The genetically modified elephants are nice.

right wing voters have made a huge difference by voting for right wing candidates, They have dragged this country dramatically to the right. Meanwhile folk like you sell some line about why we shouldn't vote for left wing candidates.

I assume you realise why you are wrong which is why you resort to such silly nonsense instead of trying to defend your claims.

do you understand that a shattered tory party with 35 MPs means a much higher chance of a radical left wing government in the medium term

i mean you lads never tire of telling us how massively popular all your policies are and yet you never win anything, maybe its down to unbelievably short sighted stupid **** like this

I understand just fine thank you. Will you even admit that those who kept voting for right wing candidates have dragged this country significantly to the right? If so will you accept that voting for left wing candidates can also work?

I still dont know whether you actually support starmers approach or not but if you think he and his ilk are going to adjust to voters they can take for granted then we disagree.

Can you manage to discuss this or shall we just do the silly nonsense?

Ok so we know where you stand now. Sorry I'm not voting for it in the hope that that will somehow transform you into a left winger. I dont hate you - I've never lied about hate tory voters and I dont hate starmer voters either. I do hate the polciies.

Dramatically to the right to the point that you can be arrested if you call a man who thinks he is woman a man in a disrespectful manner, and that the "rightwing" government committed to 0 CO2 emissions nationwide in 2050 (something that not even the left asks for in many European countries).

Oh and you locked down harder and longer than most countries.

So basically in 3 very important topics where the left/right divide is as transparent as possible in the west, the country moved so much to the right , the right took the radical left position.

i like moderates from both blue and red, and it is good for me if the two party system continues forever. on that basis starmer is alright by me despite being boring and having a fat face

yet, i am still irritated that you cant figure out how to vote in your own interest

It seems to irritate you that I'm going to vote in my interest and not yours.

Sorry.

I'm all in favour of elephants, but they appear to have filled in the River Thames, which really isn't on. Also the Palace doesn't have a dome and isn't in that location. It appears to have been swopped for the former New Scotland Yard building, which is now just MPs' offices.

AI generated pics tend to have those biases

The modern left are just as much responsible for pushing people to the right by abandoning the working class in favour of identity politics.

In a two party system where one party sneers at (and many people actively despise) people who drive white vans and hang St George's crosses from their windows, who else could they have voted for?

I agree the name calling highly divisive approach is very good for the right. Importing merican style politcs is disasterous for the left wing and progresives.

I dont think that applies when it comes to policy or positive politcs.

So why do they insist on doing it?

The problem here is who on the left can bring this aspect and not the ID politics? I can only think of Andy Burnham, who has been very quiet of late.

It's easy , it feels like doing something and it's satisfying.

It's tough to do really politics. Policies are hard. So much easier to leave it to the markets and 'manage' the inevitable.

Labour are fairly certain to win the next election by a landslide, but their elitist failure to recognise that most people of all ethnic groups are social conservatives could cause them considerable problems pretty quickly.

I think Starmer does recognise this. He’s been making a conscious effort to appear patriotic and he mostly just tries to avoid culture war stuff. Obviously certain factions within Labour dislike that approach.

All these recent posts illustrate the problem.

If we were had something to say about important policies on issues that actually make a huge difference to peopels lives then that would dominate the conversation. What people call 'the culture war' (and far worse) would pop up occasionally and often dispensed with by moving on to the big policies.

People can't find somewhere decent to live or get heathcare or buses or afford food/heating etc etc etc. That is what we should be talking about but there's nothing to offer.

The problem for the left is that nature abhors a vacuum. In the absence of any important policies on issues that actually make a huge difference to peoples lives, it is going to get filled with lowest common denominator identity politics.

The Green party focus on all these issues. Free busses for under 22s, and £1 travel for those over. Free school meals for all. Better renters protection and a large investment in insulation for housing. Okay, they are never going to gain power, but a vote for them can just as much move the needle for the left as a vote for reform can for the right.

I'll therefore probably vote for the Greens despite their heavy focus on ID politics (e. g., Shahrar Ali wins 'gender critical' court battle against Green Party

Greens clearly have the best policies by an absolute mile.

Meh, let's wait and see for their manifesto.

The environment is by far and away the most important issue for me, and I've voted Green in general elections before, but you can always trust them to include something spectacularly stupid in their manifesto which will drive all of the coverage away from the environment.

Are the greens proposing to cover all the extra free stuff they campaign for mostly with extra taxes, or extra deficit, or both in more or less equal parts?

It doesn't really matter how they plan to fund it as they are not actually going to win power. What matters is the optics of a significant minority endorsing their policies, which will force the major parties to change tack to try and win those votes.

Absolutely

The opposite of a wasted vote

I would not say that altogether. He's still weak on 'what a woman is', which makes him a culture warrior and also makes him look silly and overly metropolitan, and the plan to impose VAT on education in certain schools -- but not in universities, which are also private elitist fee-charging entities -- looks suspiciously like 1970s 'class war', in addition to the fact that the cost of accommodating and educating all those financially gonged-out private-school pupils in the state sector will greatly exceed the potential tax take, and the fact that a wholly state-maintained secondary education sector will itself impose vicious financial elitism according to who can afford to live in the catchment areas of the best schools.

Although he took several years to get there, he has muttered "adult female" at least once in answer to this question. Here is the proof, although it's hard to read with a straight face.

Keir Starmer repeats anti-trans dogwhistle, claiming a woman is an ‘adult female’