A survey of voting intentions in Hartlepool for The Economist by WeThink, a pollster, suggests how far the party has slumped. Our poll of 448 voters in the constituency puts Labour on 58%, Reform uk on 23% and the Tories on a remarkable 10% (see chart). Labour seems to have picked up voters both from the Brexit Party, Reform uk’s forerunner, and the Conservatives. If such an extreme Tory collapse seems unlikely, consider that in local elections in May it won a seat in only one of the 12 wards it contested in the town.
this post was submitted on 12 Jun 2024
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Not British, but interested in your opinions: isn't Labor almost as bad as the Tories these days? I watched the Sunak - Starmer debate, and they seemed to just be angrily agreeing with eachother on every point that mattered. There was a lot of "Yes, we should do that, but your track record shows you're not serious about [policy]!"
No.
Labour are promising the biggest expansion of workers' rights in decades and the most ambitious environmental policies in history, while the Conservatives are promising a whole load of impossible tax cuts. It's totally fine, of course, to believe Labour could and should go further - and I agree. But to say they're proposing almost the same things is, as a matter of plain fact, untrue.
Labour are promising the biggest expansion of workers’ rights in decades and the most ambitious environmental policies
You made me interested in what exactly they're promising, so I tracked down their manifesto.
The fines on river and ocean polluting sounds long overdue. Hardly revolutionary (every EU country does this) but it's definitely needed from some headlines I've read. There's also some stuff there about taxing oil and gas companies. That's honestly a good thing! Wouldn't exactly call that incredibly ambitious though.
EDIT: My eyes completely glossed over the "Clean Power by 2030" investment plan somehow. That sounds pretty great, and definitely counts as ambitious. My napkin math says 95 GW of electricity could power about 18 million homes, which according to this is more than half of UK homes. Pretty ambitious.
I couldn't find anything in there about workers' rights though. Maybe I missed something?
EDIT2: Why wasn't Starmer mentioning any of this in the debate, I wonder?
That's the local election manifesto from earlier this year. I was baffled for a moment because I thought you'd somehow found the supposedly top secret GE manifesto before it launches tomorrow!
The full manifesto will be published tomorrow but the broad outlines of the workers' rights expansion are here. It repeals a lot of the restrictions on trade union activity and gives workers more direct legal rights.
Labour in its current incarnation has a great deal of problems, but they absolutely are not as bad as the Conservatives. I don't think they're going to improve things much, but the current government is basically just flailing about trying to figure out which combination of asylum seekers, trans people, disabled people, and the EU they need to throw bricks at to stay in power. This party brought us Brexit, the Rwanda deportation plan, the "hostile environment", Liz Truss' entire premiership, and one of the worst covid death rates in the world. Labour's opposition to those things has left much to be desired, but fucking hell at least they weren't throwing their full weight behind each one
Fair enough. So if I understand you correctly, this isn't really about Labor having any positive policies, but more that they won't actively make things much worse.
Btw, on the Rwanda plan, didn't Starmer say in the debate he'd do that if it complied with international law? EDIT: I'm wrong, he said he'd do third country processing of migrants if it complied with international law.
That's my opinion on it, at least. Which sucks, but it's a clear improvement.
Starmer's recent comments have all been that he intends to scrap the Rwanda policy if elected. If he has said otherwise I'm open to being corrected, of course. In contrast, the Conservative policy has openly been to ignore international law and change domestic law to facilitate the deportations
If he has said otherwise I’m open to being corrected, of course.
I went back to double-check what I'd heard from the horse's mouth. I misunderstood the first time (they had just finished talking about Rwanda). This was in relation to third country processing of migrants.
They are open to third country processing but as far as I understand it it wouldn't be their main objective. They have said, a repeatedly said, is that they will open processing centers in France, which was always the sensible option and was rejected by the Conservatives so they could continue to use immigration as red meat for their diminishing voter base.
No one talked about immigration until the conservatives took power.
I think it's also important to draw a distinction between third country processing and the Rwanda policy. Those sent to Rwanda do not get processed for asylum in the UK. If their claim is accepted, they get asylum in Rwanda.
No they're not. A lot of angry people like to say they're the same, but they are generally the people who have about as much political acumen as a potato.
Labour or not radical left wing and that seems to have annoyed a certain subsection of society, who seemed to think that everyone else should want them to be radically left wing (part of the problem being that there isn't actually a radically left-wing political party in the UK, George Galloway's party does not count on the basis he's a leech). Obviously I'd prefer radically left radically right but realistically I'm quite happy with them being left of center.
Although I will admit that sometimes they do say some stupid things.
I don't expect labour to be full blown left, just actually left rather than ever so slightly to the left of the Tories.
They're a lot left of the Tories, what do you want about? For example, they are proposing taxes on the rich, and actually doing something about climate change, pretty left leaning. Not as much as perhaps the greens or some of the independence would like, but much more than the Tories ever did, which was bugger all in both regards.
Remember that the Tories on losing voters to hard right extremists, so some of their voter base must be extremists. Labour are not losing any votes to Reform.