The Absolute State Of It - It's The UK Politics Thread!

[Mantis]

So they admitted how crap and slow their investment into the NHS is before the election and people still voted for them.

Only 4 or 5 of Labour's lost seats were Remain constituencies. Along with the toxic Corbyn element it truly is Brexit that was the nail in the coffin for Labour.

The Tories have to own this now, but of course it'll be too late to reverse the damage they cause by the time we have another election.

It's kind of nuts, everyone thought that Brexit would destroy the Tory party and force the arch right wing Brexiters to finally split. It's actually a lot of the Tory moderates who have ended up leaving the party and losing their seats. This increased Tory majority is with a bunch of new MPs who have all been elected on a Pro Brexit perspective. Now the nasty party has five years to wreak havoc all while Johnson goes on TV and talks bollocks about "one nation Conservatism" and repaying the northerners who voted for him.

[eny]

....and guess which little odious, mediaeval, sprite-maggot comes crawling out of the woodwork today.....still smelling of camphor after being mothballed to keep his mouth shut since the election was called....fucking hideous excuse for a human.

[Animalmother]

Farage?

[Rossell]

No the demon headmaster.

[Raid]

...Jack Straw?

[Strudel]

So they admitted how crap and slow their investment into the NHS is before the election and people still voted for them.

Only 4 or 5 of Labour's lost seats were Remain constituencies. Along with the toxic Corbyn element it truly is Brexit that was the nail in the coffin for Labour.

The Tories have to own this now, but of course it'll be too late to reverse the damage they cause by the time we have another election.

It's kind of nuts, everyone thought that Brexit would destroy the Tory party and force the arch right wing Brexiters to finally split. It's actually a lot of the Tory moderates who have ended up leaving the party and losing their seats. This increased Tory majority is with a bunch of new MPs who have all been elected on a Pro Brexit perspective. Now the nasty party has five years to wreak havoc all while Johnson goes on TV and talks bollocks about "one nation Conservatism" and repaying the northerners who voted for him.

Labour still experienced huge losses in terms of vote share in Remain seats; they just had a much bigger cushion so it didn't tip the result as often. Brexit was definitely a large contributor to the abysmal showing, but by far the biggest contribution was people's distrust or outright hatred of Corbyn. Regardless of whether people traditionally voted Labour or not and whether they went to the Tories or Lib Dems this time, the poor leadership of the Labour Party was the major reason people gave for not voting Labour.

Whilst I think Corbyn was a shit leader it still depresses me that anyone would think Johnson and the Tory party is a better choice. I'm not sure what's worse; actually believing that or being too stupid to have realised it and to have followed the narrative written by large parts of the media. Either we are a country of bigots or a country of morons.

[Wrathbone]

Either we are a country of bigots or a country of morons.

Both is more likely.

[Strudel]

Depressingly true I fear.

[Maturin]

I tend to stay out of political chat, but I might just posit one observation...

There's also something about modern left-wing commentary in general which is putting a lot of people off Labour I think. This way of immediately writing off & dehumanising anyone who doesn't have the 'correct' view or vote the correct way, etc. I see too much of it these days, and on social media it's almost exclusively Labour supporters who engage in this manner.

Too often, people with genuine reasoned concerns/issues are automatically lumped in with racists/bigots, etc.

I mean, my mum and dad both voted Brexit and for the Tories, and they're both lovely, intelligent people who I know don't have a racist bone in their body. But even on here I've seen them described at various times as cunts, thick, bigots, needing to be beat up with baseball bats, etc. And that's just on TGA, which is nowhere near as vitriolic as Twitter, Facebook, etc.

It just doesn't come across at all well and alienates a lot of people I think.

[Wrathbone]

Judging a person solely on the basis of who they voted for is clearly daft. That being said, I do not understand how anyone who's paid any level of attention to this election (or the last 9 years) can honestly say that they believe the Conservatives are the best option for the people of the UK. It's beyond me.

What I do understand and abhor (and I'm in no way insinuating that this is your parents) is the ignorant, blinkered mindset that Corbyn in 10 Downing Street was too high a price to pay to avoid 5 more years of the Tories. Apparently that was the main, or only, reason a lot of people voted the way they did.

For me it's not a case of whether someone voted 'correctly'. It's that whenever I saw or heard someone in this election explaining why they were voting Conservative, it was almost unanimously because of Corbyn. Not because the Tories offered better policies and not even necessarily because of Brexit. Just because they don't like Corbyn for reasons they couldn't justify, which was usually when they started abusing me for daring to defend the Jew-hating, terrorist-supporting commie.

[DjchunKfunK]

David Miliband is a vacuous non-entity as are the majority of the politicians from the right of the party currently being mooted as leaders. If this country is to have any hope going forward the Labour party needs to keep the majority of the manifesto they put out and get someone who can do a better job of selling it. Moving back to the centre will change absolutely nothing because the centre is not the centre, the overtone window was moved years ago and what is considered centre is actually right of centre. Labour needs to offer something different and moving right will not do that.

Those bashing Momentum, dont listen to the nonsense coming out of the mouths of some of the Labour members, they are nowhere near the same as Militant, are largely responsible for the upsurge in the youth vote and did massive amounts of canvassing that helped win seats. The way they have re-energised parts of the party will be needed going forward.

Ultimately this election was a combination of Brexit, the image the media had managed to create of Corbyn and the Lib Dems being a waste of space and taking remain votes from Labour.

[Mantis]

It irks me that perfectly normal nice people can vote for the Tories consistently despite being faced with the knowledge that poverty is getting worse and worse with so many struggling to get by and so many vital supportive services being cut. It either shows indifference to the plight of others or total lack of awareness. 9 years of austerity has killed people, and there are Tory MPs who are smug about it.

Labours manifesto was too ambitious for this election. People have had it drilled into them for a decade that we can't afford anything, it's no wonder that some were concerned about how much spending and investment Labour were planning, particularly with Brexit still dominating the discourse. Johnson's constant "let's just get Brexit done" message that he didn't stop repeating during the campaign was more effective because the majority of people only ever engage with politics to a very shallow level.

Combined with toxic Corbyn hate, it's plain to see why they lost so badly when taken all together. I know quite a few people at work who didn't vote Labour simply because they didn't like Corbyn. Of course, whenever I asked them for what reasons they could never actually explain it.

Assuming the political landscape isn't completely different in five years after a catastrophic Brexit, Labour need a slightly more focused and toned down manifesto with similar policies but being pushed by a slightly more centrist unifying candidate. At the very least they need someone fresh and young who won't provide so much ammunition for the Tories. Corbyn may have won peace awards for sharing a platform with awful people when promoting diplomacy and trying to broker peace, but his history was such a gift to the Tories because all they have to do is print "Corbyn supports terrorists" and most people will take it at face value. If Labour ever want to make any ground against a media which is biased against them they need to start from a position where they can't just give free ammunition.

[Achtung Englander]

[Animalmother]

I honestly thought the first 5 minutes of that was some Avant Garde comedy skit.

[Medicine Man]

Watched it purely for ma main man KW.