I think you’re underestimating how fucked the Tories are in the next election. They’re going to get wiped out. If ever there was a time to vote your conscience, it’s this election because the Tories aren’t getting back in.
IMO you should vote with whoever most closely aligned with your views in most cases anyway. This is definitely one of those cases. Labour have the centre on lock but have abandoned the left, so the results should show that. If everyone one the left votes Labour in fear then it seems like everything is hunky-dory when it’s absolutely not.
The ideal realistic situation would be a hung parliament with a Labour largest party, opening the door for electoral reform debates. Preferably with a few parties (Greens, Binface etc.) with a decent percentage but no representation, which would further point out the need for reform, and also point out the lack of positive support for Labour.
In practice, the Tories will only get wiped out if Labour win lots of seats. There’s no way you can realistically engineer your ideal situation with your one vote. If you want to get the Tories out, which we both do, then nearly everywhere in the country the answer is to vote Labour. We really can’t fuck around, here. Polls have been way out before and the Tories are doing what they can to suppress the vote. If we mess this up, we really could be stuck with the Tories for another five years.
Couldn’t Labour form a coalition with the left-leaning parties? I am not well-versed in British politics but I think that even if Labour doesn’t win a big majority, the Tories could still be shellacked with the combined votes for everyone else, right?
If that’s not the case, please explain because I am genuinely curious
In the UK, we vote by constituency. A party could actually come second in term of votes nationally but still win more constituencies, and thus have more MPs (as happened in 1951 and in February 1974). This has historically been a problem for Labour: They get lots of votes in safe seats, with MPs winning 60% of the vote or more, but then they lose more narrowly elsewhere, leading to lots of Labour votes translating into not a lot of Labour MPs.
The second factor is that the left vote tends to be ‘split’ in the UK. If you have a constituency where the parties standing are:
Conservative
Green
Labour
Lib Dem
Reform
You have a situation where the ‘left’ vote might split three ways (to Lab, LD and Green), but the ‘right’ vote splits only two ways (to Con and Reform). So, you could get a result like:
Con: 33%
Lab: 32%
Lib Dem: 13%
Green: 12%
Reform: 10%
In that scenario, the majority of the voters (57%) have voted for left-leaning parties, and only a third have voted Conservative – but the Conservatives would win the seat.
There are a lot of constituencies where the outcome looks broadly like what I’ve described. That’s why I’m saying that the best way to beat the Tories is almost always to vote Labour. Of course, people might have other reasons they don’t want to vote Labour (I certainly don’t agree with everything they do, that would be weird), but if the priority is ‘get the Tories out’, the answer is to vote Labour.
I think you’re underestimating how fucked the Tories are in the next election. They’re going to get wiped out. If ever there was a time to vote your conscience, it’s this election because the Tories aren’t getting back in.
IMO you should vote with whoever most closely aligned with your views in most cases anyway. This is definitely one of those cases. Labour have the centre on lock but have abandoned the left, so the results should show that. If everyone one the left votes Labour in fear then it seems like everything is hunky-dory when it’s absolutely not. The ideal realistic situation would be a hung parliament with a Labour largest party, opening the door for electoral reform debates. Preferably with a few parties (Greens, Binface etc.) with a decent percentage but no representation, which would further point out the need for reform, and also point out the lack of positive support for Labour.
In practice, the Tories will only get wiped out if Labour win lots of seats. There’s no way you can realistically engineer your ideal situation with your one vote. If you want to get the Tories out, which we both do, then nearly everywhere in the country the answer is to vote Labour. We really can’t fuck around, here. Polls have been way out before and the Tories are doing what they can to suppress the vote. If we mess this up, we really could be stuck with the Tories for another five years.
Couldn’t Labour form a coalition with the left-leaning parties? I am not well-versed in British politics but I think that even if Labour doesn’t win a big majority, the Tories could still be shellacked with the combined votes for everyone else, right?
If that’s not the case, please explain because I am genuinely curious
In the UK, we vote by constituency. A party could actually come second in term of votes nationally but still win more constituencies, and thus have more MPs (as happened in 1951 and in February 1974). This has historically been a problem for Labour: They get lots of votes in safe seats, with MPs winning 60% of the vote or more, but then they lose more narrowly elsewhere, leading to lots of Labour votes translating into not a lot of Labour MPs.
The second factor is that the left vote tends to be ‘split’ in the UK. If you have a constituency where the parties standing are:
You have a situation where the ‘left’ vote might split three ways (to Lab, LD and Green), but the ‘right’ vote splits only two ways (to Con and Reform). So, you could get a result like:
In that scenario, the majority of the voters (57%) have voted for left-leaning parties, and only a third have voted Conservative – but the Conservatives would win the seat.
There are a lot of constituencies where the outcome looks broadly like what I’ve described. That’s why I’m saying that the best way to beat the Tories is almost always to vote Labour. Of course, people might have other reasons they don’t want to vote Labour (I certainly don’t agree with everything they do, that would be weird), but if the priority is ‘get the Tories out’, the answer is to vote Labour.