#if the lib dems are second then they're second to labour

[pinktinselmonstrosity]

love this advert i keep getting (on temple run, of all places) it's like an ad from another timeline where the lib dems are popular 😭

[toaarcan]

I need the anti-voting crowd to understand that not voting isn't going to cause the Democrats to take a long, hard, look in the mirror and suddenly decide that they need to swing left to appeal to more leftists.

When these centre-left parties lose, they get more centrist. They try to broaden their appeal and make themselves as appealing to as many people as possible.

The example I'll point to is my local centre-left party, Labour, who are currently poised on the brink of one of the largest victories they've ever had. By the time you read this, it may have already happened, election day is today.

Labour have been drifting rightwards on several fronts for a while now. One of the biggest examples of this was the 1997 elections. After repeatedly failing to defeat Margaret Thatcher and then subsequently losing once to John Major, Tony Blair became the new leader of the party, and reinvented it as New Labour, adopting a much more neoliberal economic approach and promptly got a historic victory.

Now there are a lot of reasons why Blair won as hard as he did, and I don't have time to break them all down, but at the end of the day, their adoption of neoliberal economic policies worked out enormously for them. Not only did Blair romp to victory, he maintained most of his popularity afterwards, reigning for an entire decade before finally stepping down in 2007.

Labour is also a handy demonstrator of why they don't lean leftwards after a defeat, because they actually did try that and it failed spectacularly.

After Ed "Wrong Milliband, wrong Ed" Milliband's dismal performance in the 2015 election, Labour actually decided to try and lean leftwards again, and selected Jeremy Corbyn as their leader.

Unfortunately, Corbyn was useless. Many a Brit will accuse him of not even actually wanting to be Prime Minister, instead just wanting to sit opposite an actual PM and oppose them. They're probably right.

The 2017 snap election, called by Theresa May, should've been an open goal. May was embattled largely by her own party, many of whom were strongly opposed to her attempt at a moderate Brexit deal. She was an unelected PM, chosen by internal party mechanisms after David "Bae of Pigs" Cameron fucked off post-Brexit disaster. The massive, and ever-growing pro-EU voting block were entirely unrepresented. The Liberal Democrats, normally a bit of a thorn in Labour's side in terms of hoovering up more left-wing votes, were still trying to recover from the massive hit in popularity they took after the disasterous Tory-Lib Dem coalition. Blood in the water for any left-wing party worth its salt.

Yeah so Corbyn fucked it up and lost. While May only ended up weakening her position, losing 13 seats and dropping below a majority, the Tories still got their largest vote share since the 80s and held onto power for grim death.

Corbyn stuck around, still didn't get any better, and promptly lost the 2019 election in a landslide. To this guy.

People didn't vote for Corbyn. In the media, he was pilloried as a communist and an antisemite (and he did such a terrible job of fighting that second one that to this day I still have no idea whether it was true or just a smear campaign), and his determination to take the high road only made him look weak and avoidant to the public. His policies got little attention and his campaigning was likely deliberately weak, shooting for the role of opposition rather than government.

It also didn't help that the people for whom Labour wasn't Left Wing Enough still didn't turn out. They still voted Green or didn't vote at all.

To the party itself, though, the message was clear. They'd gone leftward, and it had backfired spectacularly.

Corbyn promptly fucked off at long last and was replaced by Starmer, who is, as expected, another milquetoast neoliberal in most regards. And now, with the polls open for the 2024 election, and Starmer projected to win by such a massive margin that the term "Supermajority" has been thrown around like it's an inevitability, Labour has been engaging in what's been called a "purge" of its leftmost members, with most of Corbyn's base, including Corbyn himself, being barred from running as Labour candidates and instead having to run as independents.

Now, that might horrify you as a leftist, but to them, it's a course-correction. Corbyn and co. represent an era of failure for the party, where a leftward lean cost them two elections.

To swing back around to American politics, if the Democrats lose because of voter apathy, they aren't going to take it as a sign that they need to appeal to the left. They're going to take it as a sign that their appeal wasn't broad enough and they need more outreach to right-wingers.

They already lost in part due to voter apathy in 2016, they didn't move left to compensate. They found the Most Neoliberal Average Establishment Guy they could, rallied behind him, and it partially paid off for them. They at least won.

You want a more leftist Democrat party? Not voting isn't going to get you that. In fact, it will most likely have the exact opposite effect.

[thedreadvampy]

absolutely sucks shit when people are like HOW DARE YOU SUGGEST PUTTING ANY CONDITIONS ON YOUR VOTE as if. the constant shift right doesn't have to do with the belief in major parties that they're owed votes by default on account of not being the other guy.

like they're going to ignore the public's wishes either way but fuck, you don't have to make it that easy for them. literally the second they get in. oh pwetty pwease Mr Biden can you wespect basic human wights? don't worry sir you'll still get my vote if not but I thought I'd ask nicely!!!!

hold their fucking feet to the fire dude. make it clear that your vote is conditional on them listening to the public on the clear and vital points.

(btw 'refusing to vote for Clinton is how Trump got in' no it literally is not. please remember that Trump lost the popular vote anyway and only got in because your country has a weird fucked up system where states are allowed to ignore how their constituents vote.)

(Refusing to vote New Labour after the Iraq War is how the Tories got in over here. Kinda. because what actually happened was we had the first hung parliament since 1979, and then the Lib Dems sold the country up the river for some minor concessions. and then Labour spent the next 10 years actively kneecapping itself by painting its own leadership as a bigger threat than the Tories, and when they had a leftist leading them they still brought the Tories to a hung parliament again in 2017.)

(anyway the point is you all seem to have a majorly inflated sense of how much democracy is involved in elections. Ultimately in cases where the race is close-run it is not the electorate that decide, it's like 100 people in positions of high power, be it the electoral college, the party leadership, or otherwise.)

(none of which is to say your vote is useless. your vote is valuable to politicians. there's a limit to how much they can get away with ignoring the public. but. because your vote is valuable, it's only useful as leverage if there's a possibility you might not give them it. and let's be clear, people WILL change direction if they're worried about losing votes. but unless you're offering them massive funding, then the only reason your opinion would carry any weight is if there's a possibility of your vote being withheld. if you stand up and say VOTE BLUE NO MATTER WHO YOU'VE GOT MY VOTE WHATEVER HAPPENS then like. You might as well just say 'ignore me, pay attention to those guys who might not vote for you'.)

if the centre and the left's votes are vocally assured regardless of the party's policy or stance, then the party will move right. bc they've already got you, so it's time to court the undecideds. YOU HAVE TO MAKE IT NECESSARY TO A POLITICIAN'S SUCCESS TO LISTEN TO WHAT YOU WANT. they don't care. you have to use what little leverage you have, your vote, to make them care. it's the only form of accountability we can bring about that doesn't involve, like, storming the winter palace 🤷‍♀️

[thoughtlessarse]

A Labour government under Keir Starmer will fail to maximise the UK’s economic growth unless it takes the country back into the European Union’s single market and customs union, leading economists and diplomats have said. The warnings come as an Opinium poll for the Observer finds that 56% of voters now believe Brexit has been bad for the UK economy as a whole, compared with just 12% who believe it has been economically beneficial. Some 62% of people questioned also believe Brexit has contributed to higher prices in shops, against 8% who think that it has had the opposite effect. With less than two weeks to go until polling day Labour has increased its overall lead to 20 points over the Conservatives and is firmly on course for a large Commons majority. But there is increasing pressure on Starmer and the shadow chancellor, Rachel Reeves, to spell out how they plan to deliver on their manifesto pledge of securing the highest sustained economic growth of any G7 country while keeping within tight fiscal rules, and while post-Brexit barriers to trade remain in place between the UK and EU. The Office for Budget Responsibility says UK GDP will be around 4% lower every year than it would have been had we remained inside the EU. Starmer insisted while campaigning in south London that On Saturday he would not rejoin the bloc either in the short or longer term. “We are not rejoining the EU, we are not rejoining the single market or the customs union,” the Labour leader said. Asked if he would ever reconsider this, he added: “No. It isn’t our plan, it never has been. I’ve never said that as leader of the Labour party and it is not in our manifesto.”

continue reading

Nope, he's never said it, indeed rarely mentions brexit or its effects. Neither do the Tories. None of their budget policies add up, either. There's a huge deficit, but they're talking about tax cuts. Public services are going to shit, but there will be no money to make things better despite the lofty promises. The Tories are so desperate it's only a matter of time before they start offering free second-hand fossil fuelled cars because nobody's horny for their attacks on (U)LEZ zones and traffic-calming measure.

Reform UK would make the UK Airstrip One, more so than it already is. If the two main parties economic policies are shit, Reform's are a complete work of fiction. Tons of tax cuts mainly for big business would actively make public services much, much worse. They would also cancel any attempt to reach net-zero. Needless to say, immigration would be very restricted, probably to WASP countries.

The only UK-wide party that specifically mentions “brentrance,” (my word, not theirs) is the Lib-Dems.

[ganymedeaguspluto]

every election we the Online Left have the same conversation about voting, and whether we should vote, so i'm going to lay out my thoughts on it and then link here next time i get into a fight. gonna try to positively present the most compelling reasons behind voting, and then the most compelling reasons why not to, and then just for fun i'm gonna say why one of the common reasons given for not voting is bad and people should stop using it.

full disclosure: i'm an anarchist, and i choose not to vote in most elections. i have voted in the past once.

here are the most compelling reasons to vote:

1. harm reduction

...which on an abstract level i completely understand. i can only speak for a UK context, but given the threat posed by the Tories and how much damage they would cause by being in power again, i empathise with the "lesser of two evils; we don't like Labour but gotta get the Tories out" mentality. it makes sense, and while i dont think that "vote for the marginally less evil party to get the very evil party out" is a particularly good way to do politics, i understand the impulse.

2. representation in government

having more trans or disabled MPs, or MPs of colour, would be cool. this is undeniable. having these voices in our houses of power might even mean that the UK might become less horribly transphobic, disablist, or racist. might

3. more power to small/fringe left parties

okay, dont vote for a big party like Labour: instead, you should vote for the Socialists! ignoring that basically every trotskyist/communist organisation in the UK is practically a cult and some people have legit trauma from their past membership, more voice to small left parties would theoretically be a good thing: when the SSP had representation in the Scottish Parliament they got free prescriptions. that's cool. it doesnt intersect very well with point #1, but that's okay.

4. spoil your ballot

i've done this before and it was fun. i wrote "trans liberation now!" on my ballot paper and submitted it. it was cool. i felt very sexy leaving my booth

most compelling reasons not to vote

1. is it harm reduction tho, really?

take a second with me and look at the negatives of both major parties. the Labour party are, as well as the Tories, a party of political transphobia, of supporting the ongoing genocide in Gaza, of institutional racism, of increased policing, and market-friendly, austerity producing policies. i'm not saying that they're equally as bad, but for the most marginalised in our society, there is no harm reduction, merely a change of ribbon. to a trans woman fired from her workplace or harassed out of a bathroom, or a black teenager beat up by police, or the people of Gaza, does it matter whether the government is red or blue? the effect is the same

2. a vote for any party is a vote against my existence

i'm transgender. i'm not going to vote for a party that is either actively transphobic or would be willing to sell out their commitment to trans people at the faintest whiff of power. i'm actually offended that someone would ask me to hold my nose and vote against my own existence. unfortunately this leaves me with the Lib Dems, who i havent forgiven for 2010 yet

3. fuck the state

this only appeals to anarchists, but if you dont think the state should exist imo you shouldnt actively be lending it legitimacy by participating in its power-rituals

4. more power to small/fringe left parties

my options here are the cult, the Transphobia Party, the Antisemitism Party, or the Transphobic and Antisemitic Cult (George Galloway's latest venture). the fringe statist left suuuuuuucks. fuck those guys

5. there are better things to do with your time

there will most likely be evictions on election day. go prevent those from taking place. then go talk and cook with your neighbours, set up an employee-only groupchat at work, donate to a food bank, write a poem, and bulk order HRT with your trans friends. refuse to delegate care to someone else and take it into your own hands: be impactful and helpful to yourself and those around you - it does a lot more than voting will. maybe once you've done all that then you can go cast a ballot if you really want to

bad reasons not to vote

1. the parties are the same!

no they're not. both are bad; one is worse. not a reason to vote - if you vote Labour you aren't an ally to trans people - but this is a weak argument

conclusion

i dont vote, or at least won't in 2024. i dont think that "harm reduction" is a compelling enough reason to cast a ballot against myself and my communities, and also amn't a big fan of the state. rant over: im going to sleep

[dogsliampaynedoesntinstagram]

What is it about the Pilates thing that seems incompatible with, as you say, things you used to think were possible re: Harry and gender - that he is presented as a man, that he perhaps signed off on it without knowing what it said, or that he is seemingly comfortable with misogyny? (Or am I missing something?)

I don’t see the first thing as meaningful info about his gender - he knows the world sees him as man, and going along with this is perfectly compatible with closeted trans experience. As for the second thing - I don’t think it follows that a hypothetically trans Harry would necessarily be extra-sensitive to how his gender is portrayed. Again: he knows the world sees him as a man. I can see him going along with this without feeling the need to know the exact details of how it’s playing out.

If he Did know what it said, I also don’t see this as incompatible with hypothetical transness - we know his orientation toward power and limited worldview. As I think you’ve said in the past, he might see gender as a thing for himself, not for others. There exist trans people who aren’t particularly concerned with collective liberation (and it’s likely much easier for this to happen for a person with his privilege)

……anyway, in writing all this I’ve realized that it feels important to me that I defend hypothetically trans Harry, and that that probably has a lot more to do with me than it does real life Harry Styles. Which is probably the case for a lot of people, and is probably the case for lots of things in fandom beyond gender theories.

Thanks for your thoughts anon - I think they're really interesting and worth engaging with.

First of all, the aspect of the video that had most impact on how I saw Harry was none of those things you listed. The video and caption promoted both the gender binary (men are the opposite of women) and also a very narrow version of masculinity - it's that specific combo - rather than a wider more generalised misogyny

But also when I said "I think that lots of things that I thought were possible before that was posted, don’t seem possible now." I meant - I wasn't using as a euphemism for saying something far more specific. You seem to have understood it as me saying 'Harry can't be trans', which is not what I meant.

The way I see it is that there are lots of possible Harry's that are created by the gaps in what we know. To give an example, I think it's possible that Harry voted Labour or Lib Dems in the 2017 election, and that he voted Labour Lib Dems or didn't vote in the 2019 election. If he said something like 'I've only voted Labour' some of the possible Harry's would disappear.

I totally agree with everything you say about trans people having a wide range of views and not necessarily being committed to liberation. (One of my favourite responses to Harry's dumbass My Policeman comment was a gay London socialist who was basically 'this doesn't show he's straight lots of gay men have terrible opinions about cinema' - but with a strong subtext of - 'I know that he's not straight because I have access to gossip you don't').

I think it's useful to think about maybe two axes of this (there are more - but these are I think significant when it comes to Harry). One is whether or not you think it's possible for someone to transition away from the gender they were assigned at birth - and the other is the legitimacy of the gender binary - both the idea that men and women are opposites, and a narrow definition of both. So obviously you can and do get trans men and trans women who actually have no problem with the gender binary, the issue for them is how they are seen within that binary. My impression is that it's far less likely for a non-binary person to have no problem with with the idea that men and women are opposites and that the gender binary is legitimate. I'm not saying it's impossible - I'm sure there's lots I don't know and people work in all sorts of ways - but I think it's much less likely.

When it comes to the possibilities with Harry, the points that were significant were that he is seen as a man and it is clear that femininity is pretty meaningful to him and also that he's totally comfortable requiring people who work for him to follow a gendered dress code. The new information we've got with this video is that he is comfortable promoting the gender binary, and also him personally and his body as a pinnacle of masculinity.

I think that particularly combination is far more likely in a cis-man than a trans person. Or to put it another why - when I watched that clip a whole lot of possible Harrys disappeared from my imagining - and the possible Harrys that disappeared were far more likely to be trans than cis. Again I'm not saying that he's not trans - just that it seems less likely. But if you disagree with that - or have other thoughts I'd love to hear them.

Finally, I think the last paragraph is very wise and true.

[itistimetodisappear]

i know yall are saying go vote but like god there are like no good options here,, again

[thelastofthenumenoreans]

Brief summary from a Midlander before we get Elanor's much better writeup: The scale of this loss so far has been incredible. Their one front they've held has been the Police and Crime Commissioners, because in another fantastic anti-democratic move yon Tory Cunts have changed those from STV to FPTP voting, so the Lib Dem/Labour split who each would probably put the other down second has let the Tories keep a lot of those. The other problem with the PCC elections has been the incredibly low voter turnout - around 32% in some places. Their only big win so far has been the Tees Valley mayor, who was very happy to tell sky news that he didn't care who was prime minister, and who has, along with Andy Street (the west midlands' current mayor and conservative candidate, perhaps even the most likely conservative to do something good for the world(though that is saying a lot)) done his best to distance himself from the conservative party. Despite this, they're touting this as a huge win, with photo ops with Sunak 'n all. The most depressing bit of this whole fuckabout has been the continued platforming of Reform by the BBC and ignoring the Greens, when the former (the fuckwits who were UKIP) have only 2 councillors (both new) and the latter (probably the most moral party in existence even if their nuclear stance is insane) have 159 (gained 65). The country wants environmental action and yet they want to pretend like we want to be racist fucks. Somebody needs to punch Richard Tice on question time one of these days. The Cunts, by the end of day Friday have gone down by 448 of their original 927 councillors. The more important piece is that this leaves them in control of almost nothing - the majority of our councils here are spread between 15-30 wards. In some they have been eliminated, in most they have lost control, and in only a few have they gained anything.

Hope yins have had a good'un. We wait for Saturday now, to see who's won the London and West Midlands mayoral races. Any smart money is on Khan for London again, because the Tories have made the decision to run a racist islamophobe.

Is there going to be an update on the Clown Show soon, as the circus is winding up to leave town, and all the clowns are eager to spray each other with the flowers in their buttonholes in hope of becoming clown in chief?

Lol, innit tho

I've had a few requests, and the answer is 'Maybe, but it's unlikely until Tuesday at the earliest.' The reason being, all I do is write this shit up. The one who researches and makes the timelines is Steff, and he is off this weekend in Machynlleth Comedy Festival and therefore too busy in his job as a more literal clown than the elected politicians of this land.

(And then it's whether or not it's still relevant. He did send me a timeline about three weeks ago, but I was so busy in work I didn't have time to write up, so now it's probably uninteresting for Tumblr release. This may happen after Machynlleth as well.)

But we'll see! At 1.30 this afternoon the results showed the Tories had lost half their councillors trololol so there's a lil spoiler for you all, anyway

[sortyourlifeoutmate]

FPTP drives me up the fucking wall.

Like, on paper 'Most votes wins' looks like its perfectly sensible but the instant you expose it to the harsh light of reality it incinerates. Yet they still carry around this bucket of ashes and proclaim democracy, fuckers.

(As a slightly related thing I remember ages ago when they were pushing austerity (what a winner!) and some dickhead said that the finances of a country are like the finances of a household, so you need to cut back when money is tight. No! Wrong! So wrong! But it feels right to some people because money, right?)

A slim majority of the minority who bothered to (or were allowed to) vote is not a fucking mandate. That's you having a system where you've got dug in like a fucking tick.

Years back they tried that referendum to get AV in and that was always going to be a fucking non-starter and they did a shitty job of selling it, too. So we're stuck with the 'fair' system where the 'winner' wins and gets to draw lines on how to win in future. Fuckers.

So as ever we're here, trapped, watching Labour and the Tories basically just swapping spit back and forth, occasionally maybe letting in the Lib Dems for a little dribble sharing. At the national level at least. At the local level? Maybe you'll get a nice council. Who'll then get the shaft from London because they're the wrong party.

Just, shit, it's so obviously fucking stupid it boils me alive in my own piss. And the fact that they can just redraw electoral boundaries and that's apparently okay is even worse.

And that's not even getting into the related - slightly - sideshow of MP's getting fucking lobbied and sometimes whole second consultancy jobs from the private sector and apparently not seeing an issue with that.

Fuck.

Hey, it's coming up on the 200th anniversary of the reform act. You've got a decade to unfuck yourselves you torpid shitbags. Maybe sit down and ponder why everyone seems so sour on democracy these days. Maybe because you've cocked it up with your complacent fuckery? Just an idea.

...I know the original post was about America, I just reflex on FPTP. It annoys me. I think it's emblematic.

I'm begging y'all to understand this:

The U.S. mostly has a first-past-the-post voting system. The candidate with the most votes wins and there are no prizes for second place. If a district goes 49% Democratic and 51% Republican, the Republicans win the district

This makes a two party system almost inevitable because in a system with more than two parties, the instant one party gets the support of over a third of the population, the other parties cannot compete unless they join forces

And a two party system means, crucially, that if you want to get more voters, there are only two ways to get them:

Get more people to vote that ordinarily wouldn't vote at all.

Take voters from the other party.

That's it.

The reason Democrats are "not radical enough" is that, if they can't turn non-voters into voters, to get more people to vote Democratic, they have to appeal to Republicans enough to convince them to change sides. There's nowhere else to get people from.

The reason the country seems to "skew" Republican over time is not because of Democrats caving to goalpost moving, it's because of gerrymandering and our system prioritizing land area over people's votes

If 51% of voters in my district vote Republican, it's a republican district. If 51% of districts are Republican districts, the state is a "red state." That state can end up with all republican representatives even if there are barely more Republicans than Democrats

Being more spread out makes it easier for Republicans to dominate districts, too. It's like the land is voting instead of the people.

[trashcapableofsentience]

The countries is split up into ~600 constituencies that have the same amount of people of age to vote living there. I think it's either 100,000 or 500,000 but cannae remember. There is a selection of candidates in each constituencies who are all individuals. Most often, they belong to a party, but independent people have run before. When someone gets elected for that constituency, they are now an MP (member of Parliament) and have a 'seat' in the House of Commons (the part of Parliament where elected people decide and debate on different issues - sort of like what I understand of Congress. We also have a sort of Senate - the House of Lords. They're there mainly for checks and balances, but because they're not elected, most are nervous about whether they should exist in a democracy). There are ~600 seats (one per constituency) and the party with the majority of seats (over half) is now the government, with the party leader becoming Prime Minister. If they don't have a majority (under half), they have to join up with another party to fill the quota (this is called a coalition). For example, in the 2000s, the Conservatives (they're also called Tories) won but had to join with the Liberal Democrats (also called Lib Dems) in a coalition to create a majority government. The party with the second largest amount of seats becomes the shadow government - that's why you hear things like shadow chancellor, shadow minister, so on. They advise their counterpart on their job but don't actually do it. The government and shadow government are traditionally the Tories and Labour because they're the two left and right or red vs blue thing. However, there are other parties that frequently get seats - like the independent candidates and Lib Dems I mentioned earlier. These include the Green Party, the SNP (Scottish National Party), UKIP (UK Independence Party), and, more recently, the Brexit Party headed by ex-UKIP party leader Nigel Farage. Because of this, the UK is not a two party system and that's the reason why coalitions are needed. If they don't have coalitions, a 'hung Parliament' is created where there aren't enough MPs on either side to pass bills definitively. We're currently in a hung Parliament, which is why Boris Johnson called for a snap election.

That's a general election.

We also have a local election where we vote for the local council that receives money and decides how to spend it (eg libraries, roads, bin collecting, etc) but I don't know much about that.

So I know that this might be a ridiculous question, but I’m a political science major in America and I’m LIVING for the discourse. You said that you vote for a party to win an election? How does that work exactly? Over here, we vote for an individual candidate, and sometimes the party they claim doesn’t matter. Do you also vote for individuals, or does the party decide which member represents a region?

good question! we also vote for individuals