Nobody Cares about Britain

[Beebo Brink]

General election live updates: Voting for the first time? We're answering your questions on issues you care about

Join us as we look at the dos and don’ts of polling day - three days before millions of you turn out to vote.

www.bbc.co.uk

Ummm.... he's just now figuring this out? How is that even possible?

 

[Tirellia]

It's worth watching the rest of the series. You don't need to know anything about British politics, just watch it for the rants.

 

[Bartholomew Gallacher]

Most polls are predicting a victory of Labour at the upcoming general election 4th of July. If becoming true this would mean the days of Rishi Sunak would be over, and Keir Starmer becoming the next PM.

General election 2024 poll tracker: How do the parties compare?

How do people say they will vote in the UK general election? Our poll tracker measures the trends.

www.bbc.com

 

[Tigger]

15-25% of the vote still heading to the Tories. I want to grab some of these people, shake them warmly by the throat and demand "BUT WHY??????"

 

[Soen Eber]

It's worth watching the rest of the series. You don't need to know anything about British politics, just watch it for the rants.

But they look FABULOUS!

 

[Tirellia]

15-25% of the vote still heading to the Tories. I want to grab some of these people, shake them warmly by the throat and demand "BUT WHY??????"

Because there needs to be an opposition. If you don't want to vote Labour for one of many good reasons, what's the choice? You vote Conservative or Liberal Democrat. Some people might have a good local Independent. Mostly though there are horrid fringe groups like Reform, Galloway's traitors, Green or regional bigots like SNP, Plaid Cymru or the assortment of sectarian loons in Northern Ireland.

 

[Sid]

15-25% of the vote still heading to the Tories. I want to grab some of these people, shake them warmly by the throat and demand "BUT WHY??????"

Why are around 45% of the US citizens still considering to vote for Trump?
Why is Le Pen's party winning the elections in France?
Why do we have a government now in The Netherlands with the PVV from Wilders as the biggest party?

Stupidity is a common flavor these days.

 

[Tigger]

Because there needs to be an opposition. If you don't want to vote Labour for one of many good reasons, what's the choice? You vote Conservative or Liberal Democrat. Some people might have a good local Independent. Mostly though there are horrid fringe groups like Reform, Galloway's traitors, Green or regional bigots like SNP, Plaid Cymru or the assortment of sectarian loons in Northern Ireland.

I've voted Green before so I'm part of the horrid fringe and, oh hey look at that, I'm a regional bigot too! Thanks I'll wear those badges happily. I will be voting for my Plaid Cymru candidate. Weird huh, given I'm English, but so is she.

A review of her time as an MP shows almost nothing I object to. A rare experience for someone who's previous MP was Alok Sharma. Plaid Cymru is also pro-EU, which I like. Id be happy seeing the regional nations independent and part of the EU, they'd have more of a voice in the EU than they have in the UK. I got to see just how much contempt Westminster (under the Tories) has for the regional governments during the pandemic it gives me a lot of sympathy for their position. England can stay isolationist and live on delusions of significance derived from ancient history and ahistorical fantasies of a dead empire if it wants to.

So, I'm satisfied with the work they do, I don't particularly object to their long term goals and I have zero intention of letting a tory slide in by splitting the left wing vote.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

I've voted Green before so I'm part of the horrid fringe and, oh hey look at that, I'm a regional bigot too! Thanks I'll wear those badges happily. I will be voting for my Plaid Cymru candidate. Weird huh, given I'm English, but so is she.

A review of her time as an MP shows almost nothing I object to. A rare experience for someone who's previous MP was Alok Sharma. Plaid Cymru is also pro-EU, which I like. Id be happy seeing the regional nations independent and part of the EU, they'd have more of a voice in the EU than they have in the UK. I got to see just how much contempt Westminster (under the Tories) has for the regional governments during the pandemic it gives me a lot of sympathy for their position. England can stay isolationist and live on delusions of significance derived from ancient history and ahistorical fantasies of a dead empire if it wants to.

So, I'm satisfied with the work they do, I don't particularly object to their long term goals and I have zero intention of letting a tory slide in by splitting the left wing vote.

I don't have a problem with Plaid as a left-of-centre alternative to Labour -- even though I'm a long-time member of the Labour Party, I'm also from the East Midlands/South Yorkshire borders, and I accept Plaid are a completely different kettle of fish from the English Nationalists who appear in English Labour strongholds where there's no realistic opposition. I'd have no difficulty voting for Plaid to keep the Tories out, either.

However, I fear the economic case for an independent Wales as part of the EU is even more fanciful than that for an independent Scotland, and for much the same reasons -- where do you get the money from to run the country, and how do you cope with a hard customs barrier between England and Wales, similar to that between the UK and France?

ETA: The Greens seem, on paper, to have some decent ideas, but I'm afraid that, in practice, they've, along with George Galloway's latest party, become a refuge for left antisemites now the Labour Party is no longer as hospitable to them as it was under its previous leadership.

Green Party candidates accused of supporting 'antisemitic slurs'

The Board of Deputies of British Jews calls on the party to remove three candidates

inews.co.uk

Greens apologise following “Happy Yom Kippur” blunder - Campaign Against Antisemitism

The Green Party has apologised after a post was published on one of its local branches’ social media pages wishing people a “Happy Yom Kippur”. The post, published on the Party’s Brighton and Hove X account, also featured a chanukiah, a nine-branched candelabrum used during the Jewish festival...

antisemitism.org

 

[Innula Zenovka]

 

[Beebo Brink]

Disastrous fruit and vegetable crops must be ‘wake-up call’ for UK, say farmers | Farming | The Guardian

UK fruit and vegetable production has plummeted as farms have been hit by extreme weather.

The country suffered the wettest 18 months since records began across the 2023-24 growing year, leaving soil waterlogged and some farms totally underwater. The impact on harvests has been disastrous. Data from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs shows that year-on-year vegetable yields decreased by 4.9% to 2.2m tonnes in 2023, and the production volumes of fruit decreased by 12% to 585,000 tonnes.

 

[Tigger]

I don't have a problem with Plaid as a left-of-centre alternative to Labour -- even though I'm a long-time member of the Labour Party, I'm also from the East Midlands/South Yorkshire borders, and I accept Plaid are a completely different kettle of fish from the English Nationalists who appear in English Labour strongholds where there's no realistic opposition. I'd have no difficulty voting for Plaid to keep the Tories out, either.

However, I fear the economic case for an independent Wales as part of the EU is even more fanciful than that for an independent Scotland, and for much the same reasons -- where do you get the money from to run the country, and how do you cope with a hard customs barrier between England and Wales, similar to that between the UK and France?

ETA: The Greens seem, on paper, to have some decent ideas, but I'm afraid that, in practice, they've, along with George Galloway's latest party, become a refuge for left antisemites now the Labour Party is no longer as hospitable to them as it was under its previous leadership.

Green Party candidates accused of supporting 'antisemitic slurs'

The Board of Deputies of British Jews calls on the party to remove three candidates

inews.co.uk

Greens apologise following “Happy Yom Kippur” blunder - Campaign Against Antisemitism

The Green Party has apologised after a post was published on one of its local branches’ social media pages wishing people a “Happy Yom Kippur”. The post, published on the Party’s Brighton and Hove X account, also featured a chanukiah, a nine-branched candelabrum used during the Jewish festival...

antisemitism.org

I can't say Ive made a study of the economic case for independence but there is a strong idealogical case for it. Wales, and more so Scotland, are far more left of centre than England but have right wing governments imposed on them by the sheer mass of England.

There is a message that voting green should send to whoever wins: The environment matters and people expect you to damn well take some action. Climate collapse remains the single greatest threat to everyone and still we see very little beyond token action. Protests should also be sending that message but they have been criminalised.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

I can't say Ive made a study of the economic case for independence but there is a strong ideological case for it. Wales, and more so Scotland, are far more left of centre than England but have right wing governments imposed on them by the sheer mass of England.

But the problem is that an independent Wales would somehow have to fund itself, from a combination of taxation and borrowing. That means finding the money for everything -- schools, pensions, unemployment benefit, hospitals and the Health Service, roads, agricultural subsidies, police and emergency services, and so on -- as well as the bureaucracy necessary to support them, and also it would need to recruit and pay for its own civil service, administering locally what's currently done nationally in the UK

At the moment, the UK apparently spends some £4,300 more per person in Wales each year than it collects in revenues, more than anywhere else in the UK than Northern Ireland. That money would have to be come from somewhere, just to keep things as they are.

There is a message that voting green should send to whoever wins: The environment matters and people expect you to damn well take some action. Climate collapse remains the single greatest threat to everyone and still we see very little beyond token action. Protests should also be sending that message but they have been criminalised.

What do you say should happen if -- as I suspect she may well do if Labour win today -- Rachel Reeves raises UK fuel duty for the first time since 2010 (it was reduced in 2022) and drivers and hauliers respond as they did in 2000, with the support of the Conservative Party, with blockades and slow-moving convoys on major roads?

Prosecute them using the laws introduced by the Conservatives to deal with Just Stop Oil, or repeal the laws and let both sides get on with it?

 

[Soen Eber]

Refreshingly autobiographical ;P

 

[Innula Zenovka]

This, while a landslide victory in anyone's terms, is a somewhat smaller majority than the MRP polls were predicting. It's difficult because the situation is so unprecedented none of the polling companies have been too sure what set of assumptions to use. Anyway, we'll know in a few hours, but it's looking good.

 

[Free]

 

[Innula Zenovka]

We're now on our fourth Prime Minister in less than two years! Keir Starmer should last a bit longer than his immediate predecessors, however.

Because of our first past the post system, the outcome doesn't reflect the votes cast -- Labour's overall vote was up by only 1.4% on 2019, when the Conservatives won a convincing majority, and 5% less than the party achieved in 2017 under Jeremy Corbyn, which resulted in a hung parliament with the Conservatives as the largest single party.

This time, though, the Labour and Lib Dem votes were far more efficiently distributed than they were in previous years, with both parties' supporters backing the candidate most likely to defeat the Conservatives in their area. Also the SNP vote in Scotland has collapsed, with a 17% shift to Labour resulting in the SNP losing 38 seats, mostly to Labour.

Labour's former leader, Jeremy Corbyn, narrowly held Islington North as an independent, and elsewhere Labour lost 4 seats to pro-Palestinian independents. The Greens won 4 seats, as did Nigel Farage's proto-MAGA Reform Party, and the LibDems had a huge success, increasing their representation from 8 seats to 71, with 3,487,568 votes overall as compared to Reform's 4,072,947 votes. It will be interesting to see if the LibDems retain their enthusiasm for Proportional Representation now that First Past the Post is benefiting them.

General election: Who won the popular vote? A breakdown of the main parties

Anyway, the Tories are out, at last, and Keir Starmer is our new Prime Minister.

 

[Chin Rey]

Anyway, we'll know in a few hours, but it's looking good.

Even better than the exit poll suggested. The only significant downside is that the Tories managed to capture the position as the official opposition with a good margin. For a while it looked like the Lib Dems had a chance to beat them but I suppose that was too much to hope for.

One very interesting change is that Sin Fein is now the biggest party in Northern Ireland after DUP lost three seats. It won't make any difference from a practical point of view but the symbolic implication is huge and symbolism matters a lot in the NOrthern Irish conflict.

 

[Innula Zenovka]

Almost complete results (missing 6)

https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-10009/

 

[Innula Zenovka]