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UK Politics General Discussion

What will be the result of the UK’s General Election?

  • Conservative Majority

    Votes: 3 2.5%

  • Conversative Biggest Party in Hung Parliament

    Votes: 2 1.7%

  • Labour Majority

    Votes: 87 72.5%

  • Labour Biggest Party in Hung Parliament

    Votes: 28 23.3%

  • Other Result (Please specify in your post)

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Total voters
    120
  • Poll closed .
Jonathan said:
Luckily for me, the tactical vote in my constituency of Congleton is the same as I'd intend on voting anyway (Labour), so I don't have to make a compromise, but I do feel for anyone who has a tougher choice.
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The tactical vote here in the Forest of Dean is also Labour. They haven't yet announced their candidate here, though...

The Forest appears to have more mainstream parties running this time, with Conservatives, Greens, Lib Dems and Reform all having confirmed candidates. Last time, only Conservatives, Labour and Greens ran around here, alongside one independent candidate.
 
Matt N said:
If you want the current government gone, but are unsure of who to vote for, I'd recommend a look at this website: https://tactical.vote/

Put in your postcode or look up your constituency, and it should tell you who your ideal vote is if you don't want the Tories to return to power. With our First Past the Post voting system, you have to vote against what you don't want rather than for what you do, and this website should advise you on how to do that.
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Is this the same group of people who told people to vote Lib Dem in Kensington, handing the Tories the constituency Grenfell stands in?
 
Dobba said:
Is this the same group of people who told people to vote Lib Dem in Kensington, handing the Tories the constituency Grenfell stands in?
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I couldn’t say. The site doesn’t appear to have a bias towards one particular progressive party, with its recommendation normally being whichever non-Tory party had the largest vote share at the last election.
 
Think the Liberal Democrats could deliver quite the blow to the Tories looking at some of the seats. Hopefully they clearly and decisively become the third party again, knocking the SNP off their Westminster perch.
 
I think they will. In the 80's and 90's, I grew up in a constituency where Labour were nowhere. I distinctly remember a Labour canvasser turning up at the front door in 1997 and smiling at being told we were going to vote Lib Dem. "Thank you" he said. Labour never put their back into it and it became one of the safest Lib Dem seats in the country until 2015. Even when the MP was booted out in favour of a Tory again, and despite the Lib Dems being trashed after propping up the Tories, a petition was set up to get the old LD candidate to stand again. He remains very popular locally.

Come 2005, I had moved to another constituency that had similar history. Only the Lib Dem MP was never as popular. The Tory MP has held the seat with a significant majority ever since. But he now faces a challenge. His majority has been declining, the Lib Dems are nowhere, and the Labour candidate has a chance. Made worse for the Tory by boundary changes. The growth of the town means that he's now lost some of the quaint little villages that surround it, making votes from urban scum like me count more than before.

The polls failed to take Lib Dem heartlands into account in 2015. For decades before the coalition, Labour and Lib Dem votes were much the same thing in some constituencies. The LD's, aided and abetted by Labour, carved themselves a voting culture where you voted for them to keep the Tories out. So 2015 should not have been a surprise. A collapse in Lib Dem support in areas like that was always going to be inevitable, as people felt like they had actively voted for a Conservative government. It also had the effect of splitting the left vote and letting the Tories in again by default, enhancing their majorities.

I'm predicting that there will be some sort of revival, despite the polling. That wouldn't enhance a Labour majority, but would suppress Conservative seats. Add to that the fact that there is also a strong Green following in the region, and that Reform hardly feature, and there could be some interesting results from this region.
 
Oh you mean the Lib Dem’s led by a man who was in charge of the post office whist it was stealing money from post office mangers and giving it to the executives via bonuses?
He should be in jail like many of the post office managers wrongfully were.
 
BigT said:
Oh you mean the Lib Dem’s led by a man who was in charge of the post office whist it was stealing money from post office mangers and giving it to the executives via bonuses?
He should be in jail like many of the post office managers wrongfully were.
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Although Ed Davey is a bit of a jerk in my opinion, there have been Labour and Conservative ministers "in charge of the Post Office" who are equally to blame. So I don't see the angle of your party political point. They all have dirty hands. Horizon is a cross party scandal like many others.
 
Peeved that I didn’t have this in my list of desperate populist grabs I expected them to wheel out.

Clearly they are going after the over 70s now, as that’s all they have left to play. Maybe a quadruple lock for pensions and further attacks on the BBC are next.
 
I think Sunak's just trolling his own party now. They've obviously just upset him and he's having fun on his way out. Or is this actually the best his strategist can come up with? He must have his own really incompetent version of Dominic Cummings if so.
 
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Hey, can I add that my virtual room for hyperia yesterday was shared with three old gits over 70.
They all thought the prime minister was a curly c.
Compulsory military service for all those idle communist teenagers.
They don't like it up 'em sir,
but we know it will do them the power of good.
 
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It’s not a bad idea but ill thought out, a sound bite that sounds good to the electorate that he’s aiming at.
Around 10 European countries including the Nordic countries all have national service and they are some of the happiest liberal people on the planet.
 
It is just so funny how it has popped up...in an interview with the Mail on Sunday wasn't it?
Where else.
And the fact that every middle England, middle class parent will now have the perfect reason to not vote tory...just this once...to save their poor child's future career.
Love it.
Landslide.
And give the sixteen and seventeen year old's the vote tomorrow please Mr Starmer...that's from an old git.
Landslides, and a better future, for at least another decade.
 
I don't support this policy or national service in general, as I don't think it necessarily benefits either young people or the institutions facilitating the plan.

In terms of young people; I don't think young people should be forced to do military service or volunteering. For clarity, I'm not opposed to the idea of these things being promoted, perhaps in a similar vein to how National Citizen Service was promoted to me and my cohort when we were in our GCSE year. If young people would like to do these things, I would absolutely be supportive of the government helping young people to find pathways into the military or into community volunteering and helping them to sign up. However, I am opposed to them being mandated. Mandating things like that could impede the career progression and post-18 plans of some 18-year-olds, and even putting that aside, the idea of forcing things like that, with threatened "sanctions" for not "complying", does sound a little draconian to me. Also, isn't volunteering, by very nature of the name, supposed to be voluntary?

In terms of the institutions facilitating the plan; national service lumbers them with a load of 18-year-olds who don't want to be there. Surely the military don't want to be lumbered with training a load of 18-year-olds who don't want to be there and are purely doing their year to tick a box? I can imagine that an unmotivated army is not an effective one, and surely all any country wants is an effective army? In terms of the community volunteering end, I don't deny that institutions such as the fire service, police and NHS benefit hugely from volunteers. However, all of their current volunteers are people who do their work enthusiastically and consensually and have specifically elected to volunteer at that institution. If you throw a load of 18-year-olds forced to do volunteering against their will into the mix, many of these people will not be enthusiastic volunteers and will be there simply to tick their national service box. At that point, I can imagine the whole thing becomes more trouble than it's worth for the institution running proceedings, and they'd almost have to become de facto schools in terms of managing a load of young people who have no desire to be there. I'd imagine that no institution with volunteers wants that.

It does seem as though more people support national service than you might expect, though... the Tories are claiming that 57% of the country supports national service. It definitely seems to appeal to some older voters in particular.
 
AT86 said:
[citation needed]
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I'll admit that I was surprised by that statistic; everyone I've spoken to about the idea has either laughed and joked about it in a "my god, they'd never implement that" kind of way or seemed appalled by it.
 
We should take bets on their next policy. Leaving the ECHR? Banning abortions? Death penalty? Bringing back corporal punishment in schools?
 
Matt N said:
It does seem as though more people support national service than you might expect, though... the Tories are claiming that 57% of the country supports national service. It definitely seems to appeal to some older voters in particular.
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If it was accurate, I bet none of the 57% are of the age to have to do a potential national service and never had to do it when they were young either. Probably forgot about that time most of them would have died of Covid if it wasn't for young people stalling their lives for 6 months so as not to spread the disease around. You'd think that boomers and their elders would be grateful, but nothing's ever enough for them because they've 'worked hard all their lives for everything they've got'.
 
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