Labour to win next UK general election?

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I wouldn't even mind if it was higher taxes on regular folks like me (which it probably would be).

I believe that success should be based solely on merit, not based on whether or not your parents raised you in poverty. Free broadband would "level the playing field" so that poor kids aren't disadvantaged in their education.

I believe in "free broadband."

Unilateral disarmament would be a total disaster, though, in effect inviting Putin to threaten to use nuclear arms on whatever nations does this.

OK, you've put a colourful label ("mad") on the statement. But where's the evidence of important differences between those parties?

Sure, the practical problems of implementing socialist policy aren't negligible. I was expressing my own moral approval of free broadband for all.


That's the extreme expression of the matter I was asking about. Clearly the answer isn't as simple as that expression.


Indeed. Still, newspapers are still ready by millions of people, propaganda presumably has a real effect in any society where people aren't universally great at critical thinking (else why hasn't the advertising industry collapsed or become free of manipulative tricks, and why do the press barons still bother to tell their readers who to vote for?), and we're dealing with an electoral system in which a relatively small swing in public opinion can make a large difference to the relative power the main parties end up with directly after a general election. It's probably true to a degree that newspapers preach to the converted, that Tories read Tory papers etc., and that reading them doesn't change their views, but isn't keeping those readers in a state of confirmational bias an element of the game?


I hope you're right. In my experience I didn't notice much difference between Labour and Tory administrations over the years in the matters that affected me since Blair took over until the present day. But it's difficult to compare different administrations directly because we never get to roll back time and see what would have happened if the other lot had been running things. Would the Tories be presiding over the current levels of poverty and fiscal trouble if it hadn't been for the pandemic?

Ever since the days when Labour took over from the Liberals as the main competing party against the Conservatives, my Grandad said that Labour would overspend which would force the Conservatives to make cut backs when they came in to power, and the cut backs needed to get us in the UK out of debt would eventually lose the Conservatives the election and the overspending each time Labour came in would eventually lose them the election. This cycle has repeated itself through years until the last time Labour were in, they put us so far into debt that it was said it was going to take another 50 years to pay it off and that was
before the last few disasters pushed us back further. Since then, the country dare not even vote Labour in even though they may not be that thrilled with the Conservatives.

Surprizingly, when Nigel Farrage was head of the Brexit Party, they had more actual votes than Labour or the Conservatives BUT as they did not have enough seats they did not get into power. (Our system one has to gain the majority of "Seats", and each seat represents a specific local area of the country. So though it sounds odd, this senario where one party can have more voters vote for it, it is the seats gained that actually count).

In the 2019 election the Brexit Party received just 644 thousand votes across the whole country. Tories received 14 million, Labour received 10 million.

Certain Marxists wouldn't disagree with that view:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impossibilism

I find it quite scary because if a full-blown Communist revolution isn't the answer either (and many would say it isn't), there would seem to be no way out, and whatever we do to promote social justice, we'll still end up with something just as horrific as capitalism.

Poor people are often poor because they are disabled (and often unable to work many hours, or any at all). Or they have traumatic life experiences resulting in alienation, or they are born into poverty and struggle to shake the lifestyle of their influencers, influencing people may be families etc.

Decent people want to make life bearable for poor people. Economic conservatives are the types of people who don't share their food or resources. A lot of those people are selfish & entitled and their entitlement perversely gets them more resources in a selfish, capitalist society.

What I thoroughly dislike morally and have utter contempt for intellectually is the Tory party's vacuous BS of 'He/she did well because they worked hard vs 'they're poor because they're lazy'. To a very large extent they ignore the genetic lottery of life and how that affects outcomes.

As well as the environmental lottery. Poor people live in poor areas with higher rates of pollution, and thus their offspring are at higher risk for developmental disorders, for example.

When Labour left office the UK was around £850B in debt. In the 10 years from then until the start of covid the Tories added £1 trillion to that while at the same time implementing a decade of austerity, removing various public services and cutting pay for public workers. They have now taken that debt up further to £2.4 Trillion.

Thank you for pointing that out.

Yes that did happen just as you said.

Debt started to climb after the worldwide financial crisis in 2008. Cameron blamed Labour, the Tories took over in 2010 with a little help from the Liberals, implemented eye-watering public spending cuts, debt continued to rise, and never fell again. Then we got the worldwide Covid crisis and up it went again. Historically we've had worse and survived, but I don't know how much poverty national debt causes. A major driver of debt appears to be involvement in large wars. Hard to know how avoidable they are. It's funny how socialism gets so much blame for the defecit.
https://www.ukpublicspending.co.uk/uk_n ... t_analysis

Yes. I don't even think the American Dream works in America any more, let alone in the UK. It's quite wrong to pretend that hard work alone is always enough.

You’ve met Mondeo Man and Worcester Woman, now meet the key swing voter Labour hopes will win them the next election: middle-aged mortgage man.

Party insiders say they are being ruthless about targeting exactly the kind of voters they believe will put them back into power, homing in on people who previously lost faith with Labour but have been personally affected by the spike in interest rates caused by Liz Truss’ “mini-budget”.

Just as Labour won in 1997 by targeting upwardly-mobile Mondeo drivers and the Tories in 2010 by focusing on working-class women from Worcester, Starmer’s team believes mortgage man holds the key to success at the next election, likely to be in 2024.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/20 ... rtgage-man

The Tories are next-level imbeciles.