For my British friends …

A bunch of things but...

When Liz Truss became prime minister Labour was ahead by 2%in the polls, ie just a bit.
In her 43 days she brought in a budget with £45 million tax cut for rich people without actually showing how it would be funded. The IMF instantly said it was dangerous. The market reacted by plummeting the value of UK government debt (known as Gilts). These are "safe" investments used by many UK pensions to ensure they have solid liquidity. But the falling value caused them to start selling. This meant the value went down more. Essentially the Bank of England jumped in to prop it up by injecting £60 million. The pound slumped to its lowest ever value.

In hours she broke the UK economy. We the tax payers lost £30million we never got back. When she quit Labour had a 25% lead that has hardly changed to now.

That's really where they lost it.

Yes Brexit has made us all poorer, yes we've now got very high immigration as we're not training our children and we're an aging population. They have raised taxes but cut services etc etc. It's been essentially a bad 14 years. Life expectancy is down over 3 million use food banks to eat etc.

We need to except we're a poor unimportant country now and need to reshape our expectations as a result.

The result suggests a strong desire to give the other lot a go after some years of one lot - simple as that.

In fact, as was mentioned on this morning's Today programme, major switches from one party to another are not very frequent in British politics. Each major party tends to be the Governmental one for a few terms, then the other, and so on. For the many decades it has been mainly a Labour / Conservative match but the Liberals (pre Liberal-Democrat) have been in power, and their successor party does sometimes make significant gains.


That low participation, only 60%, is fundamentally much more serious. It suggests a widespread uninterest in, or disillusionment with, politicians and politics generally; not any particular party, individuals, acts or policies. That is something for all parties to think about, and I suggest starting with honesty in interviews, and wasting less time attacking their opponents and more time explaining their own plans.


I do not propose compulsory voting as some nations use. There may be a case for an "Abstain" box on the ballot form (the correct term in any election, not that childish "None of the above") - but such a poor turn-out is bad for democracy.

Similarly I do not want any sort of "proportional voting" - the excuse of those who support parties that prove of only minor popularity because they offer little enough to be attractive. Its likely effect would simply be a more diffuse version of the same result, making governing the country even harder.

I have no time for that daft "tactical voting" notion, which is insincere, even dishonest.

There is nothing wrong with our electoral system, which is "proportional" arithmetically anyway, but the lower the participation the weaker it is and the less meaningful the result. That applies to any voting system - no matter how pretentiously complicated, it still needs voters.

What is wrong is low participation!

Those too lazy to vote are the only ones who can truthfully claim their votes were "wasted" - but they can not and should not complain about the country's politics if they are too idle to participate.

Many voters who usually support the Tories may have stayed at home this time, I think that's why.

The Tory party are in disarray and I really don’t think it was down to Brexit.
It was like this in 1997 after 18 years of Tory rule when the Labour Party had been in similar disarray.
They have been through several leaders-one of whom lost her seat-and I’m not sure Sunak even really wanted the job.
They basically lost the country -and I’m not sure they would have won in 2019 if the press had not done a demolition job on Jeremy Corbyn-who stood as an independent and retained his seat.
The country are fed up with the high cost of living,a long running industrial dispute on the railways in England and a party which had no clear vision for the future.
As Labour discovered after the Tory landslide in 1979 it is a long way back.
It was a coalition with the Lib-Dems that put the Tories back into power 14 years ago.
I think it it will be a lot longer than that before they see power again.
As for the turn out that is actually pretty good.
It has never been more than about 70% and has been worse.
Although I don’t think you have any right to moan about whoever is power if you can’t be bothered to contribute to the process.

The Conservative Party need to move further to the right. If they had more right wing policies that they had a record of implementing, with successful results, more would have voted for them, and they would not have lost so many votes to Reform. They have greatly disappointed with Brexit.

It has to be said that 14 years is also a long time, and people are more likely to be disenchanted if they have been governed by the same party for so long.

It is interesting.

Here in the US we dealt with the free trade issue (for the former non-Canadian British colonies on our continent) way back in the late 18th century.

It all started because the colonial charter of Maryland gave it full control over the Potomac, right up to the Virginia shore. This led to squabbling. Also, there was a hodge-podge of currency, taxes, tarrifs, etc.

The Union eliminated all of that. The only thing a state could do is collect fees to support inspections.

I love how I can travel coast-to-coast with no need for papers, fees, etc. One currency. Yes, states have some control over things, but for the most part there is uniformity. Of course, having a fairly uniform culture and common language helps.

And in recent times free trade has expanded to Canada and Mexico, if I am not mistaken. My car was built in Canada!

Definitely buyer’s remorse over that.

People are realising voting makes no difference. Bravo.

No. On the contrary, one major factor (there are many others) was the failure of the Tory government to do anything with the freedoms Brexit gave them. Most obviously, immigration has actually increased since Brexit!

It's over economics that British voted for labor in England which was partly caused by brexit and in Scotland it looks like Labour will be the largest party because the SNP did not deliver on independence and Northern ireland will be the same

[@soosie]🤔 maybe brexit maybe people where sick of the tories maybe a good labour campaign against a weak govenment lacking ideas maybe the reform party taking tory voters thought they only managed too win four seats

Only 60% participation in election ??

Voting is compulsory in my country

You get fined $550 & or go to jail

It’s sad so few people voted. It used to be 83% or more.

Apathy.

The campaign did not need six weeks, three would have done.

Many reasons. I would like to think discontent at a decline in the standard of political ethics and public service ethos played at least some part 😐

Brexit. Rishi got punished for something that was not his fault

Maybe a simple minded view but I just think people have seen that fiscally contractive policies don't help the economy.

have no idea, don't know anything about it

Yes among many other reasons

Rishi was put as PM by mistake.

Pretty low voting attendance,but that's pretty much the same anywhere in the world these day's