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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 .
Matt N said:
Only 25% of the public approve of the recent Budget, and with the other controversies like the Winter Fuel Payment, the riots and the freebies, I fear that people may gain very negative sentiment towards Starmer’s tenure and vote the party out accordingly. This government is very unpopular with the wider populace right now; the (until today) leaderless, recently annihilated Tories are now beating Labour in opinion polls (albeit narrowly), just 4 months after Labour entered government. It took years before Labour began to match or beat the Tories again; to my memory, it only really happened after Partygate.
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I feel like we need some sources for most of these statements. It would be interesting to know if this info is coming from right-leaning news sources, or somewhere more impartial?
 
Squiggs said:
I feel like we need some sources for most of these statements. It would be interesting to know if this info is coming from right-leaning news sources, or somewhere more impartial?
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Because left-leaning news is never biased. ;)
 
GooseOnTheLoose said:
The i is owned by The Daily Mail Group (DMG Media), which is a massively right wing news source.
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I thought the i was associated with The Independent, which I’m guessing is relatively impartial going by the name?

I wouldn’t have pegged them as an overly right wing source, from previous reading. They seem to have opinion pieces criticising the Tories plenty, anyhow, so I always figured they were quite impartial and willing to praise and dish out criticism to both sides when warranted.
 
I think it’s way too early to say yet. Depends what happens in be next 3.5 or so years. Who knows could be a complete shock and the Lib Dem’s get the votes as the public are sick of Labour and the tories. At the moment the public are letting the recent by budget still set in and see what the effect will be.
 
Matt N said:
I thought the i was associated with The Independent, which I’m guessing is relatively impartial going by the name?

I wouldn’t have pegged them as an overly right wing source, from previous reading. They seem to have opinion pieces criticising the Tories plenty, anyhow, so I always figured they were quite impartial and willing to praise and dish out criticism to both sides when warranted.
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The i was created as an offshoot of The Independent in 2010.

The i was sold to DMG Media / The Daily Mail & General Trust in 2019.
www.bbc.co.uk

Daily Mail owner buys i newspaper for £50m

DMGT buys the newspaper from JPI Media, which took over Johnston Press last year.
www.bbc.co.uk

The Independent is owned by Russian oligarch, and former Conservative now independent peer, Lord Evgeny Lebedev. He derives his wealth from his father, a former KGB officer. (Although as Vladimir Putin has previously said, there's no such thing as an "ex" KGB officer).

The name sadly is very much a euphemism, although that never used to be the case. There was one a tike when The Independent was considered the paper of record for the left. The name refers to how it was previously owned, rather than its political persuasion.
 
Matt, as a very regular reader of the I, it has slowly shifted to the right since the change of ownership.
Even today's front page is a little off centre...
"Tories inch ahead in poll after Labour hit by Budget backlash"...
Who gives a flying flip a few months after the election...
 
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A lot can happen in 2-3 years. It's way too early to be guessing who could win the next general election. There's no way of telling what could happen in the next couple of years and how people would react to the government's handling of anything that might crop up.
 
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Matt N said:
I thought the i was associated with The Independent, which I’m guessing is relatively impartial going by the name?

I wouldn’t have pegged them as an overly right wing source, from previous reading. They seem to have opinion pieces criticising the Tories plenty, anyhow, so I always figured they were quite impartial and willing to praise and dish out criticism to both sides when warranted.
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The i pretty much started life as a tabloid version of The Independent. It's now certainly no longer the case under current ownership, but I can see that @GooseOnTheLoose has beaten me to it.

In my time, The Independent was never truly independent anyway. It was always a left wing mouthpiece, and famously supported the Lib Dems in 2010. There's no such thing as truly independent media. Only media that comes closer to being independent than others.

What certainly isn't an independent form of media, is Social Media (one platform of which is owned by a man who is currently spending his millions trying to get a Fascist elected in the US, but is also a clear favourite go-to source for many on this forum). This is the only category of media that can publish pretty much whatever they want on their domains in the persuit of profit.

It's unquestionable that the government has had mostly a rough time publicity wise since they came to office. Much of that is their own fault because they're poor communicators. But much of it is also just hype from both traditional media, and social media.

This concerning new era of misinformation (as seen within the last couple of pages of this very thread) is, in my view, leading to politicians making short term decisions. And that's the last thing we need right now.

The government has been in power for 5 mins. In my opinion, they've inherited the worst circumstances of any government since the second world war. The next general election is nearly 5 years away. They haven't even changed much yet, in a country that needs change, from a party that was elected on the platform of change.

With how bad things were left by the last government, I'd be more worried if people weren't slagging them off heavily this early in the election cycle. Because if they weren't, they wouldn't be changing much would they?

A feature of this odeous social media age of instant opinion and misinformation, is that it can lead to extreme perceptions. Having barely rubbed their feet on the entrance mat, there's very little empiral evidence that Labour will loose the next election at this stage.

Social constructs and the way we consume information may change, but that works both ways
 
Tom said:
Guys, just go into hibernation until 2028 at the earliest. Not worth getting excited about anything in British politics until then.
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I'm having such a nice time not being engaged in it at all, just trusting that there's decent people pulling the levers.
 
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GaryH said:
Dave, you’re hilarious. Really. You are.

I guess all the boats are coming over for a little day trip to the seaside and then off they pop again back home with a stick of rock and a bag of chips.

Ps if it’s ok with your good self I’ll refrain from smoking. Can’t afford it and it’s bad for you don’t you know.
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You really can never respond to a point with an actual articulate argument in retort can you.

The Tory government cut foreign aid spending, and badged a lot of stuff that was more economic bribery as foreign aid.

Fact is if you make the place people live economically and socially viable people don’t migrate out of it. You only risk your life crossing multiple deadly obstacles if your life is already disastrous. If you think that logic is hilarious then that reflects more on your moral philosophy than mine. UK can’t do that lone but it could take a leadership position on it.

In other news despite barely any news outlet including the BBC reporting on it NHS waiting lists have started falling. Curious that.
 
Dave said:
In other news despite barely any news outlet including the BBC reporting on it NHS waiting lists have started falling. Curious that.
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Couldn't possibly report that having a proactive relationship and dialogue with trade unions, to prevent strike action and please staff, actually works old chap! You might give the rest of them ideas, and we certainly couldn't have that.
 
Just to add to those who think the Tories where strong on immigration and Labour are not.

626 people have been deported in the last few weeks, and overall deportations are up 19% since Labour took office.

Now if you think that’s a good thing is based on your own personal opinion on illegal immigration, but it goes to show that if you actually process applications you achieve more than performative politics in Rwanda.
 
Sorry to divert the topic a tad, but I wanted to raise an interesting political discussion point in relation to something said by @Dave in another thread. In the thread about the closure of Studios North, he said the following:
Dave said:
but ask any sensible economist and they all say we need to nudge the wealth distribution back from the wealthy to the workers soon anyway otherwise history tells us economies start to collapse.
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I din’t disagree with what Dave says (given that the financial status quo evidently isn’t working for many, I feel that some form of wealth redistribution is the main tool in our economic arsenal left to try), but I have a question. In the view of the people on here, is there ever a point where the inverse happens, and the wealth distribution goes too far in favour of workers?

Now I’m by no means saying that we’re anywhere near that point here in the UK; it’s more of a hypothetical question. I do think the UK could do with some degree of wealth redistribution to solve the large-scale inequality that currently exists.

However, I do feel that if you take wealth redistribution to its absolute extreme, you’ve effectively got communism, and a lot of case studies of countries with communist economic policy are incredibly poor. The most successful example of communism in practice is probably Cuba, and even that is still a pretty poor country.

My view, admittedly without an overly strong knowledge of economics, is that some form of centrist or middle-ground economic policy is the most ideal. Enough wealth redistribution to ensure that there’s no crushing inequality and enough money to fund a healthy welfare state, but also little enough wealth restriction to allow for some form of free market and financial prosperity. I think taking the best bits of both left-wing and right-wing economic policy, merging them together and compromising a bit to get the best of both sides is the best approach.

What does anyone else think?
 
They need to stop incentivising people coming here. It can't just be oh we will deal with them when they get here. It's no wonder communities up and down the country are getting absolutely fed up with hotels being packed with large numbers of men. We are a welcoming country to people in genuine need but that's being pushed to the absolute limit. Sunak was especially useless, there are rumours he allowed this to happen so that wages were suppressed to tackle inflation. Labour need to get a grip of it and I'm not convinced they are at the moment.

626 deportations is a start but there are hundreds coming every week.
 
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