this post was submitted on 16 Jul 2023
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That's kind of what the Tory press want - if they can't get you enthusiastic to vote Conservative, then they want to suppress the vote by driving home that they are all as bad as each other.
After a dozen years of this shitshow it is clear that this isn't the case and any one of the line of Labour leaders would have saved the country a lot of pain if voted it, no matter what your feelings on Corbyn or the fact that Ed Miliband once ate a sandwich a bit weirdly.
Starmer is a personality vacuum and deeply uninspiring but, even if he performs exactly to most people's low expectations, he'll be orders of magnitude better than whatever robber baron stands against him.
When I'm in the voting booth do I pretend that Starmer has broken every promise he made to his own party? That he's not going to provide universal free school meals? That he's going to continue the child benefit cap? He's ditched the party's green plans? And whatever right-wing nonsense he spouts before the GE?
Personally, I'll be voting to get the Tories out. I'd vote for a rabid badger whose one policy was that he was going to come round and eat my face (which is refreshingly honest).
My ideal solution would be that Labour get in but without a large enough majority that they can wave bills through parliament and have to do deals that mean proper electoral reform. I'm not quite sure how to engineer such an outcome, so (this side of him surprising us with a raft of secret radical policies he's been hiding so as not to give the media a stick to beat him with) I am hoping he underperforms to such an extent that someone like Andy Burnham has to intervene and challenge him.
However, as long as my main aim (Tories Out) is accomplished then things will be better than they are now. That's a really low bar but it's a base to build from.
That's not the system we have and it's not how anything works. You have to vote for whoever can beat the Tories in your constituency, you don't have a choice.
If you don't do that, you're just a useful idiot for the Tories. Acting like we have PR when we don't and praying this is the moment of the Green breakthrough, honest, is madness. The UK is moving further and further to the right and short of a revolution we're stuck with it, so please just vote to get the current shower out.
Sadly, I do think the whole thing is an entertainment platform of distraction. Voting for any of these enabling parties only contributes.
Thank you Rupert Murdock for your contribution to democracy there, but I'll get rid of these tory nutters as fast as I possibly can.
I'll remember that when the second Sunak government forces me back into work-related activity. I'm sure it will be very comforting as I'm driven to a nervous breakdown.
Or a future Labour administration. Or Liberal and - though unlikely - Green.
But I'm sure you will enjoy Sir Kid Starver's soothing voice as he takes away what remaining benefits or entitlements you have so he can slip them to his billionaire pals and media moguls. Try to get his autograph as he does that.
Sure. Enjoy your moral purity as we head into the next Tory administration, and the next, and the next. Nothing to do with you, of course.
Makes no difference whether the PM is called Sunak or Starmer if they have the same neoliberal policies and prioritise profit and the economy over people.
We need proper political change and not the “football-ification” entertainment. I’m as pragmatic as the next, but I do think that issues like wiping out child poverty are fundamental. That’s not moral purity.
@tenebrisnox @vashti you should have listened to us. Leaders can’t change that much. A recognition that the machine is there and we can only steer is honest. Turn too quick and you’ll cause harm. Last Labour government improved all our lives quite quickly. Starmer’s government will too, guaranteed. But there won’t be a revolution, this is just normal stuff, not revolutionary forces.
Not sure how you justify last Labour govt “improving” our lives any differently than Tories (other than superficially). As I recall they conspired in the invasion of Iraq and helped wealth transfer upwards when they bailed out the banks. I come from a working class, council house background and my life hasn’t been improved by either Tories or Labour.
I used to work in secondary education. The period under Labour was horrendous: we had the various “National Strategies” which micromanaged how the curriculum was delivered. Cost billions and was a waste of time. They also introduced MATs and PFI which took schools further from democratic ownership and allowed a minority if schools to thrive at the expense of others. Worst of all, their right-wing approaches enabled Gove’s reforms a few years later that have turned schools into toxic hell-holes where everything is measured around exam passes.
My view of Labour (and I was a party member from the mid-1990s until very recently) is that it really is an enabler of neoliberal policies. Like the Democrats in US, they are simply the same party as the Tories and just wear different colours. Socialists stay in Labour because they live in hope things will be different.