Quote (Djunior @ Jul 5 2024 12:11pm)

The new government inherits the same shit that the previous one had to deal with and UK debt is sitting at what- 123% of GDP?

You'd better temper your expectations.

Quote (Black XistenZ @ Jul 5 2024 01:40pm)

Official UK results:
https://www.bbc.com/news/election/2024/uk/results

It's quite astounding how Labour has secured one of the largest seat majorities in UK history, based on a vote share of a measly 33.7% of the vote, significantly lower than what they got in their losing (!) campaign of 2017 and barely above their dismal performance in 2019. Gaining 1.6% in the vote after THESE disastrous 5 years from the Tories is actually quite pathetic. Compared to 2010, Labour has gained 4.7% after 14 consecutive years of Tory rule. :unsure:

Keir Starmer has triumphed in this election not because him or Labour won over a lot of people, he will be PM because he was able to keep Labour steady while the Tories collapsed. In spite of the huge Labour majority, they don't actually have a strong mandate from the UK's electorate.

For the Tories, it was a complete and well-deserved rout, but relative to expectations, this was actually a decent night for them. The cataclysmic wipeout that some polls predicted did not come to pass, they retained enough seats to remain a functional party, even stay the official opposition by a decent margin. And their competition on the political right from Reform UK wasn't able to achieve a full breakthrough.

The LibDems saw barely any change to their support level, but were able to pick off a lot of seats due to the Tory collapse.

The second big loser of the night is the SNP, which lost the bulk of its seats. Like with the Tories, this was a well-deserved punishment for bad government. With this collapse in SNP strength and a Labour government in Westminster, Scottish independence should be off the table for at least the next decade or so.




Another interesting tidbit I saw from the BBC analysts is that Labour support took a huge hit in Muslim-heavy seats, which even allowed the Tories to gain a seat from Labour in Leicester East - in this environment! So the Muslim backlash over the Gaza War did indeed materialize at the ballot box, it just didn't matter in the grand scheme of things, given the huge Labour lead and the UK's political system. Still something to keep in mind with regard to elections in France or Michigan...

Quote (JohnnyMcCoy @ Jul 7 2024 01:21am)

congrats britain, to get rid of the tories you voted for a party that will make every important problem even worse :rofl:

the labour leader already had a talk with trudeau and trudeau loves how many things they agree on.......YIKES

meanwhile sunak could barely hold back the laughter during his last speech, these people dont give a damn lmao

but hey, keep voting harder :rofl:

you aint voting your way out of this shit, enjoy the decline

same in france, le pen wont do shit even if she could stop losing, while the 18-24 age group voted almost 50% socialist

Quote (Black XistenZ @ Jul 7 2024 01:54pm)

That's not a solution, though. The whole premise is that dipshit politicians are making such disastrous decisions that we, as individual citizens, cannot overcome the consequences, not even with perfect personal decision-making.
Also, the plebs giving up, falling in line and keeping their head down in resignation is exactly what they want.

Quote (Meanwhile @ Jul 7 2024 01:57pm)

ok so "don't vote because politicians are not going to fix your problems" ?
useful

Quote (dro94 @ Jul 7 2024 04:38pm)

Starmer is a big improvement on Sunak, absolutely no question about that imo.

Reform getting 15% of the vote is actually good news, as Labour MUST reduce immigration significantly, otherwise they will be booted out in 5 years and it will be a hard right government that gains power, led by Braverman or Farage. That threat of punishment by voters in the next election will do some good.

Quote (JohnnyMcCoy @ Jul 7 2024 06:10pm)

only you can fix your own problems, thats a general statement

obviously you need to vote, because you are afraid that le pen might cut your free handouts one day

Quote (Meanwhile @ Jul 7 2024 06:36pm)

False statements, personal attacks, coming in political sub to say vote is useless.
Bozo.

Quote (dro94 @ 7 Jul 2024 16:33)

Labour do have a clear mandate in my opinion:

1) Tactically voting is significant, especially in a FPTP system, and many Labour voters voted purely to get the tories out, so in the south that meant voting for Lib Dem candidates quite often.

2) Corbyn had more votes overall because his far left brand of politics was loved by the liberal metropolitan voter who are numerous but are concentrated in the big cities. Starmer ran a campaign to target conservative constitutencies with a lower number of voters overall, and did so successfully.

3) Many Muslim voters ditched the Labour party in favour of the Green party or pro-palestinian independent candidates. Muslims are a very large demographic in the UK, something like 7% and rising, so it's hugely significant when looking at vote share, but in terms of seats, this only impacted 10-15 of them.

4) Reform took a lot of votes from red wall Labour voters in their 40s+, not just from conservative voters.

Quote (dro94 @ 7 Jul 2024 16:38)

Reform getting 15% of the vote is actually good news, as Labour MUST reduce immigration significantly, otherwise they will be booted out in 5 years and it will be a hard right government that gains power, led by Braverman or Farage. That threat of punishment by voters in the next election will do some good.

Quote (Black XistenZ @ Jul 5 2024 01:40pm)

Another interesting tidbit I saw from the BBC analysts is that Labour support took a huge hit in Muslim-heavy seats, which even allowed the Tories to gain a seat from Labour in Leicester East - in this environment! So the Muslim backlash over the Gaza War did indeed materialize at the ballot box, it just didn't matter in the grand scheme of things, given the huge Labour lead and the UK's political system. Still something to keep in mind with regard to elections in France or Michigan...

Quote (Black XistenZ @ Jul 7 2024 08:40pm)

Those Reform voters in red wall ancestrally Labour seats would presumably have stayed in the fold of the Tories if they had shown any intentions of following up on the agenda and positioning from their 2019 campaign. If Boris and the Tories had stayed the course, there wouldn't have been this huge split between them and Reform and they would have retained most of the votes which instead got divided between the two parties. That's 38% of the vote.



You are surely right that Labour's vote share understates its actual support level among the population, but even if you factor in the Muslim backlash and the tactical voting, their "true" support level among the electorate presumably still doesn't crack 40%.
The Tories were guilty of intra-party backstabbing/turmoil, general incompetence and betraying their campaign promises. My perspective on this election - and I could of course be wrong, I'm just a foreign voyeur after all - is that they could have gotten away with any 2 of those 3 'sins', just not all 3 at once. Even if Labour had still won in that scenario, it would have been with a somewhat narrow majority which the Tories can hope to claw back at the next election.


Instead, Labour is now in a position of unearned dominance and can expect to govern for at least 10 years unless they fuck up ridiculously.




I, for my part, don't believe for one second that Labour will actually reduce immigration. At best, the latent pressure from Reform might prevent them from opening the borders even more - but at this point, even just keeping the current status quo for another 5/10 years would be disastrous.

Quote (Prox1m1ty @ 8 Jul 2024 16:40)

Ergo stability. The UK has a currency to protect after all.
The Europeans can afford to self indulge in choosing what form of corporate socialism they prefer better for weeks on end.
Since no one country shoulders the burden of the shared currency