This is opinion. So read it as such. But consider it please.

Obviously if you read this based on the title. I assume you oppose the Tories.

But if you are wondering why labour are so keen to manage expectations. There is a reason.

Campaign funding wise the Tories are estimated to be 19m ahead of labour. But honestly at the moment they are not spending a huge amount more.

We know the Tories are skilled at election manipulation. So there is genuine fear that the Tories plan to launch a campaign within the last few days.

I.E. when there is less time and funding to ensure fact checking is effective.

They know Starmer is more publicity aware then Corbyn was. He is able to play it in a way that dose not scare traditional Conservative voters.

They also know thanks to Boris, that the courts are unable to punish them for outright lies during any political campaign. And that Rishi is prepared to lie about and accuse civil servants of lying when challenged.

As huge as polling is against the Tories. All it would take is some dramatic claim against the party or Starmer. To convince Tory traditional voters to bite their tongue and vote Tory. While convincing left wing voters not to vote or to switch to 3rd party in seats where labour are the 1st or 2nd party.

The fact we know they have a huge amount of money unspent. Makes it clear they plan to launch something nearer the end of the election. And the only advantage of leaving it so late. Is it will limit the ability of the party to effectively react. Or fact checkers to be able to prove and distribute evidence of lies.

Please be prepared for this.

  • wren@feddit.uk
    ·
    5 months ago

    Almost everyone hates FPTP, and we know it sucks, but unfortunately, tactical voting is a realistic option for most areas in the UK. I'm personally very likely to vote Green (or lib dem) as I'm in a safe Labour seat, and I won't conscionably vote Labour for a myriad of reasons (including being trans), but it's a bigger priority to get the Tories out than anything else right now.

    More optimistically though: voting is one part of a large variety of things people can do to influence politics. Protests, voting locally, working with local and bigger organisations, writing to MPs, donating to causes we care about, etc. can all help offset the feeling of having to vote for a party you hate slightly-less than the worse one.

    • Nakoichi [they/them]
      ·
      5 months ago

      I AM BEGGING YOU TO FUCKING DO MORE THAN VOTING AND STOP THINKING THAT VOTING IS GOING TO DO ANYTHING HOLY SHIT MAN.

      I HATE that you fuckin libs think that politics ends at the ballot box and then when I say this this motherfucker makes up a strawman about me advocating political assassination.

      You people are fucking useless.

      • GreatAlbatross@feddit.ukM
        ·
        5 months ago

        Please try to calm down a bit mate.

        We can appreciate your frustration: It is not a fun situation when the main options for the government both support the horrible things happening in the Middle East.

        I can promise you, we don't enjoy it either. People choose to vote tactically to put the most pressure on the lesser of two evils, and avoid an even more questionable result (CON+REF+DUP coalition, anyone?)

        Hopefully, one day we can see AV coming into practice. And we can see MPs better representing the votes of the nation.

        And until then, we can continue to put pressure on bad situations, via the small parties, via protest. But not by cutting off our noses to spite our faces.

        Please be civil with people on feddit.uk. Shouting is not civil.

        • Nakoichi [they/them]
          ·
          5 months ago

          Please be civil

          I will try to respect your rules better but I fundamentally disagree with civility/tone policing when it comes to literal genocide and people advocating voting for people facilitating said genocide.

          Like I said before I got heated and that person strawmanned me saying I was advocating political assassinations. There is a world of action that needs to be taken outside of electoralism and focusing on elections and voting is something I feel is a distraction from What Is To Be Done.

          • wren@feddit.uk
            ·
            5 months ago

            Its reasonable to be angry at world politics right now (I don't know many people who aren't) but you can be a good leftist and be kind at the same time.

            So I agree: it is an unproductive distraction to start beef on the internet about voting and elections. We both want the same things:

            • Real, measurable direct political action, on dozens of issues that the main 2 parties won't solve
            • All of the pro-genocide, awful politicians out of parliament (and ideally, off of Earth).

            Why not share stuff like: https://linktr.ee/opolivebranch instead of getting into the weeds with strangers

            • Nakoichi [they/them]
              ·
              5 months ago

              Yeah you're not wrong but the whole OP was about voting as harm reduction which I fundamentally disagree with.

              Fascism arises because of the collapse of institutional legitimacy of liberal institutions. That's how we got trump and that's how we're gonna get what's coming next after him, that's gonna be even worse, because if you think that there's not gonna be more ecological and economic catastrophes in the future that liberalism is wholly unsuited to fucking deal with and that that failure is not gonna lead to fascism filling that fucking hole, you've got another thing coming.

              And that's what these guys are. These guys who marched in Charlottesville, these are the people who are aware of the unspoken premise of the sort of zombie neoliberalism that we're living in which is that we're coming at a point that there's gonna be ecological catastrophe and it's going to either require mass redistribution of the ill-gotten gains of the first world or genocide.

              And these are the first people who have basically said, "Well if thats the choice I choose genocide." And they're getting everybody else ready, intellectually and emotionally, for why that's gonna be ok when it happens. Why they're not really people. When we're putting all this money into more fucking walls and drones and bombs and guns to keep them away so we can watch them die with clear consciences because we've been loaded with the ideology that these guys are now starting to express publicly.

              On the other side of them you have people who are saying in full fucking voice, "No, we have the resources to save everybody, to give everybody a decent and worthwhile existence," and that is what we want, and that is the fucking real difference between these two.

              Paraphrasing Matt Christman.

              In short by holding dear to these liberal institutions we are inadvertantly accelerating the rise of fascism.