I put this poll on Twitter last night. The response ratios stabilised after a couple of hundred votes had been recorded. It has attracted a lot more now:
Some people were upset that I did not offer more options, of which green issues was the most commonly suggested, but to be candid that was not the point of this exercise.
I posted the poll whilst watching discussion of migration and Rwanda policy. I was utterly bored of hearing Tory after Tory saying that stopping small boats is a matter of priority for the people of this country. I was sure that was not true. The poll was intended to test that hypothesis and I think the response shows that this is really not the issue the Tories claim it to be. For some it might be. Most can see it is a manufactured dead cat intended to distract from Tory failings elsewhere.
What did surprise me was the response to the last question, which I threw in as a ‘none of the a above option' but which also tested whether people might opt for Labour out of conviction, or not. It is apparent that they are voting against the Tories, not for Labour. Maybe I should not have been surprised, but I was by the scale of this. Labour need to be worried.
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Illegal migration (Stop the Boats) has proved an effective smokescreen. It’s effectively deflected attention from the huge rise in legal migration and beyond that failure of Brexit. Mass inward immigration manufactured fear that arguably got Brexit over the line.
The channel crossing are a problem of this Government’s own, shameless, making. The narrative does seem to resonant with part of a generation brought up when TV was full of old movies about WWII.
I know I’m probably saying this to an audience who already are aware, but itbshould be pointed out at every opportunity that the UN refugee charter explicitly states that a person entering a country seeking asylum is not an illegal immigrant, regardless of what route they enter the country by.
You are right Alex
The idea that a refugee is illegal is wrong
That does not mean they need be granted asylum, but it is not illegal to arrive and ask
Buggins’ turn isn’t it?
How much of a change we might get is anybody’s guess. There’s not a lot being promised.
I totally agree with your last point and I’ve said it here myself.
But there are going to be lot of disappointed people and thus it will be the credibility of politics that suffers and thus the destructive, fatalistic cycle we are in will continue.
The Tories love to use the phrase ‘the British People’. They try to convince us that the ‘British people’ would be outraged at any attempt to undo Brexit as well as by immigration. Perhaps they hope by keep repeating it, many of the public will assume it is a general opinion. The Daily Express and Daily Mail do their best to amplify the message.
Pilgrim is right that the credibility of politics will suffer, paving the way to Fascism.
For the Conservative Party, communications is everything; Government is not principally about executive management of the country, but management and control of the news agenda; that is it, alpha to omega. When a Conservative PM refers to communications, however he or she is not speaking to the public; he or she is speaking solely to the editorial teams at the Daily Mail, Sun and Telegraph. That is because the Conservative Party knows that it is the Press in Britain that determines the general direction of travel of the broadcast media (because licensed broadcast media cannot wholly self-determine the news agenda, and the only ‘objective’ news test beyond themselves they can use, is the Press – which is why billionaires pump money into a Press that is essentially a technologically redundant medium); and therefore in turn determine the political agenda. This is why we have the dysfunction between the current politics of Parliament (Rwanda policy as the sole key issue in politics); while British living standards. the NHS and the economy continue on the road to ruin.
…………………….and that is why the Tory party has to be good at fund raising as it relies on the return of the support of the get-rich- quick robber barons that Thatcherism created and its friends in media. Communication is expensive – especially in competition – a lot of Tory and Right wing communication is actually just blanket advertising out-selling political opponents with their perverse messages
British politics need a party with progressive policies that would right the wrongs of the last 40 years. When that seemed to be materialising, however fleeting and feeble the glimpse, the real (New) Labour Party stirred its rotting corpse to smash any hope , and any mechanism for any future hope to arise.
The real villains aren’t the Tories, it’s the Labour hierarchy, Blair, Mandelson, Labour Together, many trade unions, over 200 Labour MPs past and present, their donors national and international, and their acolytes throughout the party structure. They crushed hope.
If the real villains aren’t the tories, I presume you are going to vote for them then.
@ John Griffin
Agreed, John, 100%
As to Labour being worried, I bloody well hope they are. Indeed, as I’ve posted before, I’d love Starmer’s vile Faux-Labour Party to fail to make it in the GE.
He & his RW fanatics – the close circle Starmerites, and the swivel-eyed cult-followers, the Starmerrhoids (a moniker I invented – though others probably came up with it independently – as describing “a pain in the arse & potentially dangerous to health”) are a “clear and present danger” to democracy, decency and the rule of law – as his preposterous reaction to the calls for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza to stop the genocide proves. Bugger Parliamentary rules, let’s have meaningful action!
James IV of Scotland was defeated at Flodden Field because the rules of chivalry forbade him from taking a certain action. Bugger rules when peoples’ lives are at stake. There’s only one unbreakable rules “do no harm” – in war that means fight in a way that results in fewest deaths and injuries.
All progressives & progressive forces must do all they can to prevent this vile tinpot would-be dictator and his vile Faux-Labour, Party, from getting ANYWHERE near power. He and they would be an authoritarian (and also a flat-earther economist “fiscal rules” Procrustes bed, where people are forced to adhere to riles, instead of rulesto people) disaster!
Utterly, utterly vile.
This is just madness, I’m sorry, but just think back to the 2000s when Blair and Co were in power, was the country falling off a cliff anything like it is at present? were there foodbanks bursting at the seams all over the country? Was the NHS teetering on collapse? was there industrial action all over the place? Was there a cost of living crisis for a large proportion of folk? If Starmer is that bad or even worse I would far rather that than the alternative, God knows how many more years of the Tories.
Sure I do agree the Labour Party is a long way from where I would like it to be on a whole raft of issues, but to actively want it to fail and therefore to let the Tories in again, because that is what will happen, is just mind blowingly daft IMHO (sorry)
Do you really want to wake up on Friday morning to that???
Starmer is much to the right of Blair
@John Haydon
Stop being silly, and open your eyes to just how awful, untrustworthy, authoritarian, even dictatorial, and sociopathic Starmer is.
Try two pieces from Peter Oborne
a) On Starmer’s untrustworthiness
https://www.doubledown.news/watch/2023/september/25/exposed-keir-starmer-liar-murdochs-man-candidate-mi5-peter-oborne
b) on his authoritarian instincts
https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/uk-labour-starmer-authoritarianism-alarm-bells-ringing
And finally on his sociopathic support of genocide in Gaza.
Of COURSE I don’t want the Tories to win, but by God neither do I want vile Starmer to win either, with his Faux-Labour Party – deformed from an internationalist , progressive, anti-racist, force for progress and a voice for the 99% into a racist, little Englander, boss-bum-sucking brown-nosing, institutionally antisemitic (on which see Jonathan Cook https://twitter.com/Jonathan_K_Cook/status/1334636482041176065?s=1) antidemocratic (ask numerous Conditurncu Laboour Parties and the many decent members expelled for not signing up to little Keef Stalin’s vile politics) mockery of a Party – more like a clique of sociopathic Keystone Kops 4th-raters, bumbling from one disaster to another.
What the country needs is a hung Parliament, where the people in EVERY Party, from moderate Left to moderate Right, can come together to exclude the Fascist Right (aka Starmer’s Faux-Labour Party) and the Ultra Fascist Right (aka the Tory Party) to form a genuine GNU (Government of National Unity) that can start to rebuild society along the lines so eloquently set out in several of Richard’s blogs – one where the KEY consideration is care for the community, for our neighbours, for a society where each of us is not only our sister’s and brother’s keeper, bur where we are PROUD to be so.
And be assured – Starmer must he allowed nowhere near such a project, as he’s toxic to the core, as shoen by his disgraceful behaviour over Gaza – and so much else.
As I’ve said, and repeat utterly vile.
Thanks Andrew
Maybe Richard, but surely we can only truly judge that after he has had power for a while. At the moment we only have what he has said to judge him by, along with some admittedly dis agreeable internal party wranglings to go on. We all know that pre election pledges are total fantasy, so with all my fingers crossed behind my back I will ignore the noise and judge him on his record.
If all the shenanigans do give victory to the Tories, which I really fear is more likely than a lot of others here, they will feel invincible, probably with some justification, and go full on Numpty Trumpty batshit crazy.
For me that is just too awful to contemplate.
I know jumping over a cliff is a bad idea without doing it.
So why do I need to suffer Starmer to know he will be a disaster when that is already obvious?
Ok so if you will allow me to be a bit sillier, lets say your wish for Starmer to fail comes to reality, how will that further the progressive cause? Do you think another ten years of tory mismanagement is worth it, really?
I am hoping for a hung parliament
We all know the Tories are not going to be the next government
If you hope for a hung parliament: HM the King will have to call in someone to be PM and form a government. Who would that be? And how might they achieve working majorities to enact any legislation? A Starmer-less Labour plus Libs or SNP, in coalition or some ‘vote supply’ deal?
Do the Libs offer better policy proposals and might they have any chance of getting (enough of) the PLP to agree?
Anyone else will impose PR
And prevent austerity
Sadly a hung parliament might be the least bad outcome, but it’s thoroughly depressing. I’m not against them per se, but I wonder how positive that would be in the current climate. It may well be seen as the public wanting something between right wing Labour and ultra right wing Tories, so we end up with a bunch of policy actions to the right of Starmer’s Labour. It would take a massive ‘non-of the above’ vote, i.e. spoilt ballot papers, to encourage Starmer and Sunak’s successor to move back towards the middle. I’d love to imagine the Green’s (despite their failings) getting an unignorably large vote followed by a Government shift to the left, but it won’t happen. It seems we need at least one more catastrophic parliament before progressive voices are properly represented again. I fear it might be several more parliaments and bodies piled up in the streets before there is change, and at that point it might be violent.
What surprised me about the poll is that only 26% said that the NHS was the most important issue. Most polls I see say the NHS is at the top.
Andrew,
I agree we do need a hung parliament, but personally I think in these volatile times that is far too unlikely to bet on, realistically we are in a two horse race, and pretty much like every other GE I have voted in it comes down to picking the least worse.
Tell me what other option I have?
I take the exact opposite view of the final conclusion.
The fact that the largest vote is ” want to see change ” confirms the approach of Starmer which has been to change the image of the Labour Party. The boring image is now what people identify as the answer to the chaotic recent past. This is therefore an approval for the Starmer led approach.
Back in 2020, nobody was contemplating a return to power of the Labour Party inside 2 terms, let alone the prospect of a large turnaround in the next 12 months.
I have knocked on many doors over a long time and I have never failed to be astounded at how voters are ignorant of topics, don’t care or are able to rationalise everything to their own circumstances.
The main changes of late have been the impact on the people with mortgages who have seen the large increases in their monthly payments (often the most direct cost of living impact for them) or those who are renting at what are now massive rents. The collapse of public sector services e.g. Justice, NHS is almost taken for granted because to the central majority, there direct need for such services , is secondary. They complain about no police to help with burglaries but the number is relatively small. The NHS waiting lists present a private sector opportunity which people are taking to because they are bombarded with ads for a £20 per month service. Sadly, users of food banks are the worst offenders when it comes to voting but it may be that the next GE will see a change.
The many topics covered on this blog which appeal to blog commenters are important and often structural e.g. changes to First past the post, wealth taxes, other economic approaches as well as the social comments on wars, political priorities, climate change etc. There is a significant part of the population who are concerned about these issues but there are many more who either aren’t interested or who have a self centred approach.
What happens after the General Election will be crucial and I hope that we do see the major changes to recovery of the public services which we all rely upon. I am not confident in the basic approach outlined by the Labour Party but there are many who believe that any change will be much better than the disasters of the last 13 years. That is why people voted for a need for change.
Thank you for providing this forum. I don’t agree with it all but I have learned a lot and still have more to learn
I have to disagree.
That category. Was a represent an anti Tory sentiment, not a pro-Labour one. And the Labour lead can’t be explained in any other way than dire Tory performance.
I think you’ll find that many users of foodbanks will not be voting at the next election because they won’t have voter ID.
Done especially to boost the tory vote.
https://ocisa.org.uk/the-plan-to-unseat-starmer/
Here’s how to get a socialist government without Starmer.
Do you know anyone who lives in his constituency who does not want to vote for him or the tory candidate?
Show them this.
‘A need for change’ is open to very wide interpretation.
I ticked it with my view that the UK needs radical changes to its constitutional and political systems to bring them into the 21st century.
Whether it is realistic is another question.
I would have put in the last option and I am a Labour voter. It is however the most important thing to me right now as without a change none of the actual problems in this country will get sorted out.
Explain why, please, since it is obvious we need inward migration.