Its 4th July, you live in rainy fash island..

of course, either Green or indie Socialist or crude drawings on the ballot paper depending on circumstances

See a spoilt ballot is the equivalent of a no to me. Never quite got the point

can't be accused of apathy is my rationale

No.

A no from me.

I would almost always vote in a general, and most council elections.

But I so don't give a fuck about anything. Hence asking how many feel the same, as most uk ilxors seem engaged enough with politics to vote.

exercising my democratic right to scrawl FREE PALESTINE on the ballot

Living in the US so more likely to be waving a shirt over my head at fireworks on July 4th. How does postal voting even work, do you register with the last constituency you lived in before emigrating? That would be Edinburgh North & Leith for me so fuck that.

don't have the photo ID required to vote and don't give a fuck

Tending towards no, but I suppose Diane Abbott getting a vote less is if anything something Starmer/current Labour would celebrate so might still be arsed to show up.

Depends whether Corbyn stands.

Voting green party

it's like the most difficult decision in Corbyn's life to stand against the mainly centre-right party that conspired with the worst elements of the UK press to finish him off and actively sabotaged his 2 election campaigns. There is no hope for him!

still a Green member somehow so will probably honour the fire!!!! incredibly meaningful yes yes

I'm in a weird situation in that my (very politically engaged) son is now of voting age and is vocally resistant to my 'no to all these arseholes' approach. I think I'll still be a no, but I want to go with him for his first time, even if it's just to spoil my ballot.

Yeah.

I was getting disillusioned with the Greens a bit (the lack of Caroline Lucas at the helm is leading to them floundering) but around the mayoral elections I read up on their current manifesto, and it is still very good. Worth a look if you're uncertain.

Depends whether Corbyn stands.

― I've left the box of soup near your shoes (Tom D.), Wednesday, 22 May 2024 bookmarkflaglink

No vote for Mason huh

I know quite a few people going to work on the Andrew Feinstein campaign - the independent standing in Holborn and St Pancras against SKSKC.

gl to Feinstein

I will vote out of some misguided principle, most likely for the Independent candidate in a probably futile attempt to help her not lose her deposit

would love it if the tories had some ruinous dirt on Starmer and he was on the verge of losing his seat going into election night!

Likely just voting for any TUSC/otherwise Socialist candidate on the ballot.

No vote for Mason huh

― xyzzzz__, Wednesday, 22 May 2024 19:18 (ten minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

My dad would be spinning in his grave if I voted for a mason.

I have never voted in a general election because the constituency I live in has always been Wealdon which is Tory no matter what so I never saw the point. Think this time they've messed around with the boundaries and the village I live in will vote in which ever constituency east grinstead falls under. I would guess this is still a Tory stronghold but I may throw the greens a vote unless the election falls on my day off cos I'm not making a special journey to vote rather than dropping in on my way home from work.

boundaries have changed slightly here too but dunno if it will make a huge difference to a 17000 vote majority

they've changed the name to Hove & Portslade, but Portslade was already in the old Hove constituency so not sure why really, esp because as far as I can tell the only change is that Hove constituency now includes part of Brighton

Hearing that Paul Mason will be rejected for the Islington North Labour MP shortlist.

— Evolve Politics (@evolvepolitics) May 22, 2024

lol

The only thing the Labour right have done that I can approve

xp to self - lol sorry for repeatedly posting but apparently that's not true (that's what you get for trusting wikipedia I guess) - it's literally just a rename, the bit about part of Regency ward now being in Hove & Portslade is not backed up by the parliament.uk website

(xp) No no, I want him to run!

safe melty labour but the green candidate is nice so will give them a vote for encouragement purposes. constituency on the other side of the road might flip from tory to lib dem.

Voted yes but I count spoiled ballots. fwiw in the locals I voted green for council & wrote ACAB over the crime commissioner thing

I'm in Abbey where we have three green councillors including one neighbour, I let them put a sign in the garden, but tbh that is mostly to boil the piss of the labour coordinator who would not stop emailing me after I made it clear that I'd left the party.

East Chesterton and exact same email issue

I have never voted in a general election because the constituency I live in has always been Wealdon which is Tory no matter what so I never saw the point. Think this time they've messed around with the boundaries and the village I live in will vote in which ever constituency east grinstead falls under. I would guess this is still a Tory stronghold but I may throw the greens a vote unless the election falls on my day off cos I'm not making a special journey to vote rather than dropping in on my way home from work.

Is that where the Blur drummer is standing?

if I lived 200m to the east I could vote for the guitarist from Gomez. I wouldn't, but I could

some sort of poll about Gomez dude, Blur dude, and whether their worst crimes against humanity are standing for Labour

Reminds me that someone asked me recently if spoilt ballots are included in voter turnout or not. Does anyone know?

Electoral commission counts them in their stats, so yeah.

Just checked H&StP and there were just under 88k registered voters in 2019 with an actual turnout of around 56k. Starmer got around 36k of those votes. So I am wondering if there are 30k voters who are pissed off enough with Starmer to successfully decapitate Labour.

Encouraged by the open speculation by news nods about Wes Streeting maybe not being able to keep his seat.

voted no because i don't have the right to vote for MPs despite living here and paying my taxes.

The voters might want to have a look.

Before considering how you might vote on 4 July, do check your constituency because the boundaries have changed quite significantly since 2019 in some places

My single constituency in 2019 is now spread across five (5) newly created constituencieshttps://t.co/DNKV5b9QKw

— Tits McGee (@Scientits) May 23, 2024

these tools never work for me because they never factor in that a single postcode might be split between constituencies.

A very small number of postcodes are split between constituencies; in these cases, the search will return the constituency that covers the centre of the postcode area.

the centre is the middle of the road

a pedant notes that "postcode area" is the largest subdivision of postcodes i.e. the letters at the beginning, which would cover loads of constituencies

I mean it is true that the people on the other side of my quite small street are in a different constituency

I was just moaning about the Guardian

right, yes it is clumsy phrasing

I'm right opposite a church which is a polling station but not mine. Will do postal vote anyway, but maybe hand delivered.

Thanks to the Tories restoring the franchise to splitters who left over 15 years ago I can cast my vote against Keith in Holborn and St Pancras from all the way down here.

I don't wish to be rude to the expat community, but ftr it's Kieth not Keith. Spelling it correctly lacks disrespect!

(xp) Yay!

unseating that cunt would be glorious, might as well give it a go.

Going green - our labour mp is quite good locally and its a swing area, presumably labour will win it again

I'm just amazed it is already 15 years since Ed left.

Also voting Green. Sorry Anneliese, I know you are also good locally. It's not you, it's these others!

So many voters! Nice to know your spirits have not been crushed by the last five years

Corbyn "likely to stand" as an independent.

You can vote now. Though I'm sure you will get a commie on the ballot

jfc Corbyn, it's dead - let it go and get on with it.

The Burning of the Houses of Parliament by Turner pic.twitter.com/jtkbUy0kxo

— Impressions (@impression_ists) May 23, 2024

Corbyn wants to serve his constituents and I’m sure if you live in Islington North and you need help with your PIP after x number of appeals, you’d want someone who knows and cares about local people over some briefcase wanker with a private IVF company.

Indeed.

Hopefully a few Lab MPs will get screwed over Gaza, and that awful woman will lose her seat to the Greens in Bristol

I see a few here refuse to genuflect to the gene lecs

have to agree with john swinney that putting the election in the first week of the scottish school holidays isn't even a fuck you to scotland, it's just evidence that it scotland is never considered by w/minster at all. i will, however, be postal voting b/c the tory candidate is a tory and the labour candidate's CV looks like this and my constituency could conceivably go any of SNP / Labour / Tory

That just goes to a prompt to get the LinkedIn app, never doing that, so please C&P the CV?

Link didn't work but I see from Wiki that he's variously been:

1. Coordinator of David Miliband's leadership campaign. (LOST)
2. Head strategist to the Better Together campaign during the 2014 Scottish independence referendum. (WON but destroyed the Scottish Labour Party)
3. Adviser in Jim Murphy's campaign for the Scottish Labour leadership. (WON but finished off what was left of the Scottish Labour Party)
4. Scottish Labour candidate for Murphy's former constituency of East Renfrewshire in the 2017 general election. (LOST, came third in that election, with 26.7% of the vote, a fall in the Labour vote of over 7 points).
5. Scotland Adviser for Jess Phillips' leadership campaign. (LOST and, fuck me, Jess Phillips had a leadership campaign?!?!?)
6. Father of two children (I suppose that's a WIN but can't say for sure)

"gene lecs"

omg

genny lecks babes

xposts - oh lord sorry for the bad link. The linkedin profile also reveals much new labour spaddery in his early years and a stint with the tony blair africa governance initiative. Kirsten Oswald is it then

Gene Long Lecs

Please no tweebreviations…

Suzy, I would totally give you my proxy but not sure I can to a dirty furrener, although one who must be close on having lived in the UK longer than I did.

I am toying with the idea of getting a UK passport but it won’t happen in time for the election.

I was suggesting pls get over the Labour Party ffs, Corbyn. Not suggesting do not stand as an independent candidate - just in case there was any misunderstanding of the post there!

The Labour Party: the source of, and the solution to all of JC’s problems :)

this poll really should have had options for voting choices so we can gauge the level of shy Labour voters

Definitely should've put in a spoilt vote choice.

Genuinely don't know at this point. Really not worth it where I am. A genocide supporter will win either way, and I can't see the others having enough support to demonstrate anything. I'll make a decision closer to the time, after looking at the leaflets.

I sleep

Really feeling this. I so wanted to canvass and vote in this election.

whats really galling about Keir Starmer is he has robbed me of what should be one of the greatest joys of my life, the collapse of the conservative party

— yoshimi battles the productive forces (@nise_yoshimi) May 25, 2024

yeah, I was waiting for this to happen for years and it's barely any fun at all. It's ruined by the anxiety of the more Tory annihilation = more untrammelled power to this ghastly party equation. I hate Labour more than the Tories these days anyway. Thanks a fucking bunch, Kieth.

I liked that tweet too, but of course Starmer is just a stooge and figurehead for a wider project, which is why so many tory voters are going for him. I know you know that, of course. When I talk to friends and family about this I ensure they get that point that Starmer's personal qualities, good or bad are largely irrelevant.
I'd probably go as far as to say that he has less power in the party than Mandelson and Blair, when push comes to shove.

Mandelson with historic friendships with nice people like Lebedev and Epstein is clearly on a different level of power elite access than Kieth ever will be.

Starmer is too dull for any self respecting billionaire to choose to hang out with.

Starmer aspires to be in that elite group, that's why he joined the trilateral commission and went to secret meetings with CIA during Corbyn's leadership. Blair is his model. He just has to prove that can ignore the electorate enough in his reign in power, kowtow to American, Israeli and Saudi interests, and he'll be well on his way. He has to be more ruthless than Blair though, there can't be any of that namby pamby worker's right shit this time around. His constant line "I've changed the party" is for his donors and the elite overseers. He does like a haunted fellow sometimes, there's proper Faustian shit going on inside him.

Already had Andrew Feinstein’s leaflet army in my block at lunchtime, hooray :)

Can't imagine anybody important will want to hang with Kieth, he's got almost Majorish levels of dweebosity

Discussed Labour likely taking the election with my usually pretty smart brother today. He is of the very real belief that KS and gang are going to have two years of same old economic policy and maybe some easy target stuff and when they have proved themselves to not ruin the country, like dropping a plate and having it smash into pieces, they will magically give up austerity and throw loads of money at the country. An example of this he said was revolutionising social housing for generations.

When I asked him where he has got this idea from, he couldn’t say but was adamant that it was going to happen. And then that I must want the Tories if I’m doubting this.

—-

I usually stay in very left wing circles so this level of centrist delusion seemed very interesting to me. It really goes to show what people think when the media is on side. I know it is just an anecdote but I really get this feeling quite a bit when I hear Starmer’s name mentioned. Like his empty shirt can hold an avatar of whatever you want it to.

I'm seeing this too. people are incredulous if I say there's not much difference between the parties and Labour have said they're mostly keeping the Tories' policies. they seem to be expecting a big shift to the left. like they think Corbyn's still leader or something

that plate smashing analogy has been used by Labour Right insiders. I don't know who in particular, it was Solomon Hughes who quoted one of them saying that Labour's polling lead is like a fragile ming vase in Kieth's hands. The minute he gives even the slightest ground to unions, GND, anything good for humanity ... then it shatters. Fucking great way to do politics.

I usually stay in very left wing circles so this level of centrist delusion seemed very interesting to me. It really goes to show what people think when the media is on side. I know it is just an anecdote but I really get this feeling quite a bit when I hear Starmer’s name mentioned. Like his empty shirt can hold an avatar of whatever you want it to.

This is always going to be a danger I think, in assuming things are self-evident. That things which are true are also obviously true, and its generally not the case.

Because conversations are gradually within rather than across circles, when they eventually do happen, different worlds have been built up and these large gaps in perception arise

Yes. It's a safe Tory seat, the MP is old school One Nation, does an OK job at a constituency level, and has been effective when helping some people I know. To unseat him would require voting tactically Lib Dem, whose candidate is, once again, deeply uninspiring: a serial loser from other constituencies who has scant knowledge of this area. The Labour candidate is also from outside the region and is even less inspiring than the Lib Dem. But as I personally know and like and mostly agree with the Green candidate, I'll be voting for her.

I'll be voting for the candidate most likely to unseat the local Tory encumbant, so I'll be voting Piss Diamonds again.

"This is always going to be a danger I think, in assuming things are self-evident. That things which are true are also obviously true, and its generally not the case."

Think this is the wrong angle that always turns into a lecture from Liberals. People on the left know what's stacked against them. And its not a case of conversations coming in from wrong assumptions.

What helps Starmer is that people often look at the other guy more favourably after the ruling party have had power for many years. It helped Cameron, Corbyn, and it will help Starmer as the rulers at the SNP and Tories have had a decade + in power. And there's no Brexit this time to keep that coalition together.

Even my mother, a lifelong Tory diehard, thinks it’s time they had a spell out of power.

When did she come to that conclusion? Will she sit out the voting or go somewhere else? It's interesting Reform don't really seem to have any real traction, even as a protest vote, when a lane has presumably opened up for them Feels like interest In all parties including dissident/insurgent branded parties has fallen away

She’s felt that way since Truss and through Sunak (she liked May and had mixed feelings about Johnson), but in GEs she votes tactically LD in an attempt to unseat Labour (Tories being a distant third in her patch).

It took 20 years or so for a set of grievances fuelled by weirdos and the right to hit against the EU, which gave rise to UKIP.

Looking at the devastation caused by the rains in Southern Brazil and I reckon it won't take v long for a serious climate movement to form as well. I won't shed tears for Kent.

That's not really the right way round, UKIP have existed since 1993

Sounds like both went together. I certainly remember the odd interview with what were then the weirdos who wanted the UK out of the EU.

There’s a melt agitating for the Labour Islington North IVF guy whose father was the first and only Referendum Party MP after migrating from the Tories.

Looking at the devastation caused by the rains in Southern Brazil and I reckon it won't take v long for a serious climate movement to form as well. I won't shed tears for Kent.

― xyzzzz__, Monday, 27 May 2024 10:03 (five hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

One spot of good news is that the greens are leading the Tories amongst voters aged 18-39 in GE polls. Something to build on

I was just rewatching the Al Jazeera Labour Files doc. There was one person who said, formerly they used to believe they could be part of something bigger than themselves and work towards improving improving public services, raising the quality of life for people. But upon joining the Labour Party and seeing (paraphrasing here) what a bunch of evil, racist, lying, corrupt scumbags that exist in all the mid to upper tier positions of the party and how much hateful effort they put into smearing left-wing/BAME members. Then they gave up all hope. It was a good reminder of why I'm never going to vote for this party again.

If you want to vote, today is your last chance to register

even if you are voting for the neo-nazi/paedophile party alliance. DON'T LOSE YOUR VOICE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lKQNtIMA1vE

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

ILX is ready to Rock The Vote

You guys

66 british posters tho, that's more than I would have thought at this stage in the forum's history

let's all get together for election night

A friend and my family have had strong feelings about me not voting.

Took a msg from me on the old Lab WhatsApp group for anyone to consider this possibility.

ILX turnout: 78%

66 british posters tho, that's more than I would have thought at this stage in the forum's history

Without photo ID electoral fraud may be rife.

I voted no but then gave in and registered for a postal vote, wonder if it turned up? So 53-13 is the accurate result, take that ilx psephologists

i am gonna enable the Tories so hard tomorrow

Damn, I'm behind a bit on UK politics but this thread is grim..

Yeah we're not doing too well.

think I've decided to waste my vote on the Greens rather than the independent candidate

octobeard, depending on when you stopped following probably all you need to know is that the presumptive new government are pretty openly pressing on with both austerity and the hostile environment and (afaict, I checked out on election shit ages ago tho) neither has been much in the conversation despite being the most prominent crimes of the last decade of Tory rule

66 british posters tho, that's more than I would have thought at this stage in the forum's history

Voted for the first time ever in a general election mainly cos boundary changes meant instead of an ultra safe conservative seat now I'm in what I would guess is a p safe con seat (east grinstead, uckfield and villages).

Voted Green. Also I don't know anything about electoral law but I thought the polling station was just supposed to list the candidates and party but no rhetoric or slogans? But there on the bottom of the ballot was some guy with English Democrats - Deport All Illegal Immigrants next to his name. It almost cost the greens my vote cos I was sorely tempted to scrawl FUCK YOU next to his name on my ballot paper.

ILX: please don't forget ID today

It doesn’t matter who you vote for. Just vote. And don’t forget ID.

— Brendan Cox (@MrBrendanCox) July 4, 2024

Well, he's not wrong

it's so fucking hilariously stupid is that Just Vote shtick. More like Just Grope in his case.

Hmm, the box on my paper for "Leave" was missing I think, so I drew it in for them.