Trump

[ZedLeg]

An example

The press clearly want the next election to be between Badenoch (or whichever roaster is in charge there in 4 years) and Farage.

Labour will have sidelined itself with another PFI scandal, who are you going to vote for?

[Simon]

Not weighing in on the morals of voting/abstaining, but the practical effect of abstaining is exactly the same as casting a vote for the prevailing vote split. You might feel all morally upstanding by sticking to your principles, but what you have effectively done, without giving explicit permission, is cast your vote 53% Trump, 47% Harris (or whatever the final percentage was). If you're happy with that as the result of your non-vote, carry on.

Completely agree with this. You're saying 'I'm good with what everyone else wants'.

What I think should happen is a compulsory vote, but for the ballot to have a 'none of the above' option. Kinda like the state saying 'we need to hear from you, even if you hate everything on offer'.

[dinny_g]

An example

The press clearly want the next election to be between Badenoch (or whichever roaster is in charge there in 4 years) and Farage.

Labour will have sidelined itself with another PFI scandal, who are you going to vote for?

Badenoch or whichever roaster is in charge...

Pretty straightforward question to me...

[ZedLeg]

You’ve just voted for the party you rejected at the last election for what reason?

[duncs500]

There were independent candidates in the US election as there are here. I absolutely agree with voting for someone that on the face of it has no realistic chance of winning because they are most aligned to your views.

Whilst they may not get near winning the seat, they may surprise someone and send a message about potential policy and demonstrate voters views, or even start a movement that gains momentum in the future.

Even a none of the above sends some kind of message (albeit) not about what that voter would have preferred instead, but I appreciate sometimes even with a few independents there may not be anyone you can get behind.

Not voting at all could mean anything from the voter loved both candidates equally, to they just don't care, whatever. It's not in the slightest bit useful.

[ZedLeg]

Not weighing in on the morals of voting/abstaining, but the practical effect of abstaining is exactly the same as casting a vote for the prevailing vote split. You might feel all morally upstanding by sticking to your principles, but what you have effectively done, without giving explicit permission, is cast your vote 53% Trump, 47% Harris (or whatever the final percentage was). If you're happy with that as the result of your non-vote, carry on.

Completely agree with this. You're saying 'I'm good with what everyone else wants'.

What I think should happen is a compulsory vote, but for the ballot to have a 'none of the above' option. Kinda like the state saying 'we need to hear from you, even if you hate everything on offer'.

How is that different from abstaining though? Just adding paperwork.

[V8Granite]

There were independent candidates in the US election as there are here. I absolutely agree with voting for someone that on the face of it has no realistic chance of winning because they are most aligned to your views.

Whilst they may not get near winning the seat, they may surprise someone and send a message about potential policy and demonstrate voters views, or even start a movement that gains momentum in the future.

Even a none of the above sends some kind of message (albeit) not about what that voter would have preferred instead, but I appreciate sometimes even with a few independents there may not be anyone you can get behind.

Not voting at all could mean anything from the voter loved both candidates equally, to they just don't care, whatever. It's not in the slightest bit useful.

Agree with all of the above.

Dave!

[Nefarious]

I think dismissing ethical considerations from a personal vote is daft.

The practical effect of voting for candidates regardless of your view on them is to show them that it doesn’t matter what they do, they just have to be marginally less evil than the other guy.

An analogous situation is people choosing not to eat veal because they think it is cruel to eat younger cows. However, the practical result is that nearly all male cows end up slaughtered at birth because there is no market for them, resulting in an objectively worse outcome for the cows whose welfare the people are concerned about.

It is all well and good to justify an action (or inaction) with your personal philosophy, but your personal philosophy is completely irrelevant if the net result of your action/inaction is the complete opposite of what you say you are trying to achieve.

In voting, you effectively don't have a choice of whether to vote or not. Your simple binary choice is - vote for one candidate, or cast you vote for the prevailing vote split. Whichever makes you happier. No amount of narrative around it makes one iota of difference.

[ZedLeg]

Seems like a really good way to pragmatically end up in the same place as we’re in.

It’s a constant erosion of standards that people don’t notice imo.

40 years ago it would’ve been unimaginable to vote for a labour party talking about nhs privatisation, 20 years ago most would’ve balked at voting for a party touting more pfi. Yet here we are, because the other option was worse.

I’m not content to go along with the slide, don’t particularly care if that makes me “right or wrong”.

[dinny_g]

You’ve just voted for the party you rejected at the last election for what reason?

Because my vote in the last election was fundamentally, in order to give the Labour party a chance to govern. If, over the course of this parliament, they prove themselves incapable, or at least, no better than at running the country than the Conservatives, then I will revert to my more natural political affiliation.

To me, the politics of Farage and the politics of the Conservatives, while both far from the politics of the Labour Party, are very different if emotion is removed from the assessment.

[ZedLeg]

So you’d vote for the tories with no expectation of improvement if there wasn’t another better option?

[Nefarious]

I wholeheartedly agree with you about the slide, and the dangers of the least worst option, but I disagree about using a abstention or spoiled ballot to achieve change.

The theory is that as parties maneuver around each other's position, they create a space for a new entity to come along and fill the space left.

Something called Hotelling theory describes it like ice cream vans on a long linear beach. If you're the first van to turn up, where do you park? bang smack in the middle to capture everyone from both sides. If you're the second van to turn up, where do you park? right next to the first guy, so you at least capture half the beach. If you're the third guy to turn up, what then? There is no stable equilibrium. There is always an incentive for someone to move their van into the largest remaining gap. In theory, it should always create a force for everyone to move back to the centre.

But then you have the issue of the distribution of sunbathers on the beach. If social media (and various other nefarious voices) start false rumours that the water is warmer down one end, then the dynamics of the vans changes because the distribution is no longer homogeneous. The "centre" becomes the mean of the population distribution. But the problem isn't with the system of ice cream vans, the problem is with the skewing of the population distribution.

[ZedLeg]

The theory is that as parties maneuver around each other's position, they create a space for a new entity to come along and fill the space left.

I’ve literally been figuring out if I could run for local council or something recently

imo the problem with this (while I agree with the principle) is that neo liberalism has made politics very expensive. What was it $30bil on that election? Makes it hard for a grassroots movement to break in.

[dinny_g]

So you’d vote for the tories with no expectation of improvement if there wasn’t another better option?

I don't see it quite like like that Zed..

I think that running the UK (or any other nation for that matter) in 2025, given all of the challenges both locally and globally, is a very difficult job and I believe that only marginal gains are possible from one parliament to another, all hopefully moving the country in a positive direction and to a better place.

I didn't believe before the election, that Labour could change the world but I believed it was worth giving them a chance and I would be very happy to be proved wrong (cause there's 4 + more years so lets give them a chance)

If all that Labour can do is move us very slightly forward in one direction and all that the Conservatives can do is move us very slightly forward in a slightly different direction then I will vote for the Conservatives

(remember in you scenario, Labour have dropped the ball in this parliament and aren't a choice next time out)

[ZedLeg]

You’ve just described erosion of standards dinny, you didn’t vote for them because you thought Labour would do a better job but would vote for them as the best choice despite them not improving.

That’s how it happens.

[Gavster]

The theory is that as parties maneuver around each other's position, they create a space for a new entity to come along and fill the space left.

I’ve literally been figuring out if I could run for local council or something recently

imo the problem with this (while I agree with the principle) is that neo liberalism has made politics very expensive. What was it $30bil on that election? Makes it hard for a grassroots movement to break in.

I'm unsure that neoliberalism, albeit responsible for many things, was the thing that made it hard for grassroots movements to break through the two party dominance in the UK. Anyway, if you do want to make a difference politically from a grass roots perspective then you are going to have infinitely more success and happiness by ignoring national politics for now and focussing hyper-locally, such as being a councillor or working with the local community. Not only because that's where you can actually work and make a difference, but also that's how grass-roots movements take hold, by demonstrating their effectiveness at a small scale, before moving onto larger groups of people.

[duncs500]

I’ve literally been figuring out if I could run for local council or something recently

Do it! Honestly, I might not be politically aligned to you but you're clearly passionate and well informed. I would rather have a discussion with someone like that, maybe see something from a different perspective, maybe learn something. That's also the kind of person I'd want on a ballot paper, as a minimum it allows us to see what kind of support there is out there for your policy opinions and may indirectly influence policy with enough support.

Politics is missing people who are not afraid to give genuine opinions, and the polarised nature of life at the moment means all any budding politician cares about is avoiding a social media 'call out' / 'pile on' for expressing the 'wrong' opinion whether that's a left or right viewpoint (once they have left the comfort of their particular echo chamber).

[Gavster]

I'd defintiely applaud anyone who gets involved. I've worked on the fringes of national politics campaigning and briefly with a few ministries and behind the scenes it's an absolutely awful, constant fight for attention and relevance, regardless of your beliefs or politics. There's only a certain amount of merit involved, it's mainly about who is hard-headed enough to get their voice embedded into the minds of people that matter and even then the minister will base their decisions on whatever they learned in their GCSEs. I got close to it all and became quite repelled by how fierce the whole thing is, hence why I stepped back from it all, it's a literal daily battle. Oh, and also because I became disillusioned by how many organisations (even the holier than thou ones - I could name some large charities) are often guided by egos and/or money.

[ZedLeg]

That’s all by design imo. They don’t want people politically engaged because they wouldn’t be able to get away with what they’re doing so easily.

[dinny_g]

You’ve just described erosion of standards dinny, you didn’t vote for them because you thought Labour would do a better job but would vote for them as the best choice despite them not improving.

That’s how it happens.

I didn't vote for them because I hoped Labour would do a better job, not thought - and they still might.

I should point out that the last GE was a bit different, coming as it did after so many years of Conservative rule, Covid etc. Next time out, given the same inputs, I might choose not to vote, I may choose one party, maybe another, maybe a fringe candidate in my local constituency as they're locally sounding good etc.