If Starmer and his inner circle hadn't spent the last 2 years chasing the votes of people who wouldn't piss on him if he was on fire, while going out of his way to insult and ostracise the left wing foundations of the Labour Party's support, then Labour wouldn't be in the whole they're in right now.
"deported at once"? He sounds like a pretty dangerous predator, Ed, he should probably be in prison, not "deported at once" so that he can prey on people elsewhere in the world. Shame on you.
Worth noting this is a fptp problem that individual voters really shouldn't have to concern themselves with. I'm honestly quite tired of voting tactically rather than simply voting for what best aligns with my values.
I hope you're right but wasn't a lot of the tactical voting advice last GE driven by which party had come closest to winning excl Tories? It's l easier to organise people around voting against the Tories than it is to organise them to vote against 3 distinct(ish) parties.
That's good news but it's relied again on tactical voting consolidating behind PC. Will that happen here in England? People voted tactically to get the Tories out but I'm not convinced enough people will get behind Labour again, they've been such a disappointment on various issues.
A former colleague often used the expression "poisson rouge" and for the longest time I just assumed it was the French phrase for a red herring. Learned later that "poisson rouge" is in fact French for goldfish, adding another layer of misdirection...
It's good that they are rolling back the bad design choices but the fact that they're having to do it, and that they have taken so long to acknowledge they needed rolling back, still speaks volumes about the instincts of their decision makers.
That's all true, I just think you'd get that and worse had the Tories won again. More cuts to public services, more corruption and benefits for their rich mates (leading to more cuts in the long term), more transphobic BS and Islamophobia because the Tories love culture war. Overall more suffering.
There are some positive policies in Labour's plans e.g. Renter's Rights, things you would never get from the Tories ever. Labour are a massive disappointment but the Tories are still worse. It's a sliding scale, not a coin.
This is why we need PR or AV. We may look back on Blair now as bad (he was) but do you think the Tories wouldn't have followed the US into Iraq? Have you thought about what else they would have privatised? Starmer is woeful but the Tories would still be funneling cash and migrants to Rwanda.
Agreed, problem there is FPTP in most constituencies, though.
I'm in my 40s and have voted Labour in every GE to try and stop the Tories. If we had PR, I'd have voted Green every time. If we had AV, I'd have voted Green then Labour just to keep the Tories out.
Sidenote - how bonkers is it that Labour like to regularly use "student politics/sixth form politics" as a pejorative... while also giving 16-17 year olds voting rights? How do they think that'll work out for them?
That's probably a little harsh tbh. Dido Harding failed upwards due to cronyism in the Boris Johnson era. I'm on the fence about the merits of digital ID and I think it's probably the wrong priority. But I expect Labour will at least give the job based on competence.
