There used to be a website that showed you each party's campaign promises on a range of topics and got you to vote on which you most agreed with, without knowing who said what. It then totted it all up for you at the end. Apparently, I mostly agreed with the Green Party - but I'd find it difficult to vote for them based on their anti-nuclear stance. The next in the list was Labour. Even if the Green Party suddenly went pro-nuclear, tho', I'd have to vote Labour anyway thanks to the utterly broken first-past-the-post system we have in this country. You either vote Tory or you vote Labour or you effectively chuck your vote away.
Local dude is the speaker and I'll probably vote for him again so, I think that puts me into the other category.
Who I vote for isn't necessarily who I want to vote for. Similar to Gareth, due to fptp the only hope of ousting the incumbent Tory embarrassment is to vote Lib Dem, I'd rather vote Green. At least our local Lib Dem candidates are decent human beings, and also care about the local area.
Locals... i'd vote for a potted plant over the incumbent Labour prat... [though it probably won't matter, the incumbent prick will still win] Generals... the labour incumbent will win whatever I do so... does it really matter what i think of him, his party or his voting record? At least they're known quantitates of idiot I guess.
Labour. The past two elections I voted Lib Dem more as a sort of protest than anything else. Labour here are an outside chance but realistically only an assassin could stop our local Conservative getting re-elected.
It doesn't matter who I vote for: Bournemouth West Constituency 1950 - Conservative win (new seat) 1951 - Conservative hold 1954 - Conservative hold 1955 - Conservative hold 1959 - Conservative hold 1964 - Conservative hold 1966 - Conservative hold 1970 - Conservative hold 1974 - Conservative hold 1974 - Conservative hold 1979 - Conservative hold 1983 - Conservative hold 1987 - Conservative hold 1992 - Conservative hold 1997 - Conservative hold 2001 - Conservative hold 2005 - Conservative hold 2010 - Conservative hold 2015 - Conservative hold 2017 - Conservative hold 2019 - Conservative hold Our current MP is Conor Burns, who had to resign after he was found to have abused his parliamentary position to threaten a member of the public; Boris brought him back into cabinet, a favour which Burns then repaid by telling everyone Boris had been "ambushed with a cake", what a lad
Also fwiw, my issue in both cases is with the candidates. Especially at the council level - you couldn't pay me to vote for the guy whatever party he stood for.
I mean until we get some form of PR not all votes are equal due to the nature of the ever changing boundaries. The same number of votes do not equate to the same number of seats. But as we have what we have, anybody who has a chance against the lying billionaire inept Tory scumbags who treat anybody who didn't go to private school with utter contempt. I tie my colours to any particular mast.
I traditionally voted for Lib Dems but a vote for them is so useless its not worth it. Where I live is a red safe seat and to the MPs credit they're not totally useless and the local labour council are pretty good in my opinion (advantage of being in power for 30+ years is stability). I wouldn't call myself a labour supporter or voter yet I find myself 'stuck' voting for them.
The reality is we are in a huge financial hole due to covid and the current issues of this world. Labour spend.. far more than conservative Britain ever did and as a result we always end up with period of hardship after their tenure when the other party ultimately has to come in to fix it. Why would anyone want that!?
Actually not so: The Tories have always borrowed more than Labour, and always repaid less: they are the party of big deficit spending (taxresearch.org.uk)
Apart from being factually incorrect, check any stats you like but the disparity between rich and poor widens when the Tories govern. Seriously, the extremely rich bank on attitudes like this.
Liberal Democrats for me. Would vote Labour but, in this part of Somerset the Lib Dems are far more likely to be able to unseat our useless, money grabbing Tory. This was a Lib Dem seat before 2015 and, the district council returned to Lib Dem control at the last local elections contested here.
Whether I vote for anyone other than the tories of course depends on if we have run out of toilet paper or not then my ballot card will look mighty tempting. At the end of the day they serve the same purpose, both are for making arseholes feel more comfortable.
Given what has happened since 2010 it is baffling to me why anyone would vote Tory, unless driven by fear, or perhaps an older person voting for a version of the Conservative party that once was. Anyone who tries to make you vote for them by promoting fear about voting for somebody else absolutely is not to be trusted, and every election since 2010 has played out like this for the Tories. I simply cannot imagine what it would take for me to come around to the Conservatives - probably only tactical voting against someone even worse!
And the reality is if it’s better for me and my family that’s how I’ll vote. Do you have an issue with that or is democracy and its ideals dead? Do you want me to vote against my own views just so those I have never met can have potentially a better standard of life? “Potentially” being the word to draw on here as no one has a crystal ball that actually works. Anyway, No chance. Work hard and live to your means. The world of “borrow borrow borrow” fuels the younger generations belief of “I’ll do it tomorrow” view/attitude where as the older generations typically borrow less frequently and as such have a more stable and better standard of life. Who wouldn’t want to have a stable retirement and ownership of property? The younger generations apparently… I’d class myself as one but I think most of them with there instagram lives and Facebook “look at me” posts are probably depressed and are bringing everyone else down with them with there fabricated happiness masking their misery. Which way those views of mine point can neither be determined as labour or conservative as both reflect just as brightly depending on the coin and the side that faces up so with that in mind I’ll let you ponder on what I believe in and whether or not that correlation between what I’ve said sits on which bench. Also to note, borrowing more to fill voids left by others to govern your statistic, highlights the issue with the country we live in at the moment. No one has a clue about compound interest and how offset interest against inflation works (especially when that initial debt is left to sky rocket as other debts are patched to save face for the media) and how you have to spend to get out of it. Day 1 and the conservatives have to cover labours failings to a sum that is likely a strong percentage of the debt they left. What a great start that is. Spending for the sake of spending and not filling in voids is no different to filling in pot holes rather than surfacing a road. Why do you think council tax is always hiked? The road has already had it! Replace it now at a higher cost in the present or forever fix it leaving costs spiralling for future generations to pay out against. It’s simple on paper but the reality is that it is far harder as goalposts are forever on the move when it comes to budgets. Boris and his camp. Idiots? Most probably. The Labour Party? What party? Bunch of misfits headed up time after time by morons who the public just don’t like. What’s the point in that? Lib Dem.. arguably more conservative than the already rather liberal torries of today. The world is a tinder box and there’s too many with matches to really actually care.
And you're sure it is, right? I mean, you've actually looked into it? The reason I ask is 'cos we had someone, I forget who, on the Brexit thread who was talking about voting for his local Tory 'cos he was a stand-up guy, talked the talk, would drain the swamp, improve things for locals, all of that. Pulled up his voting record... and it turned out the Tory had, almost universally, voted against each and every proposal that would have improved the guy's life. Literally, every time. What he said and what he did were entirely different things, and at every turn he'd made the guy's life worse and simply managed to hide it by saying the right things to the journos from the local paper. I can understand voting Tory if it makes your life better, in an I'm-alright-Jack kinda way. But... are you sure it does? Last time I dug into it, unless you're in the top few percent of earners in the UK then you're demonstrably worse off under Tory governance. If you are in the top few percent of earners in the UK... gizza tenner?
Conservatives have 'won' every election I've been eligible to vote in, and have been in govt for 2/3 of my life [100% of it if you buy the 'Blair was a tory' rhetoric]. So if the country is a shithole now, I'm more inclined to place blame on the party that's been in power for the last 12 years, for 32 of the last 50 years, and 70-ish of the last 100.