__\\\ G&T General Erection Thread ///__

[PreeCome]

After watching Rishi getting nice and wet join me PreeCome in this general erection thread.

Who’s up? Who’s down? Who’s sideways?
Will it be hung? Or will a ‘changed’ Labour party walk it?
Will evil papa smurf(Galloway) and frosty the snowman(Tice) ruin the usual ‘alleged’ two party state?

Most importantly should have Rishi not thrown in the towel….before heading out to the lectern?

[Flap Jack]

I can’t vote of course, but I’ve been trying to convince my fridge to vote for Kryten.

[PreeCome]

Perhaps Boris is hiding in it?

Rimmer = Rishi and Kryten = Keir.

[Jonathan Capps]

I always knew Flap Jack was posting from prison.

[loadoftottnumb]

[Captain Bollocks]

I understood that reference. 

[Moonlight]

I’m an American so I have no idea what’s going on. Please tell me who to illegally vote for. I assume everyone on the ballot is shit.

[Flap Jack]

Vote for Kryten if you want to vote tactically, Snacky if you want to be idealistic.

[Ian Symes]

I’m an American so I have no idea what’s going on. Please tell me who to illegally vote for. I assume everyone on the ballot is shit.

It’s a choice between the incumbent Conservative Party, who used to be centre-right but are now far right, and the Labour Party, who used to be centre-left but are now centre-right. After fourteen years of the Conservatives ruining absolutely everything, enough of their previous voters have got sick of their shit and/or died that Labour will definitely win, it’s only a question of how much of a landslide it’ll be. There are some others – Liberal Democrats, Green, Reform, plus the national parties for Scotland (SNP) and Wales (Plaid Cymru) – but they’re largely irrelevant. 

One interesting difference between UK and US elections is that we don’t actually vote directly for our Prime Minister. We vote for our own local Member of Parliament (equivalent of congressperson), and whichever party has the most MPs gets to be in charge overall. So there’s potentially some interesting tactical voting, where left-leaning or progressive minded voters in traditionally conservative areas will all get behind whichever candidate has the best chance of ousting the Tories, regardless of their individual party affiliations.

Essentially this is all very reminiscent of the 1997 general election, where Labour stormed to victory under Tony Blair, after 18 years of Thatcher and Major. The best thing about that night was seeing so many senior, long-serving Tory MPs losing their seats, which I’m hoping will be the case again this year. I’ve booked the day after the election off work so that I can stay up late and savour the Tory tears, and thereafter turning my scrutiny to our new PM Keir Starmer to try and ensure he doesn’t end up like the war criminal Tony Blair. He’s recently embraced transphobia in an attempt to get the TERFs to vote Labour. His approach to campaigning is basically:

[Nick R]

If only there was a Red Dwarf episode that was all about satirising electoral politics. It would be a good source of amusing Smega Drive captions and GIFs which we could use to make jokes about the upcoming election.

Sadly, there isn’t such an episode. Oh well. :(

[Dave]

[Nick R]

Exclusive footage of the PM’s election announcement:

[Flap Jack]

Keir Starmer really has been a crushing disappointment. From his dropping of all his leadership campaign pledges, to his support of transphobia (making his admonishment of Sunak for the same offensively disingenuous), to his defence of Israel’s war crimes, to the frequency of him whipping the party to abstain on bills they absolutely should be voting against, to him treating Brexit as sacred even as it failed his “10 tests” and is rotting the UK economy to the core, to him appointing pro-austerity, pro-privatisation Tories-in-red-ties Rachel Reeves and Wes Streeting as Shadow Chancellor and Shadow Health Secretary respectively, to the disturbing number of times he responded to acts of unspeakable evil from the government by insisting that Labour would be way better at committing the acts of unspeakable evil than the incompetent government.

I’m still looking forward to seeing the Conservatives crushed of course, but it would have been nice to have an opposition party that are at all interested in turning this free win they’re being handed into actual, substantial positive change. Oh well.

[Ridley]

I’m an American so I have no idea what’s going on. Please tell me who to illegally vote for. I assume everyone on the ballot is shit.

One party’s stink is less of a stink than the other’s stink but you’d rather not have to hold your nose at all.

[Dave]

[Jonathan Capps]

Corbyn wuz robbd

[Future Producer of Series IX – aaaaany day now]

[Moonlight]

I know what I’m voting for. G&T to become a sprite comics site.

[RunawayTrain]

Vote for Kryten if you want to vote tactically, Snacky if you want to be idealistic.

#Snacky4Lyfe

(I feel like that phrasal construction is satire of something?)

[Hamish]

As a Canadian I think the greatest insight I can give is that the Tories are not really losing due to their (many) faults, and Labour is certainly not gaining ground out of merit. It is just an incredibly bad time to be an incumbent right now. Look at the polling for the next Canadian election and you will see the exact same thing is happening, just with the colours and the roles largely reversed.

[Frank Smeghammer]

I still have no idea how to vote. Obviously, definitely won’t be Conservative. Just can’t put my weight behind Labour right now.

On the question of “what will you do in government?”, the Tories are basically saying “we are horrible people and will do horrible things because that’s what our voters want” Labour are basically refusing to answer the question because they only believe in gaining power for power’s sake so its a complete mystery. But they are cosying up to some horrible people and parroting Tory rhetoric, so you can have a good guess.

I may just have to forget all the national stuff and do my digging on the actual local candidates in my constituency and vote for the best regardless of what party they represent.

Imagine that, just voting for the MP you want in your constituency…

[Formica]

Corbyn wuz robbd

To be clear, this is an actual fact you need to comprehend in order to understand the state of UK politics

[Ben Saunders]

Impossible to understand the mindset of anybody who would vote Tory in 2024.

Impossible to understand the mindset of anybody who would vote Labour in 2024.

There are other options… but I fear they will always be just “other options”.

[Formica]

It’s just a less centralized version of “I hope they both die before the election”

[Flap Jack]

Impossible to understand the mindset of anybody who would vote Labour in 2024.

Don’t think it should be too difficult to comprehend people voting for the least worst option that has an actual chance of winning in their constituency.

Then again, I am English. I understand the situation in Scotland is quite different.

[Ian Symes]

Hamish
As a Canadian I think the greatest insight I can give is that the Tories are not really losing due to their (many) faults, and Labour is certainly not gaining ground out of merit. It is just an incredibly bad time to be an incumbent right now.

This is certainly true to an extent – when the whole world turns to shit, you blame whoever’s in charge of your bit of the world, regardless of whether it’s their fault. See also every election in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis.

But in this specific case, there are two things over which the Tories have fucked themselves. Firstly “partygate”, whereby we found out that while people were dying of Covid on their own and their loved ones couldn’t even get together for the funeral, the very people who made the laws that we all followed were pretty much constantly on the piss for the duration. And secondly, Liz Truss’s absolutely disastrous month-and-a-bit in charge, where she managed to crash the economy to such an extent that everyone’s mortgage and bills instantly spiralled out of control. Even the relatively well off are feeling the pain of Tory government right now.

[Jonathan Capps]

Corbyn wuz robbd

To be clear, this is an actual fact you need to comprehend in order to understand the state of UK politics

Absolutely.

[Ben Saunders]

Cost of living I think is the big, big one right now. Oridnary people just are NOT seeing the “benefits” of a decade-plus of Tory rule. The NHS is falling to pieces, too. Pretty much everybody agrees the handling of Covid and Brexit were been a farce. We’ve had (at least) three increasingly pathetic Prime Ministers. Rishi in the rain. There’s nothing the Tories can point to to say “look, we’re good actually” anymore. And any “Labour would be worse” rhetoric is extremely hypothetical at this point. They just have to get increasingly desperate by waving the carrot of anti-wokeness in front of the hard right among the electorate.

Impossible to understand the mindset of anybody who would vote Labour in 2024.
Don’t think it should be too difficult to comprehend people voting for the least worst option that has an actual chance of winning in their constituency.
Then again, I am English. I understand the situation in Scotland is quite different.

If I was English I don’t know what I’d do. Vote for the Piss In The Wind party, I guess.

[Dave]

But in this specific case, there are two things over which the Tories have fucked themselves. Firstly “partygate”, whereby we found out that while people were dying of Covid on their own and their loved ones couldn’t even get together for the funeral, the very people who made the laws that we all followed were pretty much constantly on the piss for the duration. And secondly, Liz Truss’s absolutely disastrous month-and-a-bit in charge, where she managed to crash the economy to such an extent that everyone’s mortgage and bills instantly spiralled out of control. Even the relatively well off are feeling the pain of Tory government right now.

There was also something that happened involving the EU, but it slips my mind. It can’t be that important though as nobody talks about it any more.

[Dave]

In general though I think the overall reason the Tory vote is in freefall is that the party has become completely uncoupled from the idea of competent government, regardless of their largely awful policies and values.

There was a time when the Conservatives were essentially seen as heartless but able to govern, and Labour as having their heart in the right place but not capable of running anything. Now we’re in a situation where the Tories look both evil and utterly incompetent (in no small part due to Johnson gutting the parliamentary party of most of its talent when he drove out anyone who wasn’t a pro-Brexit loyalist) and Labour seem to have moved towards the centre-right but feel like the adults in the room.

Because the current Tory party are not only failing to make any improvements to how the country is running, they’re not even keeping it running as it is – things are going backwards in lots of different ways, and people are finally starting to notice as it hits them financially and otherwise. 

Personally, as an English voter, I’ll be voting Labour – as my local Labour MP is a good one and a Labour vote will keep the Tories out here, and for me it’s important that we ensure that we kick this government out as expected.

I’m also hoping (perhaps idealistically) that Labour are playing their campaign so conservatively because they want to make sure they don’t blow their open-goal opportunity to turf out the Tories – and that maybe after being elected they’ll be willing to pursue some more daring and genuinely left-of-centre policies that will make the country a better place.

But for now, just stopping the wheels from falling off will be an improvement. Hopefully a Starmer government will be able to manage that, at least.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

 Thing is Labour have to play to the centre. Campaigning on any socliast platform gets them completely wiped off the map (Foot, Corbyn). Fact is, the country operates on a business oriented, capitalist economy and any direct challenge to that is scary to most and downright treasonous to many.  Showing competence in Governing means accepting where and what we are as a country and reassuring most that they will work to improve it/make it work for them, not necessarily re-write the entire system which inevitably would being instability during the process of the change.

It’s how the manage the relationships between the three sectors, personal, business, public/government that should set them apart from the Tories and the fact that they should at least have an eye on the social in all of it.

The Tories completely fucked themselves in 2016 by entirely re-writing what their party is.  Conservatism is on principle about conserving society, working on solid foundation and tested method, delivering any change gradually and with care by driving it and guiding it from the top down.

The EU referendum saw them abandon that completely and saw the radical, populist side of the Tory party take of and overhaul the party and the country overnight. No longer delivering slow, methodical change, and no longer looking to observe and conserve the know, tried and tested systems.  They purposefully allowed fringe elements and exterior outer party movements to dictate a radical swing and reformation of the country by destroy in global relationships and whiplashing us out of a strong political union with absolutely zero plan.

It’s been downhill for them since then.  How they’ve clung on this long is a mystery.  The EU referendum should have been the death knell, but Corbyn (wuz robbed) scared the country to the right. And Boris was able to convince everyone he’d “get BREXIT done” after May fannied around for a couple of years.

COVID stalled absolutely everything but as Ian pointed out, really showed the current Conservative Party for what they really are at a time everyone was struggling and hurting and grieving and scared and coming together, they just fucking laughed at us.

The fact we’ve had 3 PM since shows the party in a complete free fall and this election everyone has really been waiting for since Boris left.

The country is ready for anyone but the Tories, they know Labour is the only real challenge to them.  They might be playing is safe and appearing a bit boring but after years of larger than life populist leaders on all sides, a safe boring Government that can just govern would be quite nice right now.

[Hamish]

My abiding feeling is that I would dearly love for people like Rishi Sunak or in our case Justin Trudeau to be toppled in recognition of their very real failings, but when the benefactors are the likes of Keir Starmer or in our case Pierre Poilievre, something has clearly gone wrong somewhere. In a global sense, the same frustration that is toppling the Tories is being harnessed by those seeking a second Trump presidency.

[Dave]

 Thing is Labour have to play to the centre. Campaigning on any socliast platform gets them completely wiped off the map (Foot, Corbyn). Fact is, the country operates on a business oriented, capitalist economy and any direct challenge to that is scary to most and downright treasonous to many.  Showing competence in Governing means accepting where and what we are as a country and reassuring most that they will work to improve it/make it work for them, not necessarily re-write the entire system which inevitably would being instability during the process of the change.
It’s how the manage the relationships between the three sectors, personal, business, public/government that should set them apart from the Tories and the fact that they should at least have an eye on the social in all of it.
The Tories completely fucked themselves in 2016 by entirely re-writing what their party is.  Conservatism is on principle about conserving society, working on solid foundation and tested method, delivering any change gradually and with care by driving it and guiding it from the top down.
The EU referendum saw them abandon that completely and saw the radical, populist side of the Tory party take of and overhaul the party and the country overnight. No longer delivering slow, methodical change, and no longer looking to observe and conserve the know, tried and tested systems.  They purposefully allowed fringe elements and exterior outer party movements to dictate a radical swing and reformation of the country by destroy in global relationships and whiplashing us out of a strong political union with absolutely zero plan.
It’s been downhill for them since then.  How they’ve clung on this long is a mystery.  The EU referendum should have been the death knell, but Corbyn (wuz robbed) scared the country to the right. And Boris was able to convince everyone he’d “get BREXIT done” after May fannied around for a couple of years.
COVID stalled absolutely everything but as Ian pointed out, really showed the current Conservative Party for what they really are at a time everyone was struggling and hurting and grieving and scared and coming together, they just fucking laughed at us.
The fact we’ve had 3 PM since shows the party in a complete free fall and this election everyone has really been waiting for since Boris left.
The country is ready for anyone but the Tories, they know Labour is the only real challenge to them.  They might be playing is safe and appearing a bit boring but after years of larger than life populist leaders on all sides, a safe boring Government that can just govern would be quite nice right now.

I agree with all of that, but especially the first and last paragraphs. This is just where we are now, and under a Labour government (hopefully) things can only get better.

[Dave]

My abiding feeling is that I would dearly love for people like Rishi Sunak or in our case Justin Trudeau to be toppled in recognition of their very real failings, but when the benefactors are the likes of Keir Starmer or in our case Pierre Poilievre, something has clearly gone wrong somewhere.

I completely understand wishing that the Labour opposition was stronger and more radical in a lot of ways, but like Quinn says I think they’ve very deliberately played to the centre (sometimes too much for my taste, both in policy and in the kind of ex-Tories they’ve recently welcomed into the party) to secure an election victory.

I also think that, on a personal level, Starmer is a more decent and honorable person than most of the current Tories, and someone who genuinely does want to use his position to make the country better. Which would represent an improvement over most of our recent PMs.

[Hamish]

I completely understand wishing that the Labour opposition was stronger and more radical in a lot of ways, but like Quinn says I think they’ve very deliberately played to the centre

Not exactly the best person to be selling that line to as an outside observer, but my main point is that if Sunak or Trudeau are to be defeated, then there must be an expectation that their wrongs will actually be repudiated, not covered over with just another pail of red or blue paint.

[Dave]

Oh I’m not really trying to sell anything, just offer an explanation for their approach.

I think a lot of natural Labour voters have been frustrated with the lack of progressive policy promises from Starmer. I know I have. But then, natural Labour voters aren’t who he’s trying to win over.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

It’s really hard to simply “undo” what has been done previously. Especially when it’s 14 years of relentless economic fuck up. 

You have to spend time putting in motion things that will make an improvement, and it’s gradual. 

Problem is negative effects are felt and noticed very very quickly. Positives take a lot longer. So there’ll be very quick attacks on Labour if things aren’t suddenly better for everyone overnight. 

Of course the big one would be reversing Brexit but I find that unlikely in the immediate future. Perhaps strengthen ties from the outside with a look of moving the mood of the country back to rejoining somewhere down the line. 

Unless they can do things like get people’s mortgages down, and somehow (without those scary drastic radical changes I mentioned about) break the hold private landlords have over housing, we’ll be stuck in the current mess a while. 

Their best bet would be targeting Gen Z and to an extent Millennials and creating policies that directly help impact them in the long term. 

Gradually reintroducing some social policies that help elevate the cost of living would be a big step too.

And they’re all things I can see them doing. But it won’t be by Christmas 

[Technopeasant]

Corbyn wasn’t robbed (this time).

[Ben Saunders]

“What’s really galling about Keir Starmer is he has robbed me of what should be one of the greatest joys of my life, the collapse of the conservative party” – @nise_yoshimi on Twitter

[loadoftottnumb]

It was a good night overall. 410 odd Labour MPs and 70 odd Lib Dem’s means a real move towards the centre/centre-left which is where I think we need to be right now. 

The size of the majority means Labour are almost guaranteed two terms, assuming they couldn’t possibly do a worse job than the last govt if they tried. 

[Dave]

Yeah, it’s been a long time coming, but overall the result is good. The Reform MPs and vote share are a little concerning but at least they aren’t quite as high as the exit poll suggested.

Starmer’s first speech as PM was encouraging too, just a general sense that the adults are back in the room again.

It will be interesting to see where the Tories go from here. Hopefully they won’t fall into the trap of trying to woo Reform voters by going harder-right under someone like Braverman but will instead realise that if they want to recapture broader support then they need to move back to the middle under someone more moderate (I could see Hunt making a bid for leadership).

Ideally though they’ll be little more than an afterthought for the next couple of elections at least.

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

It was a good night overall. 410 odd Labour MPs and 70 odd Lib Dem’s means a real move towards the centre/centre-left which is where I think we need to be right now. 
The size of the majority means Labour are almost guaranteed two terms, assuming they couldn’t possibly do a worse job than the last govt if they tried. 

They have two problems 

1. People will expect to see results immediately (because they don’t understand change is slow and likely to take 2 years to the full term to see any real difference) so as soon as things are fixed by Christmas Labour will be doing a terrible job

2. Every. Little. Thing they do slightly wrong the media will POUNCE on them.  If Kier so much as fails to say bless you to a bloke sneezing 5 miles away he’ll be literally worse than Hitler.  They’ll have a bit of grace to begin with but it won’t be long before the Tory rags start to tear them to shreds to discredit them.

The one thing they have on their side is that potentially those same rags won’t want Reform to get any more powerful than they are so they might see a few years of Labour while the Tory’s regroup as a way of holding off Reform and making sure people forget about them.  Not that NF will let anyone forget but he’s all bluster and I think the people of Clacton will soon tire of him not actually doing his job.

[loadoftottnumb]

Yeah the thing with Reform is, it’s just disaffected Tory voters, both parties will eat each other until they merge after the 2029 election. 

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

Yeah, it’s been a long time coming, but overall the result is good. The Reform MPs and vote share are a little concerning but at least they aren’t quite as high as the exit poll suggested.

Starmer’s first speech as PM was encouraging too, just a general sense that the adults are back in the room again.

It will be interesting to see where the Tories go from here. Hopefully they won’t fall into the trap of trying to woo Reform voters by going harder-right under someone like Braverman but will instead realise that if they want to recapture broader support then they need to move back to the middle under someone more moderate (I could see Hunt making a bid for leadership).
Ideally though they’ll be little more than an afterthought for the next couple of elections at least.

Reform have about as much of the vote share as UKIP did, is’t just the vote is split slightly differently so they gained a few seats.  But UKIP managed to plunge us into Brexit exactly because the Tories tried to appease their voting base.

Currently all Reform really seem to officially stand for is being Eurosceptic and being against the political class, of which they are now a part of it.  I don’t think they will really have a big policy agenda to move the conversation in the way UKIP did.  But they are in the room and they won’t let us forget it for a while.  But as you say, the adults are in the room and whilst NF stamps his feet and claims Labour aren’t doing this, that or the other, Labour likely will be doing just that and hopefully people see the results in time and tire of Reform standing for nothing.

[RunawayTrain]

The Reform MPs and vote share are a little concerning but at least they aren’t quite as high as the exit poll suggested.

I don’t know what share the poll suggested (I knew it predicted a lot more seats than they ended up with) but 4million people – 14% of the vote, third highest out of all of the parties – who don’t think the Conservatives are racist/right-wing enough is … quite something.

[Dave]

But I think that in a lot of cases it represented a protest vote against the Tories by people who couldn’t bring themselves to vote Labour or Lib Dem.

That’s why in most constituencies they didn’t get a seat – because there aren’t very many places at all where Reform is the top alternative to the Conservatives.

(They were predicted 13 seats by the exit poll and have ended up with 4, with a possible 5th seat to follow. So in terms of number of MPs, they’re about level with the Greens and Plaid Cymru.)

The vote share is pretty high but I think that’s partly a result of the unique circumstances of this election. Given that the Brexit/immigration aspects that Reform mainly play on are unlikely to be as prominent in five years as they were this time around, I don’t see them improving on their current position in the next election. 

Frankly I’ll be very surprised if Farage serves a full term as MP.

[RunawayTrain]

But I think that in a lot of cases it represented a protest vote against the Tories by people who couldn’t bring themselves to vote Labour or Lib Dem. … …  Frankly I’ll be very surprised if Farage serves a full term as MP.

Let’s hope so.

It will certainly be interesting to see what NF does now he’s actually got the job, after however many years of trying.

[Ben Saunders]

just a general sense that the adults are back in the room again

this is how I felt about Biden, but then the dementia and the Israel stuff kinda put me off him (among other things)

[Quinn: Clochebusters World Champion]

[Hamish]

No matter which party you support, the amount of distortion to the seat counts in this election is an utter disgrace. No party anywhere in the world is entitled to a majority government with only 33.8% of the popular vote. First-past-the-post is the real villain of the night.

[Author]

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