Who voted in UK and why is always conservative or labour winning.

Why does it always seem like there's really only 2 parties in the general election and when voting for mayor?

It's always between Convservative and Labour no matter how many other parties participate!

Gotta wonder if all votes are counted or ignored or altered. I mean, for years now many people say they aren't voting Conservative or Labour or aren't voting at all.

Having said this, I did vote for the Conservative MP for Mayor as 1st choice and Sian berry as 2nd choice. Reason for Conservative vote is I didn't want Khan in office anymore so thought I'd lend my vote to conservative as they would most likely win out of the other parties! Didn't want Labour in. General election i will vote for a different party altogether but I'm guessing it will still be the same ol same ol.

a reply to: CrazeeWorld777
I think your last paragraph answers your question.
Things do change. but slowly. A century ago, evrybody was either Conservative or Liberal. Gilbert and Sullican had a song about it.

I'm a (non-resident) US citizen, so I don't pretend to have a grasp on the UK political situation. (Many acquaintances from the UK pretend to understand all the nuances of US politics and they make themselves look like the idiots that they are with their ignorant pontifications.) However, I will ask if at least part of the problem may be the same as in the US; that being that we don't actually have a two-party system, only the illusion of one.

I have long been convinced that the two party dominance is nothing more than a ruse for a single-entity driven monopolistic political machine. The populace is fed the two-party deception to keep alive the illusion of choice and to perpetuate the us-vs-them mentality that keeps people divided and easier to control and manipulate.

The two parties are just two sides of the same coin. Unfortunately, the coin is a plugged nickle and not worth a damn.

a reply to: CrazeeWorld777

Why does it always seem like there's really only 2 parties in the general election and when voting for mayor?

The Lib Dems made themselves irrelevant by being a party who have no idea what democracy actually is , their name breaks the Trades Description act as they showed themselves to be undemocratic , now they've gone off into the wilderness to find themselves so we effectively have a two party system.

Gotta wonder if all votes are counted or ignored or altered.

Nope , the Tories have no opposition and under Boris they did what the majority wanted ... deliver Brexit , Keir Starmer is just another one of them , those who don't listen , so the Labour party are nearly as pointless as the Lib Dems under his leadership.

For Labour to lose Hartlepool buy such a margin is a very bad omen for the Labour party under Keir Starmer.

Picure of Starmer in Hartlepool showing some locals how he can make a Bunny Rabbit with his hands.

At least his friend looks impressed.

a reply to: gortex

There's much to unpick in your post but let's stick to one point.

Delivered Brexit?

One one hand, we are still in a transitional arrangement for customs, still working out what's happening with the fish and don't have a clue how to resolve the Irish question. Oh, and we have nothing beyond the risible "levelling up fund" to replace EU grants to the regions.

On the other, that is all so much noise to many voters. Ironically, it seems to be the people most in favour of Brexit, the people who brush all that aside, who are still fighting Brexit battles.

Politically, economically, socially and conceptually, Brexit is still live and dangerous.

a reply to: Whodathunkdatcheese

Delivered Brexit?

Are we a member of the European Union ?
Are we bound by the European Court ?
Were our hands tied by European bureaucracy before the vaccine roll out ?

The border in the Irish sea is a compromise until an alternative can be implemented or agreed.

a reply to: CrazeeWorld777

That's an interesting question. I have several friends in the UK, Brits, and they havent voted in years. Then again, they live rural, not in the cities. You mentioned Khan. Is he the Mayor of London? As messed up as London is, I am not sure what the point of voting would be anyway.

Voter turnout in US City elections varies wildly. I just searched to find out that a mayoral race in Houston gathered only 20% voter turnout. That's because Houston is a one-party jurisdiction so elections are no longer competitive.

Same thing in Los Angeles, only 20% voted in the last Mayoral race:
www.latimes.com...
Again of course, LA has been a 1 Party city for years now.

So, maybe you should be glad at least you have a true 2 party system? Especially if you still have competitive elections.

The advent of Universal Suffrage and the end of both WWI then WWII saw the rise of the traditional working class Labour Party.
Clement Attlee - in my opinion the greatest Prime Minister this country has ever had - oversaw the introduction of policies that vastly improved the quality of life for the working class in this country.

The Tories remained the party of business and middle and upper classes.
And every single Tory administration since has sought to claw back some of those gains.
That was ramped up a notch or two by Thatcher and her use of the propaganda machine, agent provocateurs and other nefarious means.
Labour was consigned to the political wilderness and they weren't helped by Militant Tendency and the fear spread by MSM.

All the while the Liberals/SDP/LibDems or whatever brand name they were more or less viewed as cranks with Greens/environmentalists/Amnesty activists etc being viewed as the dominant factions.

Blair came along and changed everything by turning Labour into almost a replica of The Tory Party.
As much as I dislike some of what Bliar did I do have a grudging admiration for him.
His grilling of Major during Prime Minister's Question Time when he was Opposition Leader was the very embodiment of how someone in that position should hold a government to account.

What we have now is proof positive that the party political system has outlives its fit for purpose and we need urgent and radical reform of our electoral and parliamentary processes and procedures.

We have an appalling group of self-advancing, self-aggrandising politico's who have absolutely no real life experience and whose drivers are personal glory and adherence to the party line before the interests, well being and wishes of the ordinary, everyday people they are supposed to represent.
The Tories are obsessed with the generation of wealth for the few.

Labour is obsessed with putting the wishes and advancement of every minority and special interest group before their core, traditional vote who feel they have been abandoned by middle class social justice warriors and their woke agenda.

The LibDems have lost all grip on reality and are even more woke than Labour.

Both Labour and the LibDems are currently unelectable.

So we are left with the biggest bunch of shysters and privately educated inbreds who have absolutely no understanding of the realities of life for the vast majority of British people and they have no interest whatsoever in learning about them.

We ridicule and mock people from other countries yet sit back and accept the #ing appalling state of affairs in our own country.

Keir takes full responsibility , same old same old.


"It was my fault but I'm the man to fix it"

a reply to: TonyS

Yes, Khan is the Mayor at present of London but I don't see him lasting past this election. His time is up!

originally posted by: Freeborn


We ridicule and mock people from other countries yet sit back and accept the #ing appalling state of affairs in our own country.

It is in a bit of a state though isnt it?

Well said.

a reply to: gortex

Well... we need to put a few spanners in the works next general election.

I voted for Free speech and Liberty for one of the commity roles? and voted for Freedom UK for London assembly.

a reply to: CrazeeWorld777

I'm done with voting , it's a pointless exercise.

originally posted by: gortex
a reply to: Whodathunkdatcheese

Delivered Brexit?

Are we a member of the European Union ?
Are we bound by the European Court ?
Were our hands tied by European bureaucracy before the vaccine roll out ?

The border in the Irish sea is a compromise until an alternative can be implemented or agreed.

Like I said, a lot of people like to brush things aside.

Are we a member of the EU? No
Are we bound by the European court? On matters of EU law, yes. On matters of British law, no, although EU law has been hardwired into the UK legislation by European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018. Oh, and that's the European Court of Justice. We are still members of the European Court of Human Rights.
Are our hands tied by European bureaucracy over the vaccine rollout. No. Neither are any of the EU member states. Each nation makes its own vaccination policy.

Have we resolved what the final border and customs arrangements will be? Not yet.
Have we agreed fishing rights with France or Norway? Nope. The fishermen of the East Coast and the South West are wondering why the politicians who cared so passionately about their industry have gone so quiet.
Have we decided how we're going to replace EU grants to the British regions? Where have Bodger Johnson and his crony capitalist government given any firm proposals?

The border in the Irish Sea? It's a compromise here on the mainland. In Northern Ireland, it's an open sore.

Don't get me wrong. Brexit is done as far as I'm concerned. I spent four years Brexit-proofing my life and the only impact it's had on me so far is an extra hour's admin a week on export orders.

My problem is the deep, deep, cynical lying coming from Bodger Johnson and his billionaire pals and the way so many people are not questioning it. I'm only a few years from cashing in my chips and now I'm thinking if I want to retire in a country that no longer knows who it is or what it wants.

a reply to: gortex

I'm done with voting , it's a pointless exercise.

I can understand those sentiments, I've felt like that myself many a time.

Where I can I vote for independent candidates nowadays.
And I'm seriously considering standing as an independent councillor myself in the scheduled 2023 local elections.
I have a whole graveyard full of skeletons in my closet but I'm sort of well known where I'm now living, back on the estate I grew up.

We can't allow these career politicians, lobbyist puppets and ego driven social justice warriors take over at every level.

We have to fight back.

originally posted by: CrazeeWorld777
a reply to: TonyS

Yes, Khan is the Mayor at present of London but I don't see him lasting past this election. His time is up!

Last time I looked, Shaun "sacrificial lamb" Bailey was twelve points behind in the polls.

London is not like the rest of the UK like Barcelona is not like the rest of Spain or New York City is not like the rest of the US. If it were an independent economy in the EU, it would be the sixth biggest. It pays the UK's bills. It's already on the Sunny Uplands. It's not the kind of place that will swallow empty promises about "levelling up". It remembers Bodger Johnson's £2 billion vanity projects, including £250,000 on water cannon he didn't even unwrap and £53 million spent on a the Garden Bridge project so shady that the police investigated it. It remembers the no questions asked attitude to Russian money.

I'm not saying London is better than the rest of the UK. I'm saying we can't read London like we read the rest of the UK.

a reply to: Whodathunkdatcheese

Oh, and Laurence Fox was neck and neck with Count Binhead.

a reply to: CrazeeWorld777

I have always voted Labour but not this time, I simply did not bother because the Labour Party has lost touch, it is no longer a party of the British people, this former front bench (shadow government minister) put's it perfectly.

(sorry edit I put the wrong link up AND sorry the link is one of those you will have to use the Quote function to copy an paste into the address bar because it won't display)

www.msn.com...

It though actually lost touch with the UK voters and traditional labour party supporters (not members but VOTERS which is far more important) a long, long time ago, back in the 1980's in fact.

Since that time we had NEW Labour a self congratulatory FAKE Labour made up of college and university educated kid's that entered straight into politics and whom mostly had no idea what it was to actually work so that your hand's bled or stand up all night until your feet became white and numb from week's and week's of hard work standing at a production line or running a machine in a factory.

New Labour effectively alienated most former Labour voters, they continued to vote labour but it was simply inertia and the fact that to them voting for the Tory's was unthinkable.

But Labour grew ever more right wing, ever more out of touch with TRUE labour heartland voters and ever more uncaring about the real issues that faced them.

For a brief moment Corbyn looked like he may at least RESET the party, reverse the privatisation of some essential assets and restore our nation's ability as a self sustainable industrial nation but he was weak, the worst person we could put in charge of the nation, against some of our key allies, out of touch with the greater will and belief of the British people and the very worst person we could ever put in charge of our nations defence, in fact had we put him in every tom dick and harry out there would have seen our nation as weak, ready to be kicked.

That is why HE lost but then instead of fixing the problems in his policy that turned people off Keir and his clique of Blairites decided to take us back into FAKE Labour or so called New Labour.

Had Corbyn NEVER stood with Hamas, Never stood up for the IRA (bunch of bloody murderers that kill innocent kid's by planting bomb's in concrete shopping centre trash bins), Been more committed to our defence and not been involved with a bunch of CND idiots that would have left our nation undefended with no nuclear capability THEN he probably would have won.

But he was against our own Nations security, not a bad man I believe he is actually a good guy but definitely not fit to run our nation (most of his NON defence domestic policy's were ABSOLUTELY correct though despite the unfair lambasting some idiots in the media gave him over them, of course the Media is in the Tory's paymasters hand for the most part so is biased, that paymaster is one Rupert Murdoch an ultra right wing Conservative Australian that likes to play puppet master when he can with the Tory's, he own's most of our influential newspapers that most of the public read, Sky TV and other media element's and effectively used them to propagandize against Labour during the last general election though Corbyn's statements about defence made people feel he was someone they could not trust running our nation).

Keir is even worse, He is weak, ineffectual and somehow shifty and He want's to turn labour back into Tory light so called New Labour which is the very rot within the Labour party that Turned so very many older labour voters away from it for the rest of there lives, He has not been an effective opposition leader in any debate with Boris Johnson AND the people of this nation have seen this, most labour voters now feel they have no party so out of disgust at what there old political home has become they have done the unthinkable and turned Tory voter.

And I was tempted to myself but in the event did not vote.

British politics is about as complicated as yours despite the relatively smaller size of our nation.

side note, I did not put this in BOLD that is probably a side affect of deleting and replacing the url to an MSN article above.

Also while I am being hard on Keir Starmer in my Critique I still think he is not actually a bad person just not the person to lead the Labour party in the next election not that they currently stand any chance of winning it, first they alienated the disgruntled traditional labour voters, blamed Corbyn for there collective failings in an attempt to scape goat someone other than themselves (they did about as much to sabotage his election as any outside influence by attacking him and backstabbing him instead of using there positions for the well being of there voters).

Keir is a career politician, we need REAL politician's, professors of economics not housewives in charge of our economy so both Keir and Corbyn before him had it wrong and actually you know who SHOULD have ran labour.

JOHN MCDONNELL is the man that SHOULD have been in charge of Labour, you would be genuinely surprised how many more votes he would have gotten than Keir Starmer ever could BUT he is OLD (TRUE) Labour and the NEW LABOUR Blairites such as Starmer would NEVER have allowed him to take the Labour party back out of there control.

Sadly Labour is full of Woke Imbeciles these days, but this if only he was alive today is the kind of politician that Labour USED to have.

But Labour is no less corrupt than the conservatives, this leaves us Brits feeling most of the time that we really don't have ANY Party to represent us.

At least Corbyn for all his failings TRULY believed in the values of democracy.

edit on 7-5-2021 by LABTECH767 because: (no reason given)

a reply to: CrazeeWorld777

Well... we need to put a few spanners in the works next general election.

A timeless classic from one of the greatest EP's ever.

a reply to: incoserv

This is from another American,

—both corporate political parties must appear to serve the masses while actually serving their real constituency, which are Wall St, the banks, Big Pharma, the healthcare industry, big oil, fossil fuels, the military industrial complex and more. Republicans do this by using wedge issues like abortion and guns and religion while Democrats—instead of actually focusing on the plight of working people—focus on identity politics and surface issues which don’t really speak to actual Americans. The two parties are two sides of the same coin and both serve corporate power and special interests—when Democrats are out of power in Congress they can appear to be for the working class by pushing bills they know will never get passed in order so they look good. It’s a tactic. When they do have power they never serve the working class. Ditto with Republicans. They exchange the roles of good cop and bad cop every presidential election cycle, weaponizing wedge issues and identity politics in order to divide and conquer the masses so while everyone is busy fighting the real constituency is served—the rich and 1%.”