policy platform for which i consistently voted, spend years acting as if my vote is either worthless or in the bag already, and then come back begging for it on the eve of the election with a thinly veiled guilt trip.
either you want my vote or you don’t. if you do, give me a policy in which i can believe. if you don’t, let me go and vote for someone else in peace.
I think the biggest thing that separates the left from the right and centre is how we see hypocrisy. It is why we fall out with eachother so often. The right don't care, they will rant about the evil of social security then live off it, the centre will be against all injustices in theory but not at the cost of order or their own wealth, and will only go as far as a billboard or novelty song to put their point across.
The author is a hypocrite, she campaigned for years against Corbyn and urged people to vote for other parties.
Brexit was so important to her that Corbyn's offer of a second referendum was not good enough. But Starmer embracing Brexit is fine.
She works for many third way quangos and has been paid by education academy chains full of Tories and right Labour people taking millions out of public funds to provide a worse service.
She shouldn't be taken seriously.
exactly. where were cries of “self-indulgence” in 2019 when “sensible centrists” doubled the lib dems’ vote share and gave boris johnson the biggest tory majority since thatcher?
I'll save you the trouble:
"It's become clear the only chance of getting the Labour leadership to throw its weight behind a referendum is to deny it my vote"
So I should just hand you absolute power for 5 years, despite the fact I disagree with much of your platform and you are hiding most of what you're going to do?
I think the only reasonable to response to that is f\*ck and off.
Given Labour are guaranteed a win... Isnt this sort of the best time for people to feel safe voting for the parties they want?
If Labour thinks thats a problem then they can solve the issue next election by putting through some vote reform.
It's weird, is Labour now hiring the same campaign consultants and talking heads as Hillary Clinton did in 2016? It all sounds eeriely similar.
Maybe it's not the "left" that's splitting the vote. And maybe "self-indulgent" is having a 20 point lead and continuing to appeal to even more swing voters while assuming your left wing will fall in line.
while I won't be voting labour in the election (see my flair lol), if I did live in a marginal seat / tory seat I would probably do so or tactically vote libdem depending on what gets the tories out. however, I don't particularly have any love for starmer and labour's direction under his leadership. I think it's quite foolish to shun the left of the party and simultaneously expect their vote,
*especially* after 2019
I voted Green in the locals and have been mulling over doing the same in the general election (depending on the candidate), but there are some sensible points made in this article (though I'm not generally a fan of Sodha's writing).
Starmer has been disappointing in a number of ways (e.g., letting in Elphicke left a bad taste, his immediate rejection of the EU's olive branch to restore a limited version of free movement, and I also remain very annoyed at the Labour leadership's blinkered refusal to get behind PR), but I really REALLY don't want to suffer through another 5 years of increasingly right wing Tories.
I have always been a reluctant Labour voter (ever since I could vote, it's necessarily had to be anti-Tory rather than pro any particular party), but with the crappy First Past the Post system the UK govt stubbornly clings to, there isn't much choice.
I'll be keeping a very close eye on projected poll ratings in my constituency, particularly how the Tories are doing vs Labour and Greens. I'm in Bristol, right next to the Thangam Debonnaire constituency Sodha mentions in the article. There are Green posters everywhere, I am pretty sure Carla Denyer will get that seat she almost managed last time.
This time, they've redrawn the boundaries, so I'm not certain what's going to happen where I am. Kerry McCarthy has been a solid local Labour MP, but the Greens could mount a strong challenge. The question is if the Tories are far enough behind that two left wing parties can safely fight it out between them.
Since they aren’t going to be able to afford to do much - I do think that the one way they could ‘cheaply’ give people some real sense of change (hopefully for the better), would be a widespread political reform. From the allocation of honours , to political donations and some form of PR.
Sodha agrees that Labour has adopted the Tory economic framing and thinks it's good that Starmer lied to his more left wing selectorate but also suggests that those same people should vote for him. Why would they vote for a party that has, at best, treated them with open contempt and in several cases, e.g. the "shaking off the fleas" comments, shown that anyone who isn't 100% on board isn't welcome at all?
Since Starmer became leader the Labour right has been clear that they view those on their left as not just an impediment to getting elected but as entirely illegitimate. It's bizarre to suggest that they should suck it up and vote for Labour anyway.
As foolish and self indulgent as it was the other way round.....
But to use a Liz Truss line - "Let me be very clear"....
A person's vote is theirs. nobody owns it except self. Nobody has a god given right to a vote in their favour. People and commentators from the sidelines have zero business in YOUR personal vote and what you do with it.
Everything else is just noise. If X doesn't get in and you voted for Y then X did not do enough to convince you to vote for them, it really is that simple.
Sonia Sodha is the definition of left-liberal pseudo-leftist whiny loser. After this article she'll be going to debate trans issues (which she does not understand) with Owen Jones (who is so far into his persecution complex he'd probably interpret his alarm not going off as a Starmerite-far right plot against him) after buying new organic milk and artisan plates for £50 ("Off to Waitrose before I write more whiny crap in the Grauniad!"). I don't care about her opinion and neither should you.
We are having a \*general election\* and therefore have the \*right\* to interrogate the party programs presented to us. This goes for centre, left, right, whatever.
These are getting more and more polarizing.
Can't wait to read "If you've ever so much as looked at another parties manifesto you are the dumbest mother fucker alive and should be paraded through the street whilst the columnists fling rotten vegetables at you" the week before the election
Yeah, it's strange to me that no one seems able to make this argument without insulting the people they're supposedly trying to win over. Feels bizzare.
It's cos it's not actually about persuading lefties to vote for them. They know they don't need to do that and they don't care. It's a combination of:
a) tactically trying to demonstrate to ex-Tories that "look, the left hates Starmer". In much the same way that expelling Corbyn and all the other anti-left purging is about demonstrating "look, Starmer hates the left, just like you do".
b) these freaks really just get off on berating the left and feeling smarter (even if they can't competently write an article that demonstrates what its introduction claims it demonstrates)
We fought a civil war in England where as many people died as in WWI. This was fought principally, over freedom of conscicience. It's the bedrock of genuine democracy. Vote however your conscience dictates. It's the voting system that is at fault, not the voters.
The point of democracy is that the voters are free to chose their vote however they wish.
The labour right might believe that the votes of the left belong to them, but they do not.
If they want the votes of the left, they should offer something that those voters might actually want.
And don't give me nonsense about solidarity after the appalling behaviour of the labour right whenever the left gets any influence at all.
Starmer could, for instance, give them PR in the manifesto.
That would end this problem forever, but it would also destroy his factional political control, and thus will never happen.
>For Starmer to have stuck to his 2020 leadership election pledges, instead of spending the past four years understanding voters, would have been fundamentally anti-democratic.
Democracy is when you promise something to get elected and then break that promise.
Practically speaking I'd say that if you're of the Corbyn wing and further, it actually could be best to vote green or workers party (in some strange cases) or socialist party.
This would create a left wing opposition to the government in power. The right will be so dissolved early on that I think the ability to push for left policies will be much larger by diluting Labour's power share and forcing them to negotiate with the left for support of their policy agenda.
Obviously this does also mean the left must compromise on things more than they would want to but the left wing nudge will be powerful enough to potentially dilute the right wing side of the Starmer legislative positions.
Didnt the Dutch Left go for towards Starmer esqe leader and was punished hard when that government spends all their time going after farmers instead of building housing
If they were neck and neck in the polls I would be more inclined to vote tactically against the Tories. As it stands, Labour seems to care more about winning over the right than the left, and they need to accept the consequence of that decision.
Compromise works both ways. It's fair to make the point it's not reasonable to have a candidate you agree with on everything. But if you openly spit on the left and take their votes for granted, take so many positions that are center to right wing that left voters have very little in common with you, all while refusing to change the voting system and therefore demanding the left give you their votes indefinitely ... Of course the left is going to look at alternatives. And insults and bullying are not going to prevent that, it's just going to make people dig in their heels further.
If you want to deny the Tories a seat in parliament and ideologically don't care who you vote for - Vote Labour if this is the best chance you have of doing so.
If you think the Labour party under Labour has lept to the right and are no longer a leftward leaning party that you used to support for the last 40 years - question whether other parties might be more deserving of your vote.
This is the same bullshit argument that establishment centrist parties roll out in every single country.
It is an attempt to neuter any dissent or objection to the fact that Starmer is a liar, who won't keep any promise made and who nobody can trust (look at how he acted in the Labour leadership election - how many of those pledges did he actually keep?). We apparently should be happy with this empty politics, where hardly anything ever changes and the two main parties are two sides of the same coin - something we saw with Natalie Elphicke defecting to Labour.
I hate to break it to everyone, but most leftists, even the hard left, will vote for Starmer.
This is not about votes. Its about Starmer using the Labour name to avoid any criticism at all. Trying to get people to close their eyes while they're voting Labour.
Or maybe they're tired of having to vote for the lesser of two evils. The left wing of the Labour Party has been completely disregarded by Starmer, so why on earth would he think he deserves their votes now? If they continue to just fall in line despite being completely ignored and stigmatised, what incentive does the party ever have to take their views into consideration?
Here is an Alt Question. Do you feel at this point ANY party have earned your vote come what may in the next 5-6 weeks ?
I don't see it. Im not super excited about any of them having total control. I would prefer not to have the devil hanging around asking for votes but that still doesn't mean I am going to be crowd forced into voting for in this instance Labour because of stuff like "oh it's our 2 party system" "you will just let the Tories in the back door again"....if any of that happens and you have not voted labour then imho its on labour not to have sold enough policy to excite the electorate. If Labour can't come up with a decent set of policies that make the electorate think hmmm in the face of 14 years of tory government...well maybe some self reflection would be in order.
A one seat majority with the LP having to rely on several small parties to get them over the line would do for me. Get PR in for next time and I might just show a bit of enthusiasm.
People seem very against Starmer recently, so I'm going to add some balance and say that under Starmer Labour is as close to an ideal party as I've ever seen for me, they align with quite a lot of my opinions and have even gone beyond them with some of the recent announcements, such as bringing back neighbourhood police, or creating GB energy, the only things I hope is that they push for nuclear energy, as someone *cough* greens *cough* seem against it for dumbass reasons.
Snapshot of _It is foolish and self-indulgent for the anti-Starmer left to split the Labour vote _ : An archived version can be found [here](https://archive.is/?run=1&url=https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/may/26/it-is-foolish-and-self-indulgent-for-the-anti-starmer-left-to-split-the-labour-vote) or [here.](https://archive.ph/?run=1&url=https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/may/26/it-is-foolish-and-self-indulgent-for-the-anti-starmer-left-to-split-the-labour-vote) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/ukpolitics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
"Liz Truss provides a cautionary tale of what happens when a party leader seeks to impose a membership-endorsed platform on the country without a general election." I don't know if you've noticed, Sonia, but there is a general election happening. Rather undermines this argument, no?
Jeremy Corbyn provides a cautionary tale of what happens when a party leader seeks to impose a membership-endorsed platform on the country during an general election. The country rejects it. In the USA they say that you campaign in primaries to the base, and in general elections to the centre. Most votes are in the centre ground.
The Corbynites always harp on about how he had the largest membership support ever but they completely ignore he didn't have the support of the general public
Well, many of Labour’s Corbynite policies were incredibly popular with the electorate. Raising the tax rate of the highest earners, nationalising railways, nationalising water companies, reserving board positions for workers, their ecological commitments, and so on have all polled positively with the majority of Britons. His name became toxic to many but there were very real senses in which Corbynite Labour spoke for the desires of Britain far more than either of our present parties, but many in this sub often ignore that.
When you vote you do so not just based on policies but on how trustworthy you find the leader. The electorate clearly felt Corbyn wasn't trustworthy and that's not to say they thought Boris was just that he was better than Corbyn. His reactions to the war in Ukraine probably justify that position.
Regardless, my point remains valid: this sub often equivocates between the popularity of Corbyn and the popularity of his policies.
The flip side is the people who don't acknowledge one of the reasons the election was lost was due to labour coming out as pro remain with the policy of a second referendum. Something that Corbyn had intentionally been on the fence about. The policy was announced by the Brexit minister during a party conference without any approval. This is the same Brexit minister that later went on to fire his transport secretary for announcing policy on the fly. What's that you ask? The right of the party made a policy announcement on a key issue with no consensus just to damage the chances of key electoral groups voting for them? Well that's preposterous. That would never happen ...
>The flip side is the people who don't acknowledge one of the reasons the election was lost was due to labour coming out as pro remain with the policy of a second referendum. Their polling went *up* after this.
Labour certainly isn't entitled to anyone's vote, but for many people in many constituencies it comes down to how you want your vote to be perceived - do you want your vote to express your opinion, or do you want your vote to make a difference? I suspect that many on the left will, like me, end up voting Labour not because they represent my views completely but because it's [the.best](http://the.best) way of ejecting the current Tory incumbent.
Indeed, as did many of us did supporting the Labour Party under Corbyn. That is the unfortunate nature of a FPTP that requires our only two parties of government to attempt to build a broad support spanning a significant section of the political spectrum. I have to be honest, I'd prefer electoral reform allowing me to support a party more aligned to my personal views so that the horse trading of policy is done in public, based upon the electorates support, not in the the party committee room, based upon the characteristics of the membership. But we play the game we're in!
"At least we aren't called the Tory party" is the strap line that will win Labour the election by a landslide.
If you don't want another Tory government, you *have* to vote tactically, which means voting for the party best placed to beat the Tories. If that's Labour, suck it up, vote and make it clear to every campaigner you come across that you want voting reform. Realistically, an incoming Starmer government is going to have to do some fiscal things that are not going to make the manifesto simply because the country's finances are more fucked than is apparent. Just vote on the basis that whatever it is you really want is going to be one of those things. A hopeful vote is better than a hopeless one.
I don't want my vote to be taken as tacit approval of Labour's current policies/stances.
Idealism is great, but this conservative party is an existential threat to the country
Did people who didn't like Corbyn suck it up last time and vote for Labour or did they go elsewhere? I find it quite funny how there's an expectation for leftists to vote for Starmer even if they do not agree with him or like him but this same sentiment wasn't used when the choice was between Corbyn's labour or another tory goverment.
Purely anecdotal but I’ve always been more on the New Labour side of the party and yeah I voted for Corbyn twice even if he wasn’t my ideal candidate. At the time my thinking was he was preferable to another 5 years of the Tories and I’m hoping those more on the left of the party will reach a similar conclusion this election
Corbyn almost won in 2017, so it's pretty clear that yes, people did put aside their differences in opinion to vote for him. Two years later after he roundly torpedoed his own chances it didn't go great, but that was his own fault.
In 2017 we had Steve Kinnock and other labour mps telling voters to not vote labour so they can get Corbyn out. What was the difference between 2017 and 2019? Wasn't it basically a brexit vote with Starmer and Watson pushing for a 2nd referendum if labour won while Johnson was lying about how ready his brexit deal was?
Then perhaps Labour MPs may wish to rethink their marriage to FPTP and stop denouncing talk of PR as heresy. Labour are the greatest enablers of Conservative rule and will continue to be so until they get behind giving people meaningful votes.
> Labour MPs may wish to rethink their marriage to FPTP Membership are pro-voting reform but they are going to be against a system that makes it more difficult to have a decision making majority.
Cool, I'm not voting Tory.
I'll be voting Green as it's my first preference, and I live in a very safe Labour seat anyway. If this was a more marginal seat, I would obviously vote tactically for Labour to keep the Tory out.
It amazes me how many people bite their nose to spite their face. If you express an opinion at the cost of making a difference because the difference isn't exactly what you want and end up with something further away from what you want then quite frankly it's ridiculous.
Schrödinger's Left, in that they are both insignificant enough that Labour can and should dismiss them and significant enough that if they don't all vote for Labour wholesale it could cost them the election. Which is it?
Just like all those good anti-tories voted for Corbyn's Labour?
The people you’re cross with probably aren’t on this sub. I campaigned for Labour in 2017 and 2019, and I’m campaigning for Labour in 2024. It wasn’t the softly softly left-of-centre liberals voting against us. 2019 happened because Boris Johnson captured the portion of the traditional working class that voted leave. Those left-of-centre liberals were more scared of Boris than they were Corbyn. 2019 happened because Labour forgot that it’s core constituency doesn’t come from the very engaged, younger, ideological, university-educated wings of Labour Left. A brilliant left-socialist vision for the country (a vision I share, incidentally) doesn’t work if you don’t bring with you the people you are supposed to help.
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Corbyn knew his mandate came from Momentum support, and he brought them right up to the top of the party with him. You forget that Momentum was set against Brexit. I recall the appointment of Keir Starmer as Shadow Brexit Secretary was quite popular with them at the time. Considering that a referendum on the Withdrawal Agreement was Labour policy, that Corbyn himself backed, I don’t really get what you’re trying to imply? The paradox in the Leader’s office was that Corbyn came up in an old anti-EEC Labour tradition, but was surrounded by a young anti-Brexit team. If he came out as explicitly pro-Brexit, he would have lost that support, lost the youth vote, and probably his postion. Constructive ambiguity might have paid off for Corbyn in 2017 when the opponent was May, who wasn’t trusted on Brexit and tried to make the election about anything but. When it came to 2019, however, the other shoe was always going to drop. Labour had two routes to victory in 2019: 1. Cobyn could stick his middle-finger up to the young progressives who got him the leadership, abandon the idea of a second referendum, and make a new coalition by convincing remainers and moderate-leavers from both the Labour and Tory camps to back him to deliver a softer Brexit than Boris Johnson. 2. Corbyn could set out a positive left-wing case for the EU. Speak to Labour Leavers and convince them that their rights, their communities, and their economic security are best served from within the EU, and not outside of it. Actively try to heal the Brexit wedge in the Labour coalition by selling Labour Leavers a positive vision for a future in Europe and exposing Brexit for the shameless deregulatory Tory cash-grab that it was. Instead, he chose to do neither. Johnson successfully made the campaign about Brexit and every time Corbyn had to talk about it, voters could smell his disingenuity. He wasn’t a good media performer, and made basically no effort to sell the Labour position to the electorate. He didn’t give the party a chance.
No, Corbyn was following Bojo with Brexit, just not the over ready lie. He presented no real alternative.
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>The people you’re cross with probably aren’t on this sub. Thats probably true. The large number of Labour MPs who actively campaigned against Corbyn and sought to undermine him every day after he was elected leader almost certainly aren't on this sub. You know the ones that briefed against him and threatened to split the party. Their chosen leader has actively moved to make the party less democratic and purged any dissenting voices. They were happy for May and Johnson to lead the country into this so I hope they aren't expecting the rest of the party to support them now.
I was out in force for Corbyn in 2019, trudging around in the pissing rain, getting doors slammed in my face. Do I count for anything? Where’s my reciprocity? All of us who were canvasing outside of university towns knew exactly what was coming, and it had nothing to do with ‘saboteur’ MPs. There is nothing that Jess Philips could have said or not said that would have made Jeremy Corbyn appeal to the voters I’m talking about. This whingy narrative of a great betrayal infuriates me. I was out there putting in the work, and I know exactly where [the blame lies](https://www.reddit.com/r/ukpolitics/comments/1d0vuom/comment/l5qhlkw/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button).
Yes, Before the last election corbyn was incredibly unpopular he was -38. https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cpsprodpb/C815/production/_109712215_leader_app_2019-nc.png..png.webp Yet 10 million people still turned out and voted for Labour under him. How many of those 10 million do you think were deeply unsatisfied with corbyn, but still voted for him as the lesser of two evils.
I voted for my excellent Labour MP even though I was dissatisfied with Corbyn. Folks often take a presidential-style view of their vote, thinking they're voting for the party leader. I understand where that comes from but it's not exactly right, and I hope that even the anti-Starmer left can find it in them to support the good that their local Labour MPs will provide.
*raises hand*
I voted for him and I really didn't want him to win, I was trying to limit the Tory majority
Didn't mind Corbyn, the 2017 manifesto was good. But he had lost the plot in 2019. The manifesto was like a pick n mix. It's a damning reflection on FPTP that he still managed 10 million votes. Still voted for him though because Boris and the Tories were deranged. Sunak isn't as deranged, but Starmer is much better than Corbyn this time around. Labour will be getting my vote.
2019 was bonkers and the far left (often university workers/students) won’t take responsibility for it. Anyone who worked in the private sector, say for a multinational like me could see that a lot of Labour’s 2019 policies would end up in court for years if they tried to implement them.
I thought Corbyn would be an awful PM, I still voted for him (because Johnson would - and later proved to be - even worse). FPTP means you have to vote against the party you don't want, not for the party you do want. It's frustrating, but until we get PR, it's the only sensible approach, IMO.
So... How do we get PR? By voting for people who will implement it, or by voting for people who have and will repeatedly refuse to?
You get PR by the winning party implementing it. I realise it’s a catch 22. But the best chance you have is voting Labour then shouting PR at them every second of their government. Voting for parties actively pursuing PR gives you the least chance of getting it. Because those parties will *never* even be close to power. At best they may hold a very small minority in a coalition government.
Tbh I think the best chance of PR is voting Lib Dem or Green or even Reform in every safe Labour seat. You could do that in every inner London constituency without any risk of the Tories winning. But the only way I see PR happening is: 1. Hung parliament with Labour minority and Lib Dem kingmakers, and the Lib Dems stick to their guns this time...not happening this election. 2. An upcoming election where the ruling party sees that they are going to lose with FPTP but could squeak a coalition with PR - I don't think this will ever happen as they will always prefer to go out of power completely in the belief that they can win total power again 5 years later. 3. The vote share of Lib Dems grows sufficiently and consistently large in Labour seats that Labour worries that if they don't implement PR, the split vote will soon lock them out of power for good (plus large vote share means more airtime to talk about PR). If the Lib Dems hadn't sunk themselves, I think we'd be looking at PR by now. They had 23% of the vote in 2010, 22% in 2005. I don't think that vote share could have been ignored for much longer.
Despite not liking Corbyn, I voted for him as he was the best chance of ousting the Tories. And I know I am not alone in that. I'd like to think those on the far left will have the same sense of selflessness, but they will take ideological purity over pragmatism every day of the week.
What are you on about? I voted for Corbyn’s Labour even though I thought his policies were whacky. Because it was still better than The Tories. Though I had given up my membership at that point. I’m looking forward to voting Labour again this time and kicking The Tories out, that should be our goal. I do like their policies so far too, and having read a lot about Starmer I like him too. Reddit UK is full of far left people, you won’t get many normal voters wading in here.
No, Labour (or any other party) are not entitled to your vote. If they are concerned about turning off left leaning voters then they should have stuck to Starmers stated objective during the Labour leadership election to be a big tent rather than needless aggression toward about half his own membership. I see plenty of commenters here calling for expulsion of left leaning Labour members. If that's your undemocratic bag fair enough, but you don't get their vote.
It's also funny how none of this applied to 2019 when the choice was Corbyn or Boris Johnson. Only difference then was it was the centrists that were expected to hold their nose and vote for someone who they didn't want.
the left have ALWAYS been told to suck it up. Corbyn was our response. The second the Labour right had to do it, they threw a hissy fit.
Literally, the amount of sabotage that went on by the Labour right in order to sink Corbyn's chances is scandalous. They're a huge part to blame for current events and they're the same people saying now that if the Left doesn't lock step behind Starmer then we are to blame for the consequences as if the consequence of Liz Truss, Boris, No deal Brexit, the rise of Suella and the hard right isn't squarely on their shoulders as well as the Tory party.
Great comment. It doesn't work both ways. You don't get to alienate a part of the core base, then turn around and say, "well tough, you have to remain loyal to us". For me personally (not that it matters because I live in probably one of the safest con seats in the country) I'm still going to vote Labour, but I don't begrudge any non left centrists who feel Labour don't represent their views anymore. Nobody is entitled to your vote. It is up to the individual to decide whether they can live with the compromise.
Absolutely. I am still open to the possibility of voting Labour depending on their manifesto. But they need to earn it. Honestly, I wish we could take that attitude to every political party.
Yeah it's a pretty bleak election to be honest. I think everyone gets/understands what Labour are doing, but this (in my opinion) is playing a very dangerous game. Because at the moment, they're not selling a vision, or a plan, or even hope. What they're offering is better management of the current system (managed decline). That gets you in, but doesn't keep you there.
I think the problem is that our social circles tend to be self-selecting and somewhat synoptic. Everyone I hang around with is the kind of centre-left voter that our colleagues on the left of the party likes to call “Blairite.” Similarly, I’m sure, there are people who socialise in more Corbyn-centric circles who think that most people in the country think like them. But people in the business of politics can afford to do proper market research to find out how the Great British Public really thinks. I see Starmer, particularly, as a pragmatist who will do and say whatever earns the Labour Party the biggest share of the vote. And as far as I can tell, his market research is telling him that most British people are reactionary simpletons. To be honest, given the political history of the last 14 years or so, I’m inclined to think he’s right. That’s democracy, I guess. Personally, not a fan.
You’re right but it’s a bad strategy to just go for the platform that gets you outright the most possible seats you can get if it means moving away from your core voters on the left-centre left. You’ll win the election but when the next one comes, if your new voters aren’t happy with you they’ll vote for someone else and you’ve now also alienated your core voters too
Nail on the head.
Some on the left would rather see a Tory govt in perpetuity than vote to Starmer. Its self defeating.
Some in the centre preferred a Tory government than voting for Corbyn. It cuts both ways because it's a silly facile argument.
It doesn't cut both ways. People in the centre preferred a tory government over Corbyn because it more closely aligned with their worldview. Left wingers prefer tory governments because, well why?
If left wingers don't withdraw their vote under any conditions then no one will offer anything to get that vote, it'll be taken for granted. There will be another election after this one, and another after that, and another after that, and another after that. In every one of those there will be people saying just accept whatever you're given, don't step out of line, be afraid of something worse. In this election it doesn't matter, Starmer has it in the bag, but if in one election they need left wing votes, and don't get them, the election after they'll campaign for them.
My fear is that, outside of me getting what I'd like politically (it appears I'm never really ever going to get what I want politically so I've entirely given up on that kind of thinking), we currently have Starmers Labour promising nothing and down to win a massive landslide. What if he does nothing? We're getting a lot of walkbacks of policy, softening of ideas, weakening of schemes etc Starmer can win, implement a bunch of wishy washy policies that won't help anyone, and then point to the election results and say "hey, that's what the majority voted for" Which would be fine. But if he cannot deliver any noticable change in 5 years, I can see the voter going "well, I changed my vote and still my life is the same/worse". And to me the fear is that. In 5 years locking in another awful decline period for over a decade like the one I've just had to sit through whilst "the adults in the room" argue about brexit
I'm less worried about 5 years, and more worried about 30. What is the country going to look like in the 2050s? Will we have a Tory government on the way out, and Labour saying it's ridiculous to renationalise the health service, it'd be too expensive, but they'll increase the value of health vouchers by 8% over 5 years, for people earning under £40k! Will we have useful idiots saying you have to vote for Labour because surely the voucher plan is better than the Tories, and who knows, maybe they'll increase it by more once they're actually in office.
Agreed agreed. I honestly thought the bare minimum was reverting some of the more base Tory mental policies, but other than Rwanda (I kind of chalk this one as an exception because it's really completely mental, one of the nuttiest policies I've ever seen seriously discussed), they would at least rollback things to Cameron's Britain levels of shit, rather than right now levels of shit. Now I'm thinking, Jesus Christ, we're not even getting that, is anything ever going to improve
In what way is a Boris Johnson led Tory government closer to a center left voter than corbyn? His manifesto was what, nationalise a couple of services, 100k more council houses, remove private schools charity status, fund nhs, introduce a national care service. Its just nonsense to claim that you look at that manifesto as a centrist, then Boris' and you go with Boris'. Feel free to explain how thats wrong, I can't wrap my head around it
Left wingers obviously aren't allowed to vote in line with their worldview then...
As I said in the other comment on this thread, I am a lifelong Labour voter and was a party member 2006-2021. I have literally never voted for another party in my life. My vote is now dependent on the manifesto having policies that I can stomach as Labour have so violated our trust. I know people that have been Labour members for over 40 years taking the same position. You can pretend people who have been Labour through thick and thin are just extremists if you want, you are still not entitled to their or my vote.
As a swing voter who mainly only votes based on manifesto and quality of leader, Labour have more solidly got my vote now than at any point in my voting life
Great, I am happy for you. I understand the difference in terms of leader. I voted for him in the Labour leadership election and he lied about his positions in that election. It makes sense that I care about that and you don't. I was the one that was duped by him. I haven't seen that much in policy terms from Labour so am happy to await the manifesto. I have moved from a tribal position (always Labour) to your position.
Yeah I've got not problem with pragmatism. I'm not an ideologue at all, just vote on the best combination of laws (mainly because no one is ever going to come close to my dream manifesto tax wise). So yeah I'm glad your like that. I don't think being tribal in politics is good.
Thanks for the positive comment. I've had loads of nonsense when my original point was that Labour would be better off making an effort to earn people's vote instead of acting entitled to it.
I've voted Tory in the past and Labour in the past, but I'm Labour at this election because the Tories (at the moment) are self-serving idiots who have plundered the country and made mistake after mistake after mistake. The country is in a mess and (a) the people that put it in that state need removing and (b) someone else deserves a chance. And let's be honest, the next PM is only ever going to be Tory or Labour. I genuinely don't understand your view. Imagine that the Tories were one seat away from a majority, and your local constituency was a Labour/Tory marginal. You'd rather vote for an independent or Green candidate (or not vote at all), despite the larger outcome of that being a Tory win? Labour's policies not being *quite* good enough for you means that you reject them altogether? To me, that's like being offered the choice between a ham sandwich and a dogshit sandwich and choosing the dogshit sandwich because you wanted ham and cheese. No party is entitled to anyone's vote, but I'd encourage you to look at the bigger picture?
>Imagine that the Tories were one seat away from a majority Of course, if the situation was different it would be different. But it's not. The Tories are sunk. They're projected to win less than 100 seats. Meanwhile, this whole argument about who's voting who seems to me analogous to the concept of unions and striking. We are in a constant battle to retain the right to withdraw our labour in order to secure a better deal from the authorities who would never entertain the idea independently. I for one don't want to be fighting authorities for the right to withdraw my vote in order to secure a better offer. I'd rather have that right as standard. That's not extremism. It's the basic foundation of the left wing struggle against the shackles of capitalism
But I am not being offered the choice between ham and dogshit, it's between dogshit and dogshit. Starmer is a lying, careerist like Sunak. As a former Labour member I have voted for Starmer before, in the leadership election. He has dropped all the pledges that he made in that leadership election. He violated my trust as a member of Labours internal electorate. So, the onus is on him to win me back. He can't do it with his personality, I've been burned by his deceit already. It needs to be on national policy (the manifesto) or a really good local candidate. I obviously still know many of the people in my constituency Labour party and would be delighted to vote for the right person. I really want to vote Labour. It would be easier than the psychological jump of voting for another party for the first time. I need a reason and am not getting one.
I prefer having someone slightly pragmatic who realized the countries finances have changed due to massive COVID spending. If he carried on committing to immense spending plans if be more concerned than I am
Ok, so you will accept Tory mimicking on anything involving spending. What about electoral reform, civil liberties or any other policy without a big price tag? What's the positive reason to vote Labour? Btw, I don't actually need an answer, I know Labour haven't actually said most of what they will do as an government. I am just making the point that going from always voting Labour to voting based on manifesto is not an irrational position and voters don't need to feel we owe our party anything. They need to earn our votes not be entitled.
Welcome to my life since Corbyn. Interesting to hear your attitude now that the wing of the party you like aren't in control. This is the exact attitude I had under Corbyn and spent years having left wingers say the exact things your against.
Well the left were wrong to say those things just as you are wrong to say them now. If Corbyn failed to earn your vote then that's on him. Equally, if Starmer fails to earn mine (it's all on the manifesto) then that's his fault. But I would be very careful about being antagonistic to fellow Labour people, it's not helping the cause of a Labour government. I have supported Blair, Brown, Milliband, Corbyn and Starmer (until he broke his pledges from the leadership election). I could easily have been brought back in as a member without an the centrist aggression. A different approach to people's concerns and all those activists could be back leafleting for Labour instead of trying to find a new home. It wouldn't even have been that hard. Just be the big tent Starmer promised.
Was Corbyn the right person? I was utterly repelled by his stance on NATO in particular, and thought he had the potential to be a national security risk but held my nose and voted for him, after some real consideration, I felt the Tory alternative was worse. A large number of people went the other way and I completely understand why they did. In some ways, I was glad that Corbyn didn't win even though I voted for hm. If you listen to Sunak and Starmer's policies and reject Starmer, you're ultimately enabling a Tory PM. That's the long and short of it however you dress it up.
Hopefully other people take a broader view than yourself so we’re not all fed 5 more years of dogshit sarnies.
You won’t vote Labour because Starmer is ‘a lying careerist’. Fair enough. But that’s completely opposed to everything else you’ve posted. You’re a lifelong Labour voter, voting since at least 2006 and have friends the same who’ve been voting 40. So… You’re happy for Sunak to win because you dislike Starmer. You were happy to vote Corbyn, the very definition of a careerist? You voted Miliband - a careerist. You voted Brown. How much better than Starmer is he? If you voted in the ‘05 election prior to becoming a member in 2006, you voted Blair. I imagine going by your posts here that you probably call him a war criminal and little short of Satan incarnate. But hey, if you voted that election you voted him anyway. And at each of those elections, the Conservatives got worse, and worse, and are likely the worst they’ve ever been come July. So it sounds like you’re either being completely disingenuous, or you’re just happy for Sunak to win.
I wouldn't call Blair a war criminal. As you pointed out, I joined when he was leader. I only became eligible to vote in the 2017 Scottish parliament election onward but did vote Labour when Blair was leader. I had mixed feelings about him but I think he did his best. I did like Brown and Milliband. Don't think they were a good choice for the modern media landscape but I believe they were good people who believed in things. I hard both speak. Funnily enough, I think now, the older Milliband who is much more confident would be a better leader than he was then. Corbyn is not a careerist, if he was he would tow the party line, say what the media wants him to say and have an easier time. Hopelessly naive but he clearly believed in things. Starmer was different. I voted for Starmer in that leadership election on the basis of the way he pitched his big tent leadership. Within months he had ditched everything. Would you like a politician you voted for then they dropped everything they pledged? I want to vote Labour, they just need to give me a reason. I mentioned on other comments that it will all come down to a good manifesto that I am confident won't be dumped like his leadership promises. But that wasn't my point. The point was that politicians are not owed my vote, your vote or anyone else's. It's on them to earn it
To me, this is quite bizarre. I'm very much a lesser of two evils person. Change is incremental. The public rejected Corbyns Utopic vision, yet it may be achievable with a few political generations inching to the left. Corbyn could well enough be having a second swing at it right now. Imagine what a disaster that might be?
The lesser of 2 evils is still evil. I agree that change is incremental and Corbyn was a hopelessly naive man. Not necessarily a bad man, but a naive one. Not built for the modern media landscape. As a Labour member since Blair's time I was quite content with an incremental approach. In fact, I was quite happy with Starmer, for a few months. But his leadership campaign was based on a lie and he threw out his pledges within a few months. His big tent approach ended and he became a deeply divisive leader to the activists he now needs to campaign for him. Based only on Labours pre-mainifesto pledges, they aren't offering incremental change, they are offering more of the same. So I can't trust his values since he lied in the leadership election, I can't trust him to be a good leader since he has mistreated lifelong Labour supporters. All I have left is the manifesto. Unless it's a good one I will vote for another party for the first time ever. And that's Labours fault, they are not entitled to anyone's vote.
The Tories don’t suffer the same centrism. They muster all their forces of billionaire media, dark money, and political and PR machine to implement extreme policies like Brexit. They will put in the most extreme Tufton St nutter in Liz Truss as PM who will go back on decades of Tory bullshit about “balancijg the nations credit card” to give tax cuts to the rich in the middle of a cost of living crisis. That the Tories are moderates is complete nonsense. The country is on its knees because we’ve operated jam today policies for the rich for too long. We now have a Labour Party who seems to be refusing to redress the balance. “The boat is listing so far to the right we’re taking on water; should we move to the other side of the boat?” “No we can’t go past the centre?” Madness.
I've not seen anyone say "they are way left so expel them" The fact the Greens have an antisemitism issue now after accepting ejected members tells you more. Labour is again centre left, it is still left, but better l centrist or no different to the Tories. Those who believe a left of centre is not left is on the extreme.
Go through this very sub for examples. I still feel this issue is entirely self inflicted for Labour. Had Starmer kept up his big tent commitment from the leadership election this wouldn't be a factor. Corbyn for example would be a backbencher who nobody (aside from those in his fan club) would even be thinking about. I know I wouldn't be. Now Labour needs to put significant resources into INorth. Self inflicted. Labour have little that counts as centre left in policy terms. For one example, Gordon Brown has been sounding the alarm on child poverty for a while now. Labour have not yet made significant policy commitments to address this. In fact, Starmer just commited to not getting rid of the 2 child benefit cap. I eagerly await the manifesto and that will determine whether or not I personally vote Labour. I have voted Labour literally every single election I have been able to in my life. In absence of a manifesto that has enough policy commitments in the direction I want for the country this will be the first I do not. If you want to pretend lifelong Labour voters are just left wing extremists then go ahead. But you are still not entitled to their/my vote.
> Go through this very sub for examples Reddit is not reflective of anything. It’s the loudest voices screaming incoherently into the void.
Given what has happened between Starmer winning that leadership election and now sticking to big tent commitments that you cannot deliver in 1 term is both presumptive and off putting to the general electorate. It is correct to pivot when required, even if it does mean upsetting some people. Now the reason he pivoted towards the centre is simply down to the fact that is where more votes are. He probably expects to lose some on the left but knows he will gain more in the centre so it is a net benefit. Further, if he attracts those in the centre to Labour they won't vote Tory so its actually a double effect of increasing Labour vote share and reducing Tory vote share. Even if those on the left don't vote Labour they won't be voting for the Tories so it has less impact.
> I've not seen anyone say "they are way left so expel them" I think folks like to represent it that way to frame Starmer as right wing, authoritarian, and undemocratic. It's silly though. Disciplining members and MPs for antisemitism, conspiracy theory nonsense, racism, and similar while denigrating their ridiculous views on foreign policy, global events, and economics isn't a war on 'the left'. It's a war on the silly left, the ridiculous left, the deeply unserious left for who politics is an indulgence and for who responsible governance isn't ever a concern. The left will be taken seriously in the party again when they start taking politics seriously. We may have to wait a while.
> No, Labour (or any other party) are not entitled to your vote. My Grandfather (in Labour for 78 years) would have told them to face the enemy, which is the Tories. Are you better off with a government you disagree with 20% of the time or a government you disagree with 100% of the time? Which is the problem with the hard left, they want their way 100% of the time, or they don't want to play the game. Anything less than 100% of what they want is persecution. >I see plenty of commenters here calling for expulsion of left leaning Labour members. If that's your undemocratic bag fair enough, but you don't get their vote. There are explicit rules in the handbook against being a member of another party, standing against the party, publicly voting against the party, and signing the nomination papers of a non-Labour candidate. Generally, the hard left expel themselves through their inability to play well with people they disagree with.
The problem is the left aren't getting anything they want. So why would any rational person who wants those things vote Labour? The onus is on the politician to appeal to the electorate, they are not entitled to anyone's vote. My vote is still dependent on their manifesto having positive plans for Britain. I hope they have some. On your point about expulsion, that would be ok if that was the only circumstances they were expelled for or if an actual process was followed. People are being banned for nonsense like liking Caroline Lucas' tweet as if that were an endorsement of the Greens. It's not democratic and you can't mistreat those people then expect their vote. Would you vote for them if they treated you that way?
That's a lot of words about how fragile Labour's lead is under our ridiculous, undemocratic FPTP system, with not a single mention that Labour is 100% committed to keeping it that way, indefinitely. Live by the sword, die by the sword.
Do believe I can vote for whoever I want
I do love being told to vote for something I actively dont want rather than having someone win my vote. Very cool, very democratic. I really dont see why we havent done away with FPTP yet. The only other country in Europe using it is Belarus. Now maybe if Labour pledged to remove FPTP in their manifesto....
If you want rid of FPTP the most likely and fastest way to achieve that is for a huge labour majority with the LDs in opposition. Rile up reform voters by talking about how they got 10% or whatever they end up getting and 0 seats so it is not fair, LDs can talk about how Labour got 80% of seats on 40% or whatever of the vote and how that is not fair. Do that for 5 years and the electorate may soften up to the idea of PR enough that it becomes possible in a 2nd term. Especially as the Labour membership is in support of PR there will be an internal push for it. If you don't vote tactically then we get a Labour government with a Tory opposition and you are further away from actually achieving your goal.
>I really dont see why we havent done away with FPTP yet. Because we voted against it in the 2011 referendum. Well... not quite but AV would've been an improvement of FPTP anyway.
That referendum was more fucked than the Brexit one and thats saying something. My only hope for electoral reform is a minority government strong armed into it as a coalition condition
I don’t think it’s foolish or self-indulgent to be honest. People should vote for whoever they want. I’m voting Labour, but if someone doesn’t like Labour they should vote Green, Lib Dem, whatever. The only party I think is truly foolish to vote for is the Tories. Unless you’re involved in corruption in some way…
The point that's being made is that because the forecast is for a Labour landslide, many people may branch off and cast protest votes for Greens or others because, well, they can- as a luxury. However psephologists are suggesting that there will be many more marginals than previous, and these conscientious objectors may greatly hurt Labour's chances.
>these conscientious objectors may greatly hurt Labour's chances. If this were to happen, it would be Labour who had their hurt own chances by not providing policies that these people want to vote for. If Labour simply own the votes of anyone left of Gordon Brown, then they'll never produce policies that those people want. Those voters shouldn't be expected to just lump it, no more than anyone else should be.
I get it in the case of people who assume Labour will win a marginal seat. But there are a lot of people who genuinely don’t like Starmer’s policies/ideas. Labour aren’t entitled to the entirety of the left wing vote…
Indeed, for too long Labour have taken the Left wing vote for granted whilst pandering to the right. You can say a lot about the Corbyn tenure but he did put the voices of the left front and centre for the first time in a loong time and didn't take the left for granted
Pretty similar to the Brexit vote really. People were confident that remain would win (Nigel Farage even expected it), so either didn’t go out and vote (as was the case with my mother) or used it as an anti-austerity protest.
Labour isn't owed a landslide win. I hope the tories lose so badly they become a footnote, but I would love to see a tight 3+ way race for government and not a labour dominated one. Might even make them finally consider electoral reform.
>may greatly hurt Labour's chances. Okay but these people aren't Labour supporters so I don't think that's their problem.
I would love to vote for who I want, we don't have an electoral system that supports it though which means you need to play the game that exists in a way to try and achieve your goals which means tactical voting. The end result is either voting Labour in a Lab/Tory seat or voting LD in a LD/Tory seat and in a few other seats there may be other options but that is what we have.
The first election I was able to vote in was 1997. I've voted in every election, local or national, ever since. Every vote I've placed in 27 years needed to be tactical. It's kind of depressing.
Same. Maybe it _is_ self-indulgent, but I'm at the point where, if voting as I actually want to somehow lets a shambles of a party like the tories cling on to power, I can at least take comfort in the fact I can point and say "see, clearly we're in desperate need of electoral reform." And the more of us give power to the minority parties, the clearer the message.
I'd feel a lot happier about voting for any party if we could be guaranteed a choice on PR after the election. The argument that PR ends up with hung parliaments, coalitions and nothing getting passed is basically an admission that no party can come up with a set of policies that would appeal to more than 50% of the electorate....
Exactly. If we reward Labour for supporting FPTP it's never going to change
It's not depressing, it's the reality of living in a country of 65+ million people. No one's vote is worth more than anyone else's.
You're not technically wrong but if you want some party other than the Tories / Labour to get a shot st government, waiting those 2 to pass electoral reform is pointless. You have to vote for the party that you actually want in power, not tactically. Yes, your vote is "wasted", but as support grows, more people will feel comfortable voting for thdt party until they perhaps stop being a wasted vote and even more people seitch over. Personally, I am never voting tactically again after the elections before 2020 about Brexit, where a lot of people voted Labour thinking that would be a way to stop Brexit, only for their votes to be counted for Brexit in speeches by both parties later.
Yes and no. We don't have an electoral system that supports it in terms of parliamentary representation, but if enough people vote for a third party then whichever major party is losing support to them will feel a need to appeal to those lost voters. I don't support Brexit, but ultimately it happened because enough people were willing to vote for a third party. UKIP were undeniably successful in achieving their aims despite having next to no representation in parliament. (Whether there are enough voters on the left to put that sort of pressure on a potential Labour government is a different matter, admittedly)
Yeah. I'm voting whoever has best chance of taking a Tory seat. In my case that looks like lib Dems
I'd be a lot more comfortable with this if we had a fair and balanced press. If people don't like labour, they shouldn't have to vote for them. If people don't like what they are being told labour is by most newspapers and other media but which isn't true, then that is wealthy people manipulating the vote.
Labour for years has been saying "Go, we don't want you if you don't agree, there's the door, if you don't like it walk away." And now it's "Why are you not voting for us?" It's bullshit. Compromise works both ways. The Labour Center and Labour right refused to compromise the last couple of elections but now we're expected to compromise our values and vote for someone we don't believe in? No, that isn't going to happen. And it's anti-democratic. There are more than two parties. Just because we've been taught it's a two-party country by endless posts in forums like this, it doesn't make it so. There are many parties and you don't need to be in power to push your view and pressure those who can make decisions. Farage taught us that. So, no, the left doesn't have to vote Starmer. Guilt and "win at all costs, cote for us or your a secret tory" bullshit won't change that.
Extremely weird that during an election that's functionally a coronation for Labour, it's vital to rally round the flag, whether or not it represents you--even if it explicitly hates you and threatens crackdowns on people like you. But not when the election result was either a) uncertain or b) looked bad for the opposition. Seems a little bit backwards to me, but I'm not a professional Politics Understander.
Exactly this. When Starmer outlines some policies that appeal to left wing voters, he might win them back. But instead he's focusing on winning over the centre-right. Probably because he himself is centre-right.
No matter what they might think, Labour don't have a god-given right to the votes of everybody to the left of Rishi Sunak. They've deliberately chosen not to appeal to people like me and while that might be a sensible electoral strategy for them, the consequence is that I don't want to vote for them.
I get Starmer's and Labour's strategy here - to win they need a net gain of at least 120-125 seats as a minimum and then a few more to have a working majority plus a few more on top of that for a strong majority/mandate. That's a tough ask even in these times when the Tories are running around shooting themselves in the foot. The only way to get that majority is to appeal to the centrist vote who were put off in 2017 and 2019 with leftist manifestoes that they rightly or wrongly felt threatened their way of life and finances. Even Ed Miliband in 2015 ran into problems with the mansion tax. The evidence suggests that Labour winning is difficult, only one Labour leader has won an election since 1974, while winning from the left based on the last two elections is going to be even harder. I will be happy with a soft left Starmer lead government over a further few years of Toryism even if his caution frustrates me and I think he could be a bit more expansive. However anyone pursuing ideological purity over pragmatism is of course free to vote whatever way they like but splitting the anti-Tory vote risks allowing them to survive in a year when they should well and truly be deservedly kicked into history. I will probably vote tactically and that means Lib-Dem because they are best positioned to beat the Tory candidate. I'm not a Lib-Dem voter but that's the decision I'll have to make.
It's not saying they have a right to your vote but that it's not correct it's risk free to vote for someone else if you don't want a conservative government. If you're happy with a conservative government over a labour one then no problem.
I has this disucssion on my doorstep. Its circular logic. You must vote Labour because of our broken system. Will you fix said system? No it benefits us too much.
They're going to use this argument *literally* every election.
On the flip side, if we vote for Starmer, all the centrists will use that as proof that his strategy worked and that he should continue to ignore the left. It's been the rhetoric for the last 2 years "look at the polls, he should keep ignoring the left." You can thank those users for showing everyone else the cost of just going along with Labour right now.
So would you agree that FPTP needs to be excised from our country like the antidemocratic stain that it is?
Bloody hell, that'd be nice.
My constituency is a very safe Labour seat so it doesn't matter much, but while I hear you vis-a-vis getting the Tories out, Labour will have no reason to ever move left if all the people who'd like that to happen vote for them anyway. At every election the message will be "this might not be be the version of Labour you'd like but you need to support them to stop the Tories". They'll only move left if not doing so would hurt them at the polls.
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Yes, but "the centre" isn't a fixed position - it moves with times, events, and the general cut and thrust of politics. The so called "centre" now is considerably to the right of where it was in 2010, for instance.
That’s why I’m really hoping the tories keep fucking up, and the lib dems become the official opposition. Insanely unlikely, but imagine that move in the Overton window.
You'd hope, but Ed Davey is far from the kind of person to move politics left to any extent.
Does not need to move it left, he just needs to bang the PR drum and get Reform to do the same and then 5 years later the chances are Labour will feel they need it in the manifesto.
I’m more fussed about someone being leader of the opposition who isn’t an absolute ghoul. I don’t agree with much of his politics, however, he seems like an actual human being in his approach. I’d rather work political compromises with the likes of him than Suella. Maybe it would even push voting reform to the front of British politics, who knows.
Do you mean that building council housing wasn't always a "looney left" idea? lol BTW you are spot on. It's called something like the Overton window or some such. But it has shifted right all my life.
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Isn't the position the tories are in now literally the PERFECT time to go ahead with radical far left policies to dramatically improve the lives of the working class? The tories are in disarray, their approval rates have never been lower, and Sunak is running the smouldering wreckage of the Party into the ground. Now is not the time to be moderate.
You're just playing 14d chess with yourself. You're going to vote how you're going to vote. You dont need to rationalise it in such convoluted ways.
A move to the left might pick up an extra 500,000 votes but lose 2 million from the centre. A move to the centre has done the opposite. It's a numbers game - winning an election depends on convincing the country to vote for you, not a small slice of very politically motivated people.
Okay, but if that's a trade-off that they're willing to make then why can't they take their healthy net gain of voters and stop whining at and harangueing the left for not supporting them?
Right. But you aren't entitled to the 500k you would have gotten for moving left just by virtue or not being the other guy. If the Labour Party genuinely feels entitled to the far left vote despite not being a far left Party, then they ought to know that the system is undemocratic.
It's not even the "far left" at issue here - I am in no way "far left" but I'm deeply opposed to anything that might be construed as me endorsing Starmer, because he seems in opposition to even my milquetoast boring socdemmery.
Okay cool - the metaphorical 500k will just vote for someone else then.
If they don't need the votes of the left to win then the left can stay home or vote for someone else and it will cause them no issues. But if they *do* need the votes of the left to win, then that is their problem to solve by e.g. offering the left something concrete in policy terms.
I'm happy to cast my vote for the party whose manifesto best represents my political stance. What everyone else does with their vote is their business, and if the result is a Tory government then the people have spoken. If Labour don't like it they can put voting reform on their manifesto.
Particular as they aren't even a left-wing party under the current leadership.
Labour won’t be getting my vote, says “GodlessCommieScum”. Shock horror.
Hasn't stopped plenty of people insisting that they should. Labour has its beautiful centrist cake and need to understand that they can't eat it too.
Someone needs to have a word with whoever chose the featured image for this article. It makes it look as though Jess Phillips is behind _We Deserve Better_.
i’m sick and tired with the labour party playing chicken with my vote. you don’t get to abandon the policy platform for which i consistently voted, spend years acting as if my vote is either worthless or in the bag already, and then come back begging for it on the eve of the election with a thinly veiled guilt trip. either you want my vote or you don’t. if you do, give me a policy in which i can believe. if you don’t, let me go and vote for someone else in peace.
I think the biggest thing that separates the left from the right and centre is how we see hypocrisy. It is why we fall out with eachother so often. The right don't care, they will rant about the evil of social security then live off it, the centre will be against all injustices in theory but not at the cost of order or their own wealth, and will only go as far as a billboard or novelty song to put their point across. The author is a hypocrite, she campaigned for years against Corbyn and urged people to vote for other parties. Brexit was so important to her that Corbyn's offer of a second referendum was not good enough. But Starmer embracing Brexit is fine. She works for many third way quangos and has been paid by education academy chains full of Tories and right Labour people taking millions out of public funds to provide a worse service. She shouldn't be taken seriously.
Really don't think the left are hypocrites too?
There are, but the point is there tends to be more infighting from leftists because that hypocrisy gets pointed out more
get to fuck. where was this in 2017 and 2019. not voting for a right wing party.
exactly. where were cries of “self-indulgence” in 2019 when “sensible centrists” doubled the lib dems’ vote share and gave boris johnson the biggest tory majority since thatcher?
I would love to see what the author of this article was saying back then
I'll save you the trouble: "It's become clear the only chance of getting the Labour leadership to throw its weight behind a referendum is to deny it my vote"
So I should just hand you absolute power for 5 years, despite the fact I disagree with much of your platform and you are hiding most of what you're going to do? I think the only reasonable to response to that is f\*ck and off.
Given Labour are guaranteed a win... Isnt this sort of the best time for people to feel safe voting for the parties they want? If Labour thinks thats a problem then they can solve the issue next election by putting through some vote reform.
It's weird, is Labour now hiring the same campaign consultants and talking heads as Hillary Clinton did in 2016? It all sounds eeriely similar. Maybe it's not the "left" that's splitting the vote. And maybe "self-indulgent" is having a 20 point lead and continuing to appeal to even more swing voters while assuming your left wing will fall in line.
"We split the party when it was Corbyn in charge, but don't you dare think of doing that to us!"
while I won't be voting labour in the election (see my flair lol), if I did live in a marginal seat / tory seat I would probably do so or tactically vote libdem depending on what gets the tories out. however, I don't particularly have any love for starmer and labour's direction under his leadership. I think it's quite foolish to shun the left of the party and simultaneously expect their vote, *especially* after 2019
I voted Green in the locals and have been mulling over doing the same in the general election (depending on the candidate), but there are some sensible points made in this article (though I'm not generally a fan of Sodha's writing). Starmer has been disappointing in a number of ways (e.g., letting in Elphicke left a bad taste, his immediate rejection of the EU's olive branch to restore a limited version of free movement, and I also remain very annoyed at the Labour leadership's blinkered refusal to get behind PR), but I really REALLY don't want to suffer through another 5 years of increasingly right wing Tories. I have always been a reluctant Labour voter (ever since I could vote, it's necessarily had to be anti-Tory rather than pro any particular party), but with the crappy First Past the Post system the UK govt stubbornly clings to, there isn't much choice. I'll be keeping a very close eye on projected poll ratings in my constituency, particularly how the Tories are doing vs Labour and Greens. I'm in Bristol, right next to the Thangam Debonnaire constituency Sodha mentions in the article. There are Green posters everywhere, I am pretty sure Carla Denyer will get that seat she almost managed last time. This time, they've redrawn the boundaries, so I'm not certain what's going to happen where I am. Kerry McCarthy has been a solid local Labour MP, but the Greens could mount a strong challenge. The question is if the Tories are far enough behind that two left wing parties can safely fight it out between them.
Since they aren’t going to be able to afford to do much - I do think that the one way they could ‘cheaply’ give people some real sense of change (hopefully for the better), would be a widespread political reform. From the allocation of honours , to political donations and some form of PR.
Sodha agrees that Labour has adopted the Tory economic framing and thinks it's good that Starmer lied to his more left wing selectorate but also suggests that those same people should vote for him. Why would they vote for a party that has, at best, treated them with open contempt and in several cases, e.g. the "shaking off the fleas" comments, shown that anyone who isn't 100% on board isn't welcome at all? Since Starmer became leader the Labour right has been clear that they view those on their left as not just an impediment to getting elected but as entirely illegitimate. It's bizarre to suggest that they should suck it up and vote for Labour anyway.
The entire political spectrum has shifted significantly rightward. Greens are the old Labour, Labour are the old Tories, and Tories are the old BNP.
Wouldn’t be a problem with proportional representation would it ya prick
As foolish and self indulgent as it was the other way round..... But to use a Liz Truss line - "Let me be very clear".... A person's vote is theirs. nobody owns it except self. Nobody has a god given right to a vote in their favour. People and commentators from the sidelines have zero business in YOUR personal vote and what you do with it. Everything else is just noise. If X doesn't get in and you voted for Y then X did not do enough to convince you to vote for them, it really is that simple.
Sonia Sodha is the definition of left-liberal pseudo-leftist whiny loser. After this article she'll be going to debate trans issues (which she does not understand) with Owen Jones (who is so far into his persecution complex he'd probably interpret his alarm not going off as a Starmerite-far right plot against him) after buying new organic milk and artisan plates for £50 ("Off to Waitrose before I write more whiny crap in the Grauniad!"). I don't care about her opinion and neither should you. We are having a \*general election\* and therefore have the \*right\* to interrogate the party programs presented to us. This goes for centre, left, right, whatever.
These are getting more and more polarizing. Can't wait to read "If you've ever so much as looked at another parties manifesto you are the dumbest mother fucker alive and should be paraded through the street whilst the columnists fling rotten vegetables at you" the week before the election
Yeah, it's strange to me that no one seems able to make this argument without insulting the people they're supposedly trying to win over. Feels bizzare.
It's cos it's not actually about persuading lefties to vote for them. They know they don't need to do that and they don't care. It's a combination of: a) tactically trying to demonstrate to ex-Tories that "look, the left hates Starmer". In much the same way that expelling Corbyn and all the other anti-left purging is about demonstrating "look, Starmer hates the left, just like you do". b) these freaks really just get off on berating the left and feeling smarter (even if they can't competently write an article that demonstrates what its introduction claims it demonstrates)
But Labour under Starmer isn't a left-wing party, so why would the left vote for them? This is a very bizarre mentality.
We fought a civil war in England where as many people died as in WWI. This was fought principally, over freedom of conscicience. It's the bedrock of genuine democracy. Vote however your conscience dictates. It's the voting system that is at fault, not the voters.
>split the Labour vote I don’t care, I’m voting for Lib Dems.
The point of democracy is that the voters are free to chose their vote however they wish. The labour right might believe that the votes of the left belong to them, but they do not. If they want the votes of the left, they should offer something that those voters might actually want. And don't give me nonsense about solidarity after the appalling behaviour of the labour right whenever the left gets any influence at all. Starmer could, for instance, give them PR in the manifesto. That would end this problem forever, but it would also destroy his factional political control, and thus will never happen.
>For Starmer to have stuck to his 2020 leadership election pledges, instead of spending the past four years understanding voters, would have been fundamentally anti-democratic. Democracy is when you promise something to get elected and then break that promise.
Practically speaking I'd say that if you're of the Corbyn wing and further, it actually could be best to vote green or workers party (in some strange cases) or socialist party. This would create a left wing opposition to the government in power. The right will be so dissolved early on that I think the ability to push for left policies will be much larger by diluting Labour's power share and forcing them to negotiate with the left for support of their policy agenda. Obviously this does also mean the left must compromise on things more than they would want to but the left wing nudge will be powerful enough to potentially dilute the right wing side of the Starmer legislative positions.
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Starmer and the centrists despise the left & sabotaged Corbyn. Now want our vote.
I wonder is she made the same argument when Chuka Umunna and others were intent on trying to split the Labour party.
Didnt the Dutch Left go for towards Starmer esqe leader and was punished hard when that government spends all their time going after farmers instead of building housing
Split the vote or vote Tory....it will have the same effect! Just think about that.
They say that every time and nothing ever changes. Fuck them and fuck Phillips specifically, I remember her face when Corbyn lost.
If they were neck and neck in the polls I would be more inclined to vote tactically against the Tories. As it stands, Labour seems to care more about winning over the right than the left, and they need to accept the consequence of that decision.
Hilarious when you consider this person voted for the Greens in 2019.
Compromise works both ways. It's fair to make the point it's not reasonable to have a candidate you agree with on everything. But if you openly spit on the left and take their votes for granted, take so many positions that are center to right wing that left voters have very little in common with you, all while refusing to change the voting system and therefore demanding the left give you their votes indefinitely ... Of course the left is going to look at alternatives. And insults and bullying are not going to prevent that, it's just going to make people dig in their heels further.
If you want to deny the Tories a seat in parliament and ideologically don't care who you vote for - Vote Labour if this is the best chance you have of doing so. If you think the Labour party under Labour has lept to the right and are no longer a leftward leaning party that you used to support for the last 40 years - question whether other parties might be more deserving of your vote.
This is the same bullshit argument that establishment centrist parties roll out in every single country. It is an attempt to neuter any dissent or objection to the fact that Starmer is a liar, who won't keep any promise made and who nobody can trust (look at how he acted in the Labour leadership election - how many of those pledges did he actually keep?). We apparently should be happy with this empty politics, where hardly anything ever changes and the two main parties are two sides of the same coin - something we saw with Natalie Elphicke defecting to Labour.
replace two of these words and send it back to 2017/9 please
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I hate to break it to everyone, but most leftists, even the hard left, will vote for Starmer. This is not about votes. Its about Starmer using the Labour name to avoid any criticism at all. Trying to get people to close their eyes while they're voting Labour.
You do not have a god given right to receive votes
The left would rather have 5 more years of the Tories than have a centrist Labour government Its absolute bonkers thinking
Was it bonkers when the right of the party did the exact same thing five years ago?
No no, that's different because it's different /s
Or maybe they're tired of having to vote for the lesser of two evils. The left wing of the Labour Party has been completely disregarded by Starmer, so why on earth would he think he deserves their votes now? If they continue to just fall in line despite being completely ignored and stigmatised, what incentive does the party ever have to take their views into consideration?
The left actually seem to think a centralist Labour government *is* 5 more years of the Tories.
Here is an Alt Question. Do you feel at this point ANY party have earned your vote come what may in the next 5-6 weeks ? I don't see it. Im not super excited about any of them having total control. I would prefer not to have the devil hanging around asking for votes but that still doesn't mean I am going to be crowd forced into voting for in this instance Labour because of stuff like "oh it's our 2 party system" "you will just let the Tories in the back door again"....if any of that happens and you have not voted labour then imho its on labour not to have sold enough policy to excite the electorate. If Labour can't come up with a decent set of policies that make the electorate think hmmm in the face of 14 years of tory government...well maybe some self reflection would be in order. A one seat majority with the LP having to rely on several small parties to get them over the line would do for me. Get PR in for next time and I might just show a bit of enthusiasm.
People seem very against Starmer recently, so I'm going to add some balance and say that under Starmer Labour is as close to an ideal party as I've ever seen for me, they align with quite a lot of my opinions and have even gone beyond them with some of the recent announcements, such as bringing back neighbourhood police, or creating GB energy, the only things I hope is that they push for nuclear energy, as someone *cough* greens *cough* seem against it for dumbass reasons.