UK Election!

theotherjonv
Full Member
Suggestions that Reform growth may be being influenced by clever targeted Bot activity from non British sources. That sounds quite familiar to the referendum iirc. I wonder if there’s any link?

The same people would benefit. If I remember correctly, Johnson would’ve even allow an investigation into potential Russian meddling in the referendum vote. It stunk then and it still does.

More to the point, it would be a miracle if Putin wasn’t meddling given the war in Ukraine. Hell, he’d still be upto it without the war, he doesn’t need a reason, it’s what he does. Destabilise and sow doubt/ division.

https://imgflip.com/i/8ttl6f

Destabilise and sow doubt/ division.

And his troll farms will be merrily assisting whoever the most divisive parties are in any Western polity, regardless of whether they’re left or right wing.

on other election matters.

My wife, me and daughter have routinely had postal votes in case we are away. My son’s going to be allowed to vote for the first time and has registered and has a normal vote.

I know you can drop a postal vote off at the polling station on the day, for that last minute waverer…. but I quite fancy doing old school and going with him. Partly so if I’m exit polled, I can tell them I’m a labour supporter voting LD because I want you (tory supporter, too much to hope the candidate turns up) to get an absolute spanking locally and nationally.

Overly vindictive?

Definitely Labour for me. I have a number of reservations about them, but it’s too-close-to-call here and I want Robert Jenrick out! Ironically my GB News-watching boss will be helping by voting Reform.

If the Reform % in polls is similar to that of the Tories, why are they still predicted no seats? Is it simply that their supporters are spread out across many constituencies, so not likely to get a majority in any one?

There seems to be little interest in debating policy any  longer

Because this is the election thread and in an election you don’t vote for individual policies, you vote for your local representative which effectively means voting for a party and their basket of policies. For most people though its an emotional and not well thought through decision. For most of the sensible on here the best we can hope for is no more right wing chaos and a stabilisation of the current decline. An improvement would be great but one step at a time. You’ll have plenty of opportunity to rant about Labour post election but given your adherence to mad monetary theory I doubt you’ll be happy regardless of who is in power.

If the Reform % in polls is similar to that of the Tories, why are they still predicted no seats? Is it simply that their supporters are spread out across many constituencies, so not likely to get a majority in any one?

IANA Polling E, so can’t say this as FACT! but basically this.

It’s the argument for, and some would argue in this case, against PR vs FPTP

Apart from them not liking foreigners does anyone know what else Deform stand for?

Does farage support Ukraine?  Will he clean the rivers, sort the nhs ,roads etc.

Are the Deform bots done by them or the Russians?

Are the Deform bots done by them or the Russians?

My earlier comment was tongue in cheek, I’m well aware of who was (allegedly) behind the Leave bot campaign – and also note as above that it seems strange that Johnson would then block an investigation into interference. I note too the BBC article pointing strongly at the messages being generated by non-English speakers.

I’m not saying it was/is Vlad, but that’s only because I don’t like polonium tea.

Overly vindictive?

In this election, after the last 14 years, you can’t be too vindictive.

Sunak concluded his first day without any formal bilateral meetings with any other G7 leaders. He held a 10-minute conversation with Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy. On Sunak’s request, the pair took a walk through the grounds of the golf club hosting the summit and spoke at length about Ukraine. They embraced at the end and Zelensky wished Sunak “all the best”.

1) “10-minute conversation…spoke at length”

2) TFW Zelenskiy shakes your hand and sheds a tear bc he knows it’s the last time he will see you before your certain defeat…

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/article/2024/jun/13/rishi-sunak-denies-he-is-being-snubbed-after-awkward-start-to-g7-summit

No politician wants to be seen with a loser as they’re scared the stench of defeat might rub off on them.

His new Italian host literally recoiled in horror when he went to greet her

He cut the same sad and lonely figure as Theresa May at that last EU conference

Does farage support Ukraine?

I doubt it. At the time that Corbyn was warning us the threat that Putin posed, and the Russian oligarchs were bankrolling the Tory Party, Nigel Farage was very publicly and brazenly declaring his admiration for Putin.

In fact Farage claimed that Putin was the leader that he admired most in the world.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/vladimir-putin/10733446/Brilliant-Putin-is-the-leader-I-most-admire-says-Nigel-Farage.html

Not been following any Farage interviews, for telly preservation reasons, but I assume he’s been nailed to the wall over his professed love for Putin by every interviewer? :)

I thought it was generally accepted that Reform pulled votes from both Labour and Tories but at a ratio of about 2 Tory votes for every 1 Labour vote?

I assume he’s been nailed to the wall over his professed love for Putin by every interviewer? 🙂

I actually think that the single biggest chink in Nigel Farage’s armour is his solid support for Donald Trump.

However popular Donald Trump might be in the United States opinion polls show that he is deeply unpopular in the UK. And Trump certainly doesn’t get a sympathetic press here.

I reckon Farage’s political opponents should exploit his admiration and support for the convicted criminal as it is very current and easily proven.

As far as I am aware no one is attacking Farage from that angle. In fact no one seems to be attacking Farage from any angle, apart from the occasional object thrown at him.

I’m starting to think that only poor health might stop Farage. And I’m happy to say that his health doesn’t appear to be very good. He’s certainly in a lot of pain, which is a shame.

Reform in second place in the polls. So we still want PR?

Reform in second place in the polls. So we still want PR?

Yep,

Because without PR, Reform gets to form the government in 5 years time with a 100+ majority based on 30% of the vote.

Yes.  Absolutely essernt6ial to modernise the UK.  Works well where it is used, provides much better representative government and we would not have had the hard right tory governments.  Name one UK election where right wing parties got more than 50% of the vote?  I don’t thin k Thatcher ever did.  Her majorities were built on a divided anti tory vote.  Possible one parliament pre brexit?

Far right parties in countries with PR:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/jun/11/left-wing-nordic-nations-provide-ray-of-hope-in-europe

The site that was linked to earlier showed voting intention by previous vote.  The only big change was previous Tory to Reform this time.  The Labour to Reform shift was tiny.

Depending on how you count it the electorate voted overall against the Brexit parties in 2019. But it depends on what you believe the Labour “close ties” stance really was.

Reform in second place in the polls. So we still want PR?

The same mechanism that denies Reform seats on 17% of the vote also denies Greens seats, and also means we don’t even get left wing or socialist parties at all.

The site that was linked to earlier showed voting intention by previous vote.  The only big change was previous Tory to Reform this time.  The Labour to Reform shift was tiny.

Curtice reckoned the Labour sag was to LibDem driven by folk assuming the landslide was a forgone conclusion.

Unwinding tactical voting effectively.

I’d rather have a smaller Labour majority and LD as the official opposition than a gigantic one and still have Tories getting air time.

Agreed

Still can’t get my head around pro-EU left of centre types wanting to give Farage the single thing he prays for when he wakes up in the morning. Being the official opposition would be a massive stepping stone to inevitably being in govt one day. You’re all mental. 🙂

I thought it was generally accepted that Reform pulled votes from both Labour and Tories

If you look at the opinion polls over the last couple of years support for Reform UK has grown from about 5% to until Farage announced his candidacy about 12-14%

During that time support for Labour has remained more or less stable but support for the Tories has very significantly fallen.

Clearly things appear to have changed since Farage stepped into the election battle and now support for Labour has dipped.

My only explanation is that Reform UK is a fairly natural home for disaffected Tories, and there has definitely been some very unhappy Tory voters in the last couple of years!

However some Labour voters now seem to have been attracted to Reform UK by the “Nigel Farage” factor. I suspect that the fact that Farage has, unlike Starmer, an actual personality is an important factor in this.

I commented on this thread, at the time that Farage made the announcement that he was standing, that immediately after seeing Farage on the telly I saw Starmer giving a speech and my reaction was “jeezus the geezer is dull”

Binners claimed his wife said the same concerning Rishi Sunak straight after she had seen Farage.

Labour have had a very clear strategy of not using policies to attract voters and instead have focused on not being “an unpopular Tory government”. This strategy has obviously worked very well indeed.

However now that Farage is in the foray if policies aren’t the issue why then not go for someone who claims not to be a Tory AND has some charisma?

If Labour had won voters over with solid policies, which is what they did in 2017 and they got 40% of the vote (it certainly wasn’t the charisma of the leader!) they wouldn’t now be so vulnerable  to the Farage factor.

Being the official opposition would be a massive stepping stone to inevitably being in govt one day.

FPTP forces coalitions IN parties. Farage has a good chance of leading a right wing party in parliament, as the official opposition, if he gets to be in the Conservative parliamentary party. He was welcomed as a hero at the last Conservative party conference outside the main hall. He has a lot of support with current Conservative MPs, and party members, and understands how to win them over if the time comes. Sorry to go all Godwin… but the only reason he’s not in the party now is he only wants to work with them as leader, not in a supporting role.

As the polls get worse and worse for the Tories, I’m just starting to wonder what the civil war will look like when the electoral thumping gets delivered. It’s going to be viscous but highly amusing watching them all turn on each other.

If the election itself doesn’t deliver an ‘extinction level event’ the aftermath very well might, with Farage happily stirring the pot

I can’t see the man-frog and his mates getting more than a couple of seats but even that could be enough to send what’s left of the Tory party into a complete meltdown

Still can’t get my head around pro-EU left of centre types wanting to give Farage the single thing he prays for when he wakes up in the morning.

I’m not pro-EU, as some people on here love to remind me, and in my ideal world there will be no political parties, but until we reach utopia I am happy to settle for PR.

If the election goes as expected for them then it could well be the Tories who are the fringe party now advocating proportional representation

Heres hoping 😂

I am happy to settle for PR.

I’d rather we had a more direct form of democracy rather than giving representative politicians more power to decide what’s best and then not being accountable for it. In the meantime though there is a huge far right threat here and in other countries and we need to use every tool in the box to resist it, and FPTP is a great way of denying fascists power.

The Conservative Party may be in a hole, but the ideology will survive them and be represented by an even worse entity.   Haw Haw terrifies me,  remember his so called party is his private property and can be used to take over the established party – which is transparently the objective.   The comment of impregnating the husk with frogspawn was spot on, and FPtP can give these monsters an unchallenged majority in future.

Moscow calling, Moscow calling

If the election itself doesn’t deliver an ‘extinction level event’ the aftermath very well might, with Farage happily stirring the pot

The thing about liberal parliamentary democracy is that due to constant and unwavering voter dissatisfaction it is, like water, self-leveling.

If the Tory Party does collapse the vacuum it leaves will simply be filled by another right-wing party, that is totally inevitable.

The aim should not be to destroy the right, that simply can’t happen, but to move the centre leftwards.

If the election goes as expected for them then it could well be the Tories who are the fringe party now advocating proportional representation

Heres hoping 😂

Which is especially ironic given they specifically changed the London Mayoral election to FPTP in an attempt to benefit their own candidate!

It seems obvious to me that Reform would attract Labour votes. There’s a couple of ‘policy suggestions’ that I could get behind in their manifesto. Whether it amounts to a significant vote in each constituency to make a difference is unlikely apart from Clacton (which is still the only contest they seem likely to win). I think Farage is a pull, across the political divide but every other candidate is an unknown, and every time they do hit the headlines, it mostly becasue they’re revealed to be closet Nazis.

Sure in some contests they may pull some votes from Labours overall victory, but I don’t think they realistically even threaten the Tories for their place as the right wing party in Parliament, or as even a junior partner in any new party.

Farage has still to face Nick Robinson 1 on 1 – he dodged the last one, cos of the Hitler thing.

My bet is he’ll dodge him as much as possible to avoid having a spotlight shone on him. He’s a cowardly, loud mouthed bully & the sooner he is exposed the better.

I’d rather we had a more direct form of democracy rather giving representative politicians more power to decide what’s best and then not being accountable for it.

Because direct democracy works so well in the United States?

Personally I want less direct democracy and more delegated democracy, which is why I don’t support directly elected mayors, and judging by the outrage the last referendum held caused I’m not alone.

Has there been much discussion around voter ID and how it will play in the overall turnout numbers?