Kate BarrettIf you live in britain, vote for labour
Florian@thewaether I'm still feeling a bit thrown under the bus by the "free movement will end" turn but other than that the manifesto is good
@theoutrider I thought they said the opposite? That they weren't going to focus on immigrtion as an issue at all. I don't know if I can dig up the quote, though
@thewaether yeah, that was the draft manifesto. They backpedalled on that, reportedly Starmer pushed for it to be changed
@theoutrider ugh. I swear, left wing partied keep pandering to the right thinking it will get them votes, and it always leaves their actual base behind. and then they don't vote for them, and it reinforces itself.
Mind, despite labour's failings, this is the most left platform I've seen in this country my whole life, so I'm still voting for them. It's either 1 bad thing or all the bad things
@thewaether I'm not allowed to vote anyway so it's a moot point but I agree. The manifesto also specifies that they would guarantee a "truly meaningful vote on the final deal" which sounds like a get-out clause.
@theoutrider If we HAVE to do brexit though, I want it to be the "I'm doing this so i can naitonalise rail" guy instead of the "I'm doing this to kick black people out and fill my pockets with ca$$$h" lady
@thewaether yeah, obviously. Especially given the context of the wider manifesto I would certainly trust Labour to at least *try* to not shit on everyone in the process, while the Tories are hellbent on turning this place into a turbolibertarian right-wing hellhole
@theoutrider Like... Anyone voting tories must have missed the entirety of last year, the first time they've truly been in power since John Major, and they fucked everything up more than it's ever been fucked in the space of a few months. Despite this, people have really short memories and seem to think labour's the one that's in crisis. Corbyn's the most level-headed of them all right now
@thewaether If I were to vote I'd be quite torn - Cambridge's former LD MP is a legitimately good guy, and the current Labour one has been woefully ineffective on basically anything.
I became a Labour member after Corbyn's first election but as an EU citizen with a UK partner any variant of Brexit would be potential trouble. At the same time I don't think the LDs could get strong enough to actually reverse anything, while Labour still seem to be trying to keep all options open...
@theoutrider yeah. I've always been against brexit for exactly those reasons (free travel made things so much easier) I'd say if your labour MP is inneffective, you've gotta vote for em anyway, cause the choice is,
Labour: do good innefficiently
Tories: do evil very efficiently
Labour: do good innefficiently
Tories: do evil very efficiently
@thewaether I'm more than a little grouchy about both Labour and the LDs going "lol coalition? fuck no" because for shit's sake, you're literally saying you'd rather hand power to the Tories than have to share it with anyone else
@thewaether like now more than ever anyone left of what the Tories have become has to work together to obstruct them in any way possible
@theoutrider Also yeah, the tories are UKIP, they absorbed all their policies. I'm disturbed that my mum for example, hates ukip, but is dead set on voting for the tories this election. I keep saying, "you know they ARE ukip now, right?" and it just bounces off
@thewaether so here's a little story
in Germany, coalition or "largest minority" governments are the norm
in 2005, the New Labour equivalent government of Germany called an early general election, saying (correctly) the endless obstructionism of the conservatives made it unable to act
a few months prior, a new party formed of people grumpy w/the New Labourisation of the social democrats, people from the socialist party that grew out of the E.German regime, and various other left-wingers
@thewaether the general election ended with both the New Labour equiv and the conservatives losing about 10% of the vote each, which distributed among the new party, Greens, libertarian party and very minor others
Labour + The Left together would have had a comfortable but not absolute majority
instead they had a big hissy fit, ruled out any coalition, and instead Germany got saddled with Lab+Con coalition holding near 70% of parliament
@thewaether the same Lab+Con that months prior had insisted they are so unable to compromise on any level that they had to hold new elections
that particular election was one of the catalytic events that led up to my leaving the country. I was visiting my brother in Florida when the results came in and I was *fucking furious*.
@theoutrider or rather it sounds like we're pretty screwed. If labour can get a majority we'll at the very least have a more stable and chilled-out time than any other outcome, but a stalemate or a tie is more likely. That, or a conservative majority, cause people are still dumb enough to vote for them.
@theoutrider So you're saying that's similar to what we'll have here? Sounds possible.
@thewaether no, I'm just venting about leftist parties that should be perfectly capable of allying rather handing power to the right than working together which is what Lab/LDs have been posturing about here
@theoutrider I'd like to hope they can set aside their differences, cause otherwise we're in a con + ukip coalition
@thewaether yikes. I'd rather not think about what that would mean.
Labour of course have expelled people who were forming cross-party anti-Tory pacts at a local level and I can't find enough swear words to express my thoughts there
@thewaether I mean, letter of the law and all but for shit's sake you asshats
@theoutrider hopefully they'll come to their senses when it actually comes to the crunch
@theoutrider It's likely to be very close, too. The lib dems would easily join the tories again, so it could come down to their choice.
I know the SNP hates labour, but, labour joining with them could be the only way to avoid the tories. That would be very weird
@thewaether "Freedom of movement will end when we leave the European Union." is the literal first sentence in the "Immigration" section in the final manifesto.
@theoutrider them going ahead on brexit is the stupidest thing they're doing, yeah. In a way I understand why (because it was the winning thing and it's hard to go back on that) but also I'm of the opinion the referendum was unfair from the get-go (most referendums require a massive majority, which should've been in the rules before it was even started) so imo, overturning it is perfectly fine if you're the one in power