General Election 2019

The problem with swinging back to the centre is my understanding is that it was New Labour that killed the labour vote and put many of their safe seats up for challenge as many life long labour voters didn't recognise the party and felt abandonded and simply stopped voting, so it isn't that they left for another party but could come back, they were lost from voting all together

I wonder if that's the same demographic who now cite corbyn as their reason. And how many have grown into voting age with no party to call home.
It seems to me there's a large section of the population who are unrepresented in politics now. They found a home, wrongly or rightly in voting to leave the EU, but ukip is gone, brexit party is gone and conservatives are still just about unstomachable.
I hope it's not insurmountable to bring these people around to Labour at some point, though it seems the messages that resonate most are those of negativity and of resentment of the establishment.

Sorry for the amount of sweeping generalisations in this post. It's been a long time since I've tried to articulate politics chat outside a pub.

I do get that theory but wonder if it's borne out by evidence. If that was the case, why do labour seem to struggle so much to gain a majority now (or, for that matter, before Blair)?

Is it the case that that demographic exists but is smaller than labour would like to believe?

https://twitter.com/davidgraeber/status/1201950245804027904

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From memory it was an estimate by a charity based on the number of Iraqi soldiers deployed to the Sadam line who didn't return to their families. They contested that the ~450 figure was based on a count of visible body parts sticking out of the sand. A full excavation was never conducted, let alone by the USA to come to the ~450 figure.

I'm sure it's a bullshit high estimate but the point is that the ~459 figure is clearly an underestimate.

In the same way that the US official death toll for the Highway of Death is lower than even the photos that western journalists took of corpses in the vehicles because the US publically stated that they were sure that everybody ran away when the attack started. The US claim 200 deaths, independent assessors claim closer to 1,000.

The whole thing stinks. I didn't even realise until yesterday that the US have recently admitted to exposing their own troops to Sarin and VX, telling them at the time that their chemical sensors were faulty and false alarms. War Crimes against the Iraqis, war Crimes against their own men.

back to GE2019 - tactical voting
I am not knowledgeable about such things, but I worry about:

• It only works based on predictive information.
  
• But everyone is saying the predictions and polls are not reliable.
  
• Different websites give different advice
  
• It kind of freezes things in the past since that's what a lot of the prediction is based on.
  
• Voting doesn't reflect actual preferences. Doesn't that fuck up the whole idea of democractic elections?
  
• You can't see shifts in support over time (either the big parties losing or small parties gaining) if people are voting based on "effectiveness".
  
  

I absolutely get the need to remove the Tories from power.
But can tactical voting based on poor information actually screw things up? It's apparent popularity makes me nervous.

Also, why isn't there more chat about Labour's Green New Deal?

Knock yerself out:

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/tactical-voting

:)

I found this article persuasive (but I'm still open to persuasion either way):

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/nov/29/tactical-voting-sites-confusion-animosity

And, honestly, this is just so typical Guardian/Observer:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/dec/08/observer-view-on-general-election-and-who-to-vote-for

The choice is clear, it must be anyone but Johnson

For as long as I can remember, the Guardian and Observer have endorsed one party, either Labour or the Lib Dems. To claim it is clear that people have to vote against Johnson is considerably less clear than their previous recommendations. Not that anything is clear about this election, anyway.

Isn't that just accepting that now voting against the Tories might include SNP / Plaid Cymru / Green rather than labour / libs as in previous years?

I found this article persuasive (but I'm still open to persuasion either way):

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfre­e/2019/nov/29/tactical-voting-sites-conf­usion-animosity

in what way persuasive? that article just seems to reinforce my doubts.

Corbyn is not a Marxist by any stretch of the imagination...neither is he an anti-Semite as the Tory press suggest.

He is, though, a fucking lad.

No they wouldn’t.

And this is why...
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/these-are-the-184-labour-mps-who-didn-t-vote-against-the-tories-welfare-bill-10404831.html

I am not knowledgeable about such things, but I worry about:

I run one of the sites with a group of others, it's this one https://tacticalvote.co.uk/ which is the most popular and largest of the sites.

The people who run it come from a wide range of political biases (except Tory) and all feel unrepresented by the current voting system and govt.

So I hope you won't mind my going through your concerns:

It only works based on predictive information.

Yes, but in our case not data driven by machines... humans who look at the history of a seat, factor in local elements, Remain/Leave votes, prior elections, whether it's changed, etc.

But everyone is saying the predictions and polls are not reliable.

Predictions and polls are unreliable, but knowing where to tactically vote and which way to vote isn't unreliable because the recommendations are pretty reliable and unified. We know where tactical voting can make a difference and if it's done it will make a difference.

Different websites give different advice

Not so much: https://tacticalvote.co.uk/key-seats/

Virtually every website is aligned, as no tactical voting site wishes to split the vote and risk a bad outcome.

It kind of freezes things in the past since that's what a lot of the prediction is based on.

This is true, if people are always tactical voting then recommendations in the future echo off of that. But why to tactical vote is interesting and I personally do not wish this to become an election echo effect... I want tactical voting to show the need for progressive agreements (where candidates work together and drop out to better represent local votes) and then that be a step towards proportional representation.

Voting doesn't reflect actual preferences. Doesn't that fuck up the whole idea of democractic elections?

No, it makes it more reflective of voter preference:

Some areas go Tory when the majority in the area vote left/liberal/green.

But can tactical voting based on poor information actually screw things up? It's apparent popularity makes me nervous.

In the 2017 GE tactical voting did well: https://tacticalvote.co.uk/tactical2017/

At a glance:

• Seats where we could have affected the outcome: 100% accuracy
  
• Seats where we could not have affected the outcome: 89% accuracy
  
• All seats:
  
  • 565 correct
    
  • 69 incorrect (mostly safe Tory seats where tactical voting cannot change the outcome)
    
  • 16 no recommendation
    
    

This is from the Sunday Times, but arguably captures the state of British politics better than anything else I’ve read during this election campaign.

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Nah, fuck that. People want decent things and it can be done.

It can, but people seem to want European levels of public service with US levels of taxation. That can’t be done.

Why is that a problem? They’re saying that the opinion of the newspaper is that Boris would be less preferable for the UK than the other options. It’s an opinion; I don’t see that something labelled opinion/editorial has to provide a balanced view.

Interesting where it mensions pensions. The current UK pension deficit is £7.2tn. Thats not far off a quarter of a million squids for every person of working age.

This problem is actually pretty closely tied to the UK gov policy of high immigration levels too. The traditional government tools to tackle a pension deifict with an ageing population are:

1) get people to have more babies (hard)
2) raise retirement age (unpopular)
3) encourage immigration (effective but unpopular)
4) diversion of tax revenues to pensions. (Unpopular.)

The lack of public discourse on this is saddening and heavily linked to Brexit. "Stop the freeloading forrins coming over here".

The lack of intelligent public discourse on this issue is really sad.

5) increase productivity.

An hour of a Brit working equals 45 mins of a German.

True although that requires better working conditions which doesn't seem something that the billionaires are willing to support.

Doesn't the UK have some of the lowest productivity in Europe?

Not 100% on this but I think basically worse than all of Europe but better than the US. It has fallen in recent years.

Thanks for this. I appreciate it, I'm aware my own scepticism is based on 'feelings' and so clear information is useful.