Nice article in the Spectator about voting for 'none':

https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2019/1...-of-the-above/

The only thing left for people like me is tactical voting but I don't like either of the parties who are vying for the top position in my constituency. It's stalemate.

Centrist moderates are disenfranchised. There's no one who represents their views, but by spoiling your paper, you're just giving the extremists more of a say. However unsatisfactory, picking the least bad option, is still IMO the least bad option, even though I hate the fact that my vote will be portrayed as "support" after the election is over, when in reality it is anything but.

Labour have gone way too far left. The Cons are too far right,
and the liberals, who would have been a safe vote under these circumstances in the past, have just gone insane!


BTW, what happens in the Oz scheme if "None of the above" wins?

As I've said before, we need proportional representation here in the UK, until that happens, things can only get worse.

And this is why we're not in a democracy: it's first past the post, and then the winning party can do whatever they like once they're in. It's little more than political coin-pushing.

A spoilt ballot helps the party most likely to gain the majority, which last time I checked was the Conservatives.

So no surprise it's being suggested by The Spectator - the company who employed Boris Johnson as editor.


I don't like any of the parties full stop, but the Tories are without question the worst of the lot.

Anyone who agrees should check https://www.tactical.vote/all

+1

My "tactical" vote is inline with how I will vote.

I will be voting, first and foremost, to uproot our pillock of an MP from his seat.

No, there's certainly a question there, but it's telling that we're arguing who is worst and not who is best.

These exit poll results are crazy.

Tory: 368
Labour: 191

We'll see in the coming hours but that's much bigger than I expected, for one.

Not at all unexpected. If you control the media and repeat lies enough times...

If you have an electoral system which favours, the rich and privileged in affluent small towns and villages, over the multitudes of the not so well off living in the larger towns and cities...

I am somewhat vainly hoping that those previously complaining of BBC bias have also noted the obvious bias from a certain political broadcaster with links to the Spectator, Telegraph and historic connections with News Corp and Daily Mail...

The one lesson learned might be that by avoiding lots of media debates and hiding away helps - let the others destroy themselves. Media debates only work for all if everyone is present, otherwise the opposition are arguing amongst themselves - clever tactics by Boris.

My constituency (overall) voted remain in the referendum, but apparently has a 99+% chance of remaining conservative. That seems interesting - it means that the majority disagree with them on their Brexit stance, but will still vote for them, therefore expecting Brexit... So confused about the public more than anything...

Now do you believe me when I say that the political landscape in the UK has changed?

@Cynwulf: there has been a conservative bias in the press since I was a child. The BBC too has always been on the side of the establishment. But that did not make people in Darlington, Bolsover and Stoke vote Tory! So why are they suddenly doing so now?

I think the Brexit Party had a significant part to play in this. Nigel Farage said that his intention was not to run for government and spend the rest of his life in politics but to assist Brexit, and now it's becoming clearer - it seems that the main aim of the BXP [or one of them] was to steal Labour seats by going for the pro-Brexit Labour voters [this is my own theory, so it's open to revision and not all the figures stack up].

Blyth Valley is a good example though. A former mining town which had been red since the '50s. The BXP took 3,000+ votes - if they hadn't existed I imagine those votes would have been split between Con and Lab with maybe a Lab win. They definitely did a lot of harm to the Lib Dems, as the LDs said themselves on Radio 4 this morning when they were hoping for a seismic result in their favour.

Additionally, a lot of former Labour voters didn't want to vote Tory, but they didn't want to vote for Jeremy Corbyn more. For many [myself included], this was an election of lesser evils.

I think it was for most people. Certainly for me. I voted Conservative for the first time in my life in a general election and it certainly wasn't because I have a high opinion of Boris Johnson's honesty! But then Corbyn was lying through his teeth too. There is no way any government could deliver on the kind of promises he was making. It's weird, isn't it: all the year round we are lectured on not falling for scams. "If it seems too good to be true, it is too good to be true." And then election time comes around and we are suddenly supposed to forget all that and believe in magic money trees and God knows what other rubbish.

In any case, any Jew who voted for Corbyn was a turkey voting for Christmas. The Labour party always took the Jewish vote for granted, just as it took Scotland and the North for granted. Now it has lost all three. btw the Labour MP who said that that his party was being "too apologetic" about antisemitism lost his seat too. Good riddance to bad rubbish!

A couple of interesting articles in The Guardian today, one which supports my earlier theory re Farage's role in all this:

The Brexit party folded, but make no mistake: Farage won it for Johnson

An interesting comment from the above article's comment section:

And another article on the reasons why Labour lost. I won't quote the articles but I think they are worth looking at:

Five reasons why Labour lost the election

Reading the comments from you guys about the mistrust of politics (not that it's undeserved), it reminds me of the last federal election here - just without "Brexit".

In relation to the UK election just held, it seems people just didn't like or trust Jeremy Corbyn. I suspect it was probably a number of people who normally voted Labour, who this time around voted for the Conservatives instead that gave them such a big win, and therefore a majority government. This is basically what happened here too, small world - although Labour here WAS expected to win, and ended up losing big time instead. I think GazL put it the best in saying "it's telling how you guys are talking about who's worst rather than who's best" - again, it reminds me of the last federal (and state) election here.

Personally, I'm not a follower in voting for the "lesser of the evils". Why vote for any of them if you can't trust any of them? I don't get the "lesser of the evil" philosophy, I really don't. I only went to the polling booth here because voting is compulsory here, even then, I defaced the ballot paper, then put it in the ballot box right in front of the electoral official. F*** the bastards. None of them deserve my vote - I wouldn't vote for any of them if my life depended on it.