How Labour lost my vote.

[Taxloss]

"I had a feeling there might be a straw that would break the camel's back and end my support for the Labour party. I wasn't certain what that straw might be. As I have said before, Iraq was not quite enough to end my support. But it seems civil liberties - or rather, the government's insane scrapping of them - is."

The rest here: http://taxloss.blogspot.com/2005/02/sedgemore-doctrine.html

My doubts: http://taxloss.blogspot.com/2005/01/lib-dem-thing.html

[roguevalley]

1. who are you going to vote for? British politics is fascinating.

[Taxloss]

2. I'll be voting for the Greens.

The fact is that my vote is irrelevant wherever I place it since I live in a "Safe Seat". And a Tory safe seat at that. But that means I can register my protest without fear of contributing to a Tory victory.

Respect is just Veritas for the Left - a vanity project.

I'm strangely flattered that you find British politics fascinating; I find American politics fascinating, that's why I'm here.

[mr blur]

5. In that sense my vote is irrelevent too,

but after a lifetime of voting Labour - and that's going back to times when there WAS a Labour Party worthy of the name - I still find it hard to think of voting any other way. Which doesn't mean that I won't, just that it feels like some kind of betrayal of... something. Of course, if Labour is betraying us then they don't deserve our support.

[Taxloss]

6. I don't know if you read the blog posts appended to the OP

but they dealt with my sense of betrayal. I too am a lifelong Labour supporter; but I cannot back them this election. This may well create trouble with my parents.

[ikri]

8. I'm a born and bred Socialist yet I've never voted Labour

The 1997 election was the first that I was eligible to vote in. Even then I could see what was happening to the Labour party. They'd abandoned their traditional principles (nationalization of the railways, etc.) in favour of "the middle way" or "the daily mail way" under the misapprehension that they needed to go that way to get rid of the Tories. To be honest, most people here would have voted for a tub of lard ahead of another 5 years of Tory fuck ups.

Since that "historical" win the Labour party Gordon Brown has done many good things for this country but they've never used the power they have to make a genuine difference to the country. Most of what they've done has been to fix the Tory party's mess.

While Labour has been cruising along doing OK the Tory party has become a joke. Every time they look to a new leader and new direction instead of finding a leader who could actually win them an election (Ken Clark, Portaloo) they've looked for the most right-wing unelectable idiot they have in their ranks and followed their inane policies trying to rival UKIP/BNP/Referendum Party rather than rival the Labour government.

The Lib Dems aren't much better than the Tories. They consistently fail to get the right message over when it matters. More often it looks like they're trying to jump on whichever political bandwagon is flying around at the time.

The Labour party seems to think that their poll ratings are due to their policies. They're not. They have better poll ratings than the other parties because the other parties either fail to get the message across or the message that the do get across is abhorrent to a large proportion of the population.

I really have no idea how I'm going to vote in the upcoming election, I only know it won't be for Labour or the Tories.

[Anarcho-Socialist]

3. Welcome to the U.K. forum

:hi:

[non sociopath skin]

4. Welcome, roguevalley.

Yes, I guess British politics at the moment is fascinating - in the way that pondlife is fascinating - but I have to say that I almost envy the clear choice you guys had last November.

The nearest thing we have to John Kerry, Gordon Brown, isn't an option ...

The Skin

[sweetheart]

7. Blair has gone off the track

Its official, after 8 years of labour government, social mobility has
dropped... it seems this new labour is a foul evil cousin to the
good stuff. Declining social mobility, corporate coziness and a batty
leader who is a breathtaking liability.... there is serious concern that
blair will be remembered in history for starting an illegal war, getting
bush re-elected, and getting the torys elected as his final act as
conservative prime minister.

That they've undermined Brown's participation in this campaign only
further suggests that blair is short on intelligence and long on
political suicide. Sack the bastard before its too late.