Why are Labour and the Conservatives neck and neck?

[Chicken Chaser]

I think elections will become increasingly fractured on the vote. Social media, scrutiny by the media and accessibility of information has opened this right up. Turnout will be key, I have a feeling that turnout may be slightly down on 2010, I hope that I'm wrong but I think the electorate are disillusioned or just simply not interested. If it does get worse, may be they should get Cowell to make the next one X in the box Factor. I'm sure Ant and Dec could gee up a few extra votes.

[turbobloke]

rs1952 said:

turbobloke said:

rs1952 said:

Cheese Mechanic said:

Muzzer79 said:

I forgot
5. A lot of Labour voters still have a chip on their shoulder about Thatcher and blame her for what happened to them/their parents/their grandparents.

Yup, fk it , Fecking Fatcher sunk the fecking Titanic,caused the Black Death ennit, ennit, eh?

No. That was all caused by the EU

You didn't get that from the BBC.

That's right. It was in the Express

At least the Mail would have given the value of Thatcher's house.

[don4l]

Don said:

Same st, different party.

I am increasingly disillusioned with them all. And yet I will vote for the party I dislike least in an attempt the even worse lot out of power.

But I am in a safe seat and my vote doesn't count.

I'm in one of the safest Conservative seats in the country. If I had voted Conservative in the 2010 election, then my vote would have counted for nothing.

However, like many others, I voted UKIP. So did many others.

Oddly, enough people did the same as I did... and CMD made a commitment to hold a referendum.

My vote for UKIP was not wasted. It achieved exactly what I wanted.

There is no doubt that the most influential man in British politics is Nigel Farage.

Every vote is a warning shot across the bows of the traditional parties.

[Twin1]

I think a major problem is the candidates put forward by the Conservatives in constituencies that traditionally vote Labour are of poor quality. Obviously they don't want to put their stronger candidates in places that'll be difficult to win, but they need to put up a bit of a fight.

For example, my local MP is Douglas Alexander, and in the local area prejudice runs high against anyone who is 'rich'. Around here, anyone earning more than £25k is a wker; private school is 'because they think they're too good for us'; going to university is 'to skive off for another four years' [got to note on that last point there are many who do]. Yet the Conservatives have presented a privately educated lawyer who works for a firm in London.

Why? People hate him as a person, and if they can't get past hating the candidate, how are they ever to get over Thatcher (yep, even teenagers are hung up on her here, dreadful). IMO there needs to be more of a fight, more of a presence in constituencies like this: bring a presence to the people and they might change their views - stay in London, where all people see is David Cameron on TV and of course things are never going to change.

[johnfm]

ffc said:

fblm said:

Because 90% of the public are financially illiterate.

fblm said:

They should be now after 2008 but instead they managed to pin it entirely on 'bankers'. Innit. The Tories missed the big picture though and played along, they probably welcomed any distraction from the expenses scandal at the time. Oh look over there. Bankers are even nastier than us!

Anyway can hardly blame the electorate for not understanding macro-economics, not when MP's, of all colours, are utterly, utterly clueless fvckwits;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gd6-zfeeaM&fe...

fking morons. Every one of them in that video should be fired.

Edited by fblm on Friday 17th April 16:15

Why do you stay here?

LOL! FBLM lives somewhere a bit warmer, with slightly less tax! I'd join if if I could...

[RichB]

Muzzer79 said:

...A lot of Labour voters still have a chip on their shoulder about Thatcher and blame her for what happened to them/their parents/their grandparents.

Yep, bought their council houses at knock-down price and then curse thatcher for all the evils in the world.

[johnxjsc1985]

yes their are lots of factory workers ,plumbers and brickies etc who are all reitred now with a nice pension and a former council home owned outright all because of Mrs Thatcher. Now the question is what did Labour ever do for them.

[groucho]

johnxjsc1985 said:

yes their are lots of factory workers ,plumbers and brickies etc who are all reitred now with a nice pension and a former council home owned outright all because of Mrs Thatcher. Now the question is what did Labour ever do for them.

Maybe the Labour supporters here can shed some light on it.

[AyBee]

mcbook said:

I am still undecided on who to vote for. Rhetoric would say that the Conservatives will give you a better economy and labour will provide better public services but keep growing debt.

I think the levels of debt we have today are an outrage and such mismanagement is hard to forgive (Labour btw).

However, the Conservatives' boats about the economy and their success with reducing in the deficit don't hit as hard as they should.

It's not difficult to add spending to the NHS, you just borrow more - people like this, ignore the effect that borrowing more will have and vote Labour.

I'd much rather the deficit was under control, the economy was heading in the right direction and then spending on services is increased. Unfortunately there are a lot of people who don't understand this and only think of themselves today!

[dfen5]

£8,000,000,000 extra needed for the NHS.
Labour going to do nothing about the national debt. They say that they'll balance the budget.
Say they'll set aside an extra £2,500,000,000 for the NHS of that 8.
Happy to continue to pay £50,000,000,000 debt interest & service costs every year.
What the fk?

Conservatives should be walking it. Why they don't ask people to join in and join them rather than just voting for them I've no idea. Inclusion's got to be better than just asking people to vote - give them a voice.

Still, at least the BBC are campaigning hard for Labour. As are the SNP.

[IanMorewood]

Both are practicing pretty central policies these days hence the appeal of ukip etc.

[johnxjsc1985]

groucho said:

Maybe the Labour supporters here can shed some light on it.

its like my home town Liverpool anything good that has happend has been as a direct result of a Conservative Gov going back to Hessletine with the Albert Docks Regen to the Liverpool One project which was something to do with the Duke of Westminster.
when they tried to get the Trams back Labour said no.
the Mayor Joe Anderson just google him.

[ninja-lewis]

Twin1 said:

I think a major problem is the candidates put forward by the Conservatives in constituencies that traditionally vote Labour are of poor quality. Obviously they don't want to put their stronger candidates in places that'll be difficult to win, but they need to put up a bit of a fight.

For example, my local MP is Douglas Alexander, and in the local area prejudice runs high against anyone who is 'rich'. Around here, anyone earning more than £25k is a wker; private school is 'because they think they're too good for us'; going to university is 'to skive off for another four years' [got to note on that last point there are many who do]. Yet the Conservatives have presented a privately educated lawyer who works for a firm in London.

Why? People hate him as a person, and if they can't get past hating the candidate, how are they ever to get over Thatcher (yep, even teenagers are hung up on her here, dreadful). IMO there needs to be more of a fight, more of a presence in constituencies like this: bring a presence to the people and they might change their views - stay in London, where all people see is David Cameron on TV and of course things are never going to change.

Even the Tories and Labour cannot afford to campaign in every seat - scarce resources (money, quality candidates, activists, ministerial visits) are directed to the seats that will provide the best return.

In the safest seats, the local opposition parties are told by party HQ that they will not be receiving any help and indeed may be told to send their activists to help out in a nearby seat that is being actively contested. Some candidates are merely warm bodies so that the party can claim that they stand in 640-odd seats nationally (NI doesn't really count), which can cause issues when they're returned to Parliament in a surprise landslide. For the price of a £500 deposit, maintaining local party morale is worthwhile and there is always a chance that an unexpected event suddenly puts a safe seat in play during the election campaign - you'd kick yourself if an incumbent pulled out at the last minute and you had no candidate in the running.

Many such candidates are promised that if they run a strong campaign (with no resources) in a forlorn hope, they'll be rewarded with a contestable or even safer seat elsewhere. Your London lawyer probably falls into this category - "do a shift in the North and you'll have a run at a nice safe South East next time"). Of course, if you fail to impress then that's end of the road for you.

This suits parties because they want MPs who are good campaigners and will toe the party line - not least because your own safe seats can be stripped of activists to be sent to campaign elsewhere (e.g. for a senior party official in a marginal seat who is above doing their own door knocking).

[Axionknight]

Tory peer Lord (ex?) Ashcroft wrote a good piece on this, he's a true blue Tory but his polling and commentary are some of the best out there in my opinion:

http://lordashcroftpolls.com/2015/03/why-arent-the...

[Flip Martian]

Political threads on here are virtually pointless. Anyone who doesn't vote tory is a mouth breather, according to most of you. Perhaps these threads are just to remind yourselves how superior you are. Most peculiar.

[anonymous-user]

skyrover said:

As per the title...

Labour gave us a broken economy.

The Conservatives have turned it around into the strongest in Europe with record employment, low inflation and stable interest rates.

Not sure it's stronger than Germany's economy.

It doesn't matter who was in power in '08, they were going to get hammered. It doesn't matter who was in power a few years after, things 'would' get better.

The macro economic situation went well beyond who was in power.

[anonymous-user]

Mermaid said:

Jasandjules said:

Because there seems little to choose between them? It's like asking if you want to be hanged or drowned.

What will be most interesting is who might be third and become in effect the power broker... My money is on UKIP right now.

Seriously? You need to understand how votes don't translate to seats under FPTP. The consistent non-partisan projections I've seen are around 48 seats for the SNP and 1 or 2 for UKIP.

[anonymous-user]

don4l said:

There is no doubt that the most influential man in British politics is Nigel Farage.

Every vote is a warning shot across the bows of the traditional parties.

I'm not sure how you define "influential" but come May 8th, which is when it counts, the most influential person in British politics will certainly not be Farage. It will be Nicola Sturgeon.

[turbobloke]

La Liga said:

skyrover said:

As per the title...

Labour gave us a broken economy.

The Conservatives have turned it around into the strongest in Europe with record employment, low inflation and stable interest rates.

Not sure it's stronger than Germany's economy.

It depends on what interpretation is put on 'stronger' as there's mention of employment and inflation as well as GDP alone. However sticking with GDP...

From The Guardian 'General Election 2015 Reality Check':

"George Osborne can correctly say that the economy grew faster than any other advanced economy"

The above was in response to the open letter from 103 business leaders pointing out the bleedin' obvious that Labour would be a disaster for Britain.

A lot of weasel words followed - not surprising given the source. For example IMF figures showed that the UK grew faster “though it is forecast to fall behind the US this year". Like everyone else, The Guardian's lefty hacks will need to wait and see. Maybe if we were fracking like the USA was then we'd be even further ahead and staying there, The Guardian is keen on fracking

[Pan Pan Pan]

Flip Martian said:

Political threads on here are virtually pointless. Anyone who doesn't vote tory is a mouth breather, according to most of you. Perhaps these threads are just to remind yourselves how superior you are. Most peculiar.

Try going to the Guardian website, and see what language posters there use to describe anyone who doesn't vote Labour. See! under the skin, we are all not so different after all.