Is Labour Clearing Out The Psuedo Tories?

[ToraToraTora]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-42153139
They claim not!

[naomi24]

Mikey, //I don't share your fear or disdain of the far left//

Well perhaps you should. Look around the world. Where are all those wonderful Utopian far left regimes now? That's how well they work.

[ichkeria]

There are other options besides Laabour and the Tories, who are surely currently cursed with the worst pair of leaders since Wilson and Heath.
The problem with Corbyn (and to an extent May for different reasons) is that he is not really in control of his party. He is a good campaigner but I believe he got a bit lucky at the last election: that is not to say Labour cannot win next time, because who knows what state we'll be in then.
Labour benefitted last time round from -
Defecting UKIP voters - there are hardly any of them left to defect now.
First time voters who were roundly conned on Europe and student loans and it remains to be seen if they can be conned again
People who thought they couldn't win so voted for them partly to put the cocksure and hapless Tories in their place - not sure the first bit of that at least will apply again.
Their only hope is the same hope that sustained the goverment last time: that the other lot are a disaster.

[mikey4444]

Itchy...just what other alternatives are there, in the majority of seats, to voting Labour or Tory ?

For any alternative to be viable, there has to be a strong likelihood of that alternative winning an Election, and when has any Party won an Election in living memory, that wasn't Labour or Tory ?

In 2010, 6,836,824 voted LibDem and they managed to get 57 seats. But what did that really mean ? Vote LibDem, get Tory.

If, like me, you don't want the Tories to win, you should vote for the Party that is most likely to defeat them in your constituency.

[ichkeria]

and I should add that by claiming there is no alternative we are doing the bidding of this hopeless people. You might think that with the Tories veering to the right and Labour disappearing into a Marxist fantasy land, the centre would rise, but it doiesn't seem to work like that: it looks like what happens is we get all tribal about it and vote for X to stop Y. I think I'm right in saying that at the last election we had one of the highest combined Labour/Tory voting percentages ever. Doesn't mean we have to keep doing it though :-)

[mikey4444]

Itchy...yes you are correct...in June the Tories had 13,669,883 votes, and Labour had 12,878,460.

[ichkeria]

The party most likely to defeat the Tories in our two local constituencies Mikey is the Lib Dems (they will probably win one seat back next time round - little chance in the other). I have always voted tactically in the past which means I have usually voted Lib Dem. But now I am afraid I would vote for them out of conviction.
I could never support a party run by the likes of Andrew Fisher and Seumas Milne, who are both sinister figures in my eyes. If there was a decent Labour candidate with a chance of winnning locally I might consider it I suppose. Depends on how one views the voting process

[jim360]

It's not actually true that only Labour and the Tories are capable of winning any given election. But enough people believe it to be so, and that makes it true.

If, for whatever reason, a particularly popular figure were able to sell a convincing centrist policy then it could certainly happen that mainstream parties suddenly lose support (beyond a solid core) and a party wins from nowhere. That's essentially what just happened in France, for example.

Trouble is, no-one's come up with a convincing enough party yet. The SDP/Libs nearly managed it in 1983, sort of, and maybe even would have succeeded had the election been held earlier, or had Galtieri waited until 1984 to be monumentally stupid.

[Togo]

We have a lot to thank Galtieri for Jim. :))

[jim360]

Incidentally, if Labour does go full Trot, then they would lose my support nationally, but not necessarily at seat level. I voted Labour last election anyway only because it seemed the best chance I had of reducing SNP representation in Parliament.

As long as constituencies are a thing then local factors will always come into play. If I were in Ken Clark's seat I might vote for him because I think he's a decent MP, and sod the fact that he's also Tory. It's not always about Labour v. Tory, and it also depends a little on which of the two parties you trash first, anyway. The Conservative record over the last seven years is, from my perspective, not exactly stellar. General Elections being about the only way I can tell them so, I would hardly want to vote to endorse the party that tamely capitulated to its Eurosceptic wing, not because of allowing the referendum per se but because of how it's handling the aftermath.

[jim360]

Well, possibly, Togo. :P

[naomi24]

Jim, //General Elections being about the only way I can tell them //

You'd hardly be 'telling them' if you voted for Ken Clark, would you!