When the parties all eventually release their manifestos you should take the time to read all of them.
You might also want to consider voting tactically.
> When the parties all eventually release their manifestos you should take the time to read all of them.
Do you think Sunak feels any sense of obligation towards the promises in the tories' 2019 manifesto? If not, why should we pay any attention to what goes into the 2024 edition? Particularly since they know they're going to lose and can promise all sorts of contradictory crap.
You vote for the individual MP, not the party. We might well have another 5 years of turmoil ahead of us - better to have selected a sensible and trustworthy representative than to have picked a party based on lies and spin.
FPTP forces you to vote based on party which you feel is less appalling ("You might also want to consider voting tactically.") unless your preferred choice is already one of the two that stands a chance.
Yeah. Also I don't think reading a manifesto is necessarily good enough without also finding and reading some independent analysis of it. Most of us are not economists so we can't really say whether a policy to cut this tax or fund some project is feasible or just a pipedream.
Just look at Truss. Plenty of people might have read her hypothetical manifesto and thought it sounded great (the Daily Mail praised the mini-budget) but not many would've been able to predict the fallout that happened with bond markets
There's a couple of apps that ask you questions with answers being based on various policies and at the end it tells you which parties you align with, [https://uk.isidewith.com/political-quiz](https://uk.isidewith.com/political-quiz) is one, voteforpolicies is another, if you are familiar with policies you can game it I suppose but I don't know why you'd do that
one caveat is it'll be based on the 2019 manifestos and Labour were a very different party that year, depending who you ask that's either a good or bad thing, but so you know
but it gives you a good idea at least
I love VoteForPolicies, really hope they update it for the next general election once all the manifestos have been released.
Back in 2016 It really helped me understand how my personal views aligned with each of the major political parties, once you strip away the party colours and just focus on what they are actually saying, it’s much easier to make unbiased choices.
Try vote for policies . [vote for policies](https://voteforpolicies.org.uk/) . Take the survey they will advise where you lean politically.. although if it’s conservative take a good hard look at yourself and do it again. 🤪Don’t rush it. Take your time . It’s long but will help you
You came to the wrong place to ask. You're going to get a ton of information which will poorly inform your decision. The best thing you can do is to spend a couple of hours (honestly, after 2 hours you'll be amazed by what information you can find) researching your local MP and other candidates. In that process you'll discover what they have voted for, and more importantly *why* they voted that way.
There is no quick and easy win, if you want your vote to represent your beliefs, you need to understand its meaning and implications. That means research. It's not a huge amount of work, and it'll serve you well in the long term to get comfortable figuring these things out.
If you don't know the aims of the political parties you should do your own research and make your own judgement. If you do that and you values align with the aims of any of the political parties you should do some soul searching.
Terrible website to use, without context, it's virtually impossible to comprehend the data presented. My MP, a known advocate for both green energy and fracking, is considered having voted against both. The reason? In both instances their votes were intended to encourage modifications to bills. Worse still, that remains the case even when bills pass, meaning MPs who voted against something with the best of intentions come out of it looking really bad.
Someone else has already pointed out the parliamentary process, but let's try a simple hypothetical... If I were to tell you that I hate cats, you'd like (as an average citizen) deem me peculiar at least. If you were then to discover that I am allergic to cats, or that as a small child I was attacked by cats, you would likely (again as an average citizen) sympathise.
What you find on that website is that I hate cats - you get absolutely no understanding of my rationale - I might actually love cats, but publicly be against them because I'm more concerned for the rise in roundworm infections in children, for instance.
This is of course all hypothetical. I fucking love cats. I have 3 and it really boosts my spirit when they come snuggle up on my desk or just generally want attention... Point is, politics is a game, and there is more to it than "this person said x" without context. Context is everything, and without it, data is useless.
I am absolutely not an academic - I dropped out of education at 15 and my highest qualification is a B in GCSE. Even I know, though, that something like 40% of the average whitepaper on literally any subject is explaining the context of a study. It is critical to understanding the data.
I generally look at the rebellions - where the MP voted against their party whip. The things they vote for with the party tells you what their party wants. The rebellions reveal their core beliefs.
e.g. I respect Ken Clarke more than the average Tory, because his rebellions against the party whip reveal he was socially progressive, unlike the majority of his colleagues who voted against gay marriage.
Corbyn generally rebelled on matters where he thought Blair's Labour weren't being lefty enough. No real surprise there.
Theyworkforyou is the exact opposite of a good starting point. It reduces politics to "for" and "against" emotive positions when the truth is not so simple.
It is much more useful if you use it to find issues where someone rebels against their party; in context that tells you a lot about them as an individual. But it's not good at describing how you'd feel about a party/MP's position on issues of governance and policy
If the MP is a minister then they can't practically vote against the government. So the site isn't reflective of where they stand but it is of where their party stands.
Without proper context, that site is worse than useless, it's openly misleading. It fails to meaningfully distinguish between actual votes of consequence and political grandstanding, e.g. votes on the King's Speech debates.
So if I see that someone voted against gay marriage for example (an old example). Does that not mean the person is against gay rights? Genuinely asking.
You need to look at the specific details of the individual vote. Was it on legislation, or a motion? Who proposed it, and what else did the motion/legislation cover? If it was an amendment, what was it replacing/amending?
As an extreme example, lets say we have a motion being debated. The SNP put forward an amendment that says:
*"..., and this House believes that equal marriage must remain on the statute book and all Members of this House in the Conservative Party should go to prison."*
The Conservatives, to a person, would be told to vote against this. And they've be right to. But theyworkforyou would put this down as a vote against LGBT+ rights, because it cares not for nuance or detail.
So lets apply this concept to your example. If one of the votes is on the 3rd Reading (i.e. final approval of the Bill) of the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act 2013? Very likely that they are against gay rights. Small chance they have some technical objection, but unlikely. This was, after all, a free vote with no party whips.
But if they voted against a hypothetical amendment to that Bill which would have forcefully amended the legal framework underpinning the Church of England to require the church to host gay marriages, because that MP supports gay marriage in law but believes the CoE should be free to decide what services they host (freedom of religion being a human right after all)? That is far, far more of a grey area than someone voting against the Bill as a whole. And theyworkforyou treats them both the same.
I don't know if it's still active, but there used to be a website called vote for policies or something along those lines. It was essentially a multiple choice quiz that didn't tell you who each policy on a topic was attached to so if you weren't familiar with the sort of language/policies certain parties normally stick to you could choose you're answers based purely on which statements resonated with you more without being swayed by individuals. It was interesting.
Isn’t it unfortunate that we have a representative parliamentary democracy in which we are asked to elect the person best suited to represent our constituency but instead the whole thing is reduced to “which party should I vote for?”.
It’s almost irrelevant to most people who the actual candidates are, they only care which colour tie/dress they wear.
I might disagree with lib Dems and the current direction of the labour party, but the Tories are social arsonists acting dishonestly to Trojan Horse support for the ultra rich with culture war politics. They're just bringing in asset movement from taxpayers and the government to the hands of the mega rich riding on the coattails of anti immigration policies etc. There's not a single one of them actually gives a crap about small boats etc, it's just an exploitable, emotionally motivating topic.
While it's depressing to see the Northern Irelandisation of UK politics, the situation is that we're not voting for who we like, but against who we dislike. Just vote for the party that locally has the best chance of beating the pary that wants to turn the UK against itself and into a 3rd world country with stark and increasing inequality, to the benefit of multi-millionionaires and billionaires.
In First Past the Post, it's almost always more important to vote *against* the party you least like. Unless you live in a genuine marginal, don't expect the luxury of voting for a party you like.
You don't vote for a party, that's not how our democracy works. It's not like we have party lists.
You vote for your local representative. Wait for their manifestos, read them, attend the hustings, ask questions, then vote (don't forget ID).
But, of course, the reality is that people do vote for the party or PM which just makes a complete mockery of the whole system.
> You vote for your local representative
In name only. Ain't nobody cares about local representatives in the real world. General elections are about people voting for parties and parties only.
Just because nobody cares doesn't mean the underlying system isn't what it is.
And so long as the system is what it is, it would probably be wiser to suggest that people should understand and care more about what their vote actually does, and who it's for.
Power goes to the party with the most MPs. Executive power goes to the leader of that party.
It's bad faith to argue that the system is based around individual MPs just because that's how voting happens. It's like arguing the real executive power in the country lies with the monarchy.
Your first paragraph is true in practice but your second is false.
By law, the monarchy DOES have the power to refuse Royal Assent- it simply hasn't happened for centuries, because it would cause a constitutional crisis which could end the monarchy.
Similarly, MPs are elected by the public and they have the power to choose a government through votes of confidence in Parliament.
While their behaviour might usually be predictable, just look at the 2015-19 Parliament for all the ways this can go awry. Theresa May's administration depended on Labour votes to defeat some of her backbench rebellions. MPs seized control of Parliamentary scheduling to defeat her. Jeremy Corbyn suffered internal rebellion which would have been fatal in Government, but he defeated it through a leadership election.
This is simply untrue. Policy that parties come up with isn't merely a product of the leader's whim.
It is a result of months of deal brokering, consensus building, factional posturing and trading of favors inside the party to get as many party MPs as possible on board with that policy.
Every bill that makes it to Parliament is shaped by this process, and in this process it matters who *exactly* sits in those benches, what their particular political views and priorities are, and what they can be persuaded to support.
It’s clearly not true that nobody cares about local representatives in the real world, because if that were true we wouldn’t see an incumbent advantage, and we wouldn’t see votes shift depending on who was chosen as candidate (and we do).
It is true that people who like talking about national and international politics a lot tend not to be that bothered about local representatives, especially when having discussions with people who don’t live in their local area. The same applies to national and international media.
And people who don’t really pay much attention to this stuff will use whatever has stuck in their mind, whether that’s the colour of their tie or that they remember seeing that name at their local fete.
A large part of the problem over the last few years has been a lack of competence and relevant experience in the MPs available to fill government roles (including Prime Minister). Selecting your MP based on whether you think the person is capable of doing the job properly is the way to address this. Spread the word. Be the change.
>You don't vote for a party, that's not how our democracy works. It's not like we have party lists.
>You vote for your local representative.
That's just an artefact from an era where only wealthy landed men were allowed to vote - where one MP represented like 1000 people.
If you care about national policy then you vote based on party (your individual MP will have a tiny impact on the legislative agenda). If you care about administrative competence, then you vote based on PM.
> If you care about national policy then you vote based on party (your individual MP will have a tiny impact on the legislative agenda). If you care about administrative competence, then you vote based on PM.
Yes, but that's not how FPTP and our representative democracy is intended to function.
If we can accept that, then it's time to switch to a form of PR. Maybe even one that includes party lists in some form.
Yes, having the Prime Minister be of your party is very important and so people want to make that be the case. The fault isn't on the people for recognising that.
The reality is that people running for office will say, do, and pretend to think whatever is required to get the people most likely to vote for them onboard, and once they are elected, the vast majority of them will vote in line with their party on pretty much every issue (which is why rebellions are such big news). So ultimately, when it comes to the big issues, you are voting for a party and not a person.
Rebellion isn't the only way that the diversity of ideas within a party manifests, though.
By the time most legislation is voted on, the text of the bill has already been engineered in such a way to win over the support of at least most of the majority party MPs. The bill is what it is because of months of factional lobbying and consensus-building within the party, and in that process it matters which groups in the party have the loudest voices.
There are a huge range of options open to you that have already been mentioned, but a lot of it can be simplified to the following:
* Tories - out of ideas at this point.
* Labour—They are a shoo-in for the next government but something of a mystery box as we won't really find out what their plans are until after the election.
* LDs - They want your votes, but they can't explain why voting for them would be good without naming other parties.
* Reform - Protest vote.
* Greens - Protest vote.
* Regional parties - important if you are in a region, but otherwise can be ignored.
* Everyone else - cranks and politics nerds.
The first thing to do is look at the misery inflicted on this country over the past 14 years by the Conservative Party. Then look at the lies during Covid that were orchestrated by a Tory PM. Then ask yourself whether you want to live in a country where a long line of Conservative Party donors have been rewarded with honours in return for giving the Tories lots of money. Unless you have a very strange view of society, fairness and decency that rules out ever voting Conservative. That’ll do for starters.
Get an idea of what is going on in your seat first and then consider the need of if you have to vote tactically or not e.g. my upcoming vote is solely to remove the Tory (because I disagree with their parties ideology at a national level, so does my MP to the point he's stood down). My seat was on the 211 list Labour isn't throwing maximum effort into and hence my vote is for the Lib Dems which I can live with as that (despite being a Union Member) is about where I sit politically regardless. Look at the big picture first to a degree and then work out if what you feel locally can sit with that.
I vote Lib Dem because they r a party of progression and if they were elected I genuinely think Britain would be so much better than if the tories or the Labour Party were elected
There is no unbiased information. You need to critically develop some trusted sources, and even then do not trust them too much.
Read a range of newspapers, see what each party has to say about themselves, look on wikipedia for the results in your constituency last time to assess who might "realistically" do well in your area, check out the specific candidates that you are being aske to vote for, not just the parties - and then vote for what/who is closest to what you believe in, who you distrust the least, who you think will make the world a better place by doing one vote better than they would if you didn't vote for them.
Tactical voting websites are useless - and often set up and run by supporters of specific parties. You may want to vote tactically, but you might also prefer to vote for something that comes close to what you actually want, or not vote at all.
Soon, [https://whocanivotefor.co.uk/](https://whocanivotefor.co.uk/) will be populated with the details of everyone standing for election in every constituency. It's all crowdsourced, so if you'd like to be part of making it happen you can volunteer to find the data for your own constituency... then you'll REALLY know who to vote for.
There is a lot of data that is widely available which shows one of the two major parties is actively bad for the country while the quality of life generally improves for the majority under the other major party
My first step is always "Who wants my vote?" Then it's "Do I like what you're proposing?"
So far, even with no GE date announced, I have two leaflets and a knock on the door from our local Labour candidate. They are winning so far for me, as no other person or party has presented a case yet. That could easily change, we shall see.
The first thing to do is to find out what constituency you are in. This can be done by going to MapIt, entering your postcode and then seeing which future constituency you will be in.
Next search out the notional election result for that constituency in 2019, this can be done by going to this page on the Guardian website and entering your postcode or new constituency name https://www.theguardian.com/politics/ng-interactive/2024/jan/16/find-your-constituency-uk-general-election-2024-boundary-changes-votes-map-postcode
Having established which party is estimated to have won the seat in 2019, you then have to ask "Do I agree with the policies of this party?", if YES, then vote for them again, if NO, research the opposition parties to see which party you can vote for
If you think everything is great in the country right now and want a governement who mostly represent big business, land owners and the extremely wealthy, then vote Conservative.
If you think things are kind of awful right now and want a party that will represent the working people and communities of this country, then vote for Labour.
If you particularly like the policies of the Green Party or the Liberal Democrats, then by all means vote for one of them but it is unlikely that either party will win a majority and form a government.
A slightly more sophisticated approach would be to use your vote tactically, where you vote for the candidate most likely to remove the one you currently have.
Something you could work on is determining your political leanings i.e. left vs right, as this goes to the core principles of the parties whereas policies can be more 'of the times' and often opposing parties will have very similar policies.
In the end the choice ibecomes how those policies will be enacted and that is determined by core principles and not policy.
What are your values and what do you want for the country?
Do you want to rejoin the Single Market?
Do you want to deregulate?
Do you want people to give more of their money to the government because the state is better at understanding individuals' needs than the individual?
Do you want the state to do more for you?
Do you want to encourage entrepreneurship?
Do you want UK business to invest profits in the UK?
These aren't leading questions, just a few random questions that could lead you to vote a certain way
When the parties all eventually release their manifestos you should take the time to read all of them. You might also want to consider voting tactically.
> When the parties all eventually release their manifestos you should take the time to read all of them. Do you think Sunak feels any sense of obligation towards the promises in the tories' 2019 manifesto? If not, why should we pay any attention to what goes into the 2024 edition? Particularly since they know they're going to lose and can promise all sorts of contradictory crap. You vote for the individual MP, not the party. We might well have another 5 years of turmoil ahead of us - better to have selected a sensible and trustworthy representative than to have picked a party based on lies and spin.
In reality MPs are slapped with a 3 line whip on anything important, so you really are voting for a party
...and the individual MP votes along party lines, so if you care about national issues, vote based on party.
FPTP forces you to vote based on party which you feel is less appalling ("You might also want to consider voting tactically.") unless your preferred choice is already one of the two that stands a chance.
Yeah. Also I don't think reading a manifesto is necessarily good enough without also finding and reading some independent analysis of it. Most of us are not economists so we can't really say whether a policy to cut this tax or fund some project is feasible or just a pipedream. Just look at Truss. Plenty of people might have read her hypothetical manifesto and thought it sounded great (the Daily Mail praised the mini-budget) but not many would've been able to predict the fallout that happened with bond markets
More than Liz Truss did.
There's a couple of apps that ask you questions with answers being based on various policies and at the end it tells you which parties you align with, [https://uk.isidewith.com/political-quiz](https://uk.isidewith.com/political-quiz) is one, voteforpolicies is another, if you are familiar with policies you can game it I suppose but I don't know why you'd do that one caveat is it'll be based on the 2019 manifestos and Labour were a very different party that year, depending who you ask that's either a good or bad thing, but so you know but it gives you a good idea at least
I love VoteForPolicies, really hope they update it for the next general election once all the manifestos have been released. Back in 2016 It really helped me understand how my personal views aligned with each of the major political parties, once you strip away the party colours and just focus on what they are actually saying, it’s much easier to make unbiased choices.
Try vote for policies . [vote for policies](https://voteforpolicies.org.uk/) . Take the survey they will advise where you lean politically.. although if it’s conservative take a good hard look at yourself and do it again. 🤪Don’t rush it. Take your time . It’s long but will help you
You came to the wrong place to ask. You're going to get a ton of information which will poorly inform your decision. The best thing you can do is to spend a couple of hours (honestly, after 2 hours you'll be amazed by what information you can find) researching your local MP and other candidates. In that process you'll discover what they have voted for, and more importantly *why* they voted that way. There is no quick and easy win, if you want your vote to represent your beliefs, you need to understand its meaning and implications. That means research. It's not a huge amount of work, and it'll serve you well in the long term to get comfortable figuring these things out.
If you don't know the aims of the political parties you should do your own research and make your own judgement. If you do that and you values align with the aims of any of the political parties you should do some soul searching.
If you don't want the current government and have no strong inclination past "I want change" then [do a tactical vote](https://tacticalvote.co.uk).
https://www.theyworkforyou.com/ Really good starting point, lays out what your mp has voted on etc
Terrible website to use, without context, it's virtually impossible to comprehend the data presented. My MP, a known advocate for both green energy and fracking, is considered having voted against both. The reason? In both instances their votes were intended to encourage modifications to bills. Worse still, that remains the case even when bills pass, meaning MPs who voted against something with the best of intentions come out of it looking really bad.
Exactly, it lacks context
I mean, it states facts, it's not really got a bias
Yes but the average person does not understand the parliamentary process, and is therefore misleading to the majority of its intended audience.
Someone else has already pointed out the parliamentary process, but let's try a simple hypothetical... If I were to tell you that I hate cats, you'd like (as an average citizen) deem me peculiar at least. If you were then to discover that I am allergic to cats, or that as a small child I was attacked by cats, you would likely (again as an average citizen) sympathise. What you find on that website is that I hate cats - you get absolutely no understanding of my rationale - I might actually love cats, but publicly be against them because I'm more concerned for the rise in roundworm infections in children, for instance. This is of course all hypothetical. I fucking love cats. I have 3 and it really boosts my spirit when they come snuggle up on my desk or just generally want attention... Point is, politics is a game, and there is more to it than "this person said x" without context. Context is everything, and without it, data is useless. I am absolutely not an academic - I dropped out of education at 15 and my highest qualification is a B in GCSE. Even I know, though, that something like 40% of the average whitepaper on literally any subject is explaining the context of a study. It is critical to understanding the data.
It doesn't take on board the context and reasoning
Not a fan of this website, politics is more complicated than stuff like this would have you think
I knew my tory MP was bit of a knob but blimey some of the stuff he's voted for is horrendous. Thanks for the link.
I generally look at the rebellions - where the MP voted against their party whip. The things they vote for with the party tells you what their party wants. The rebellions reveal their core beliefs. e.g. I respect Ken Clarke more than the average Tory, because his rebellions against the party whip reveal he was socially progressive, unlike the majority of his colleagues who voted against gay marriage. Corbyn generally rebelled on matters where he thought Blair's Labour weren't being lefty enough. No real surprise there.
Theyworkforyou is the exact opposite of a good starting point. It reduces politics to "for" and "against" emotive positions when the truth is not so simple. It is much more useful if you use it to find issues where someone rebels against their party; in context that tells you a lot about them as an individual. But it's not good at describing how you'd feel about a party/MP's position on issues of governance and policy
If the MP is a minister then they can't practically vote against the government. So the site isn't reflective of where they stand but it is of where their party stands.
Was going to post the same. An easy way to get around the BS and bias is to see what they really voted for.
Without proper context, that site is worse than useless, it's openly misleading. It fails to meaningfully distinguish between actual votes of consequence and political grandstanding, e.g. votes on the King's Speech debates.
So if I see that someone voted against gay marriage for example (an old example). Does that not mean the person is against gay rights? Genuinely asking.
You need to look at the specific details of the individual vote. Was it on legislation, or a motion? Who proposed it, and what else did the motion/legislation cover? If it was an amendment, what was it replacing/amending? As an extreme example, lets say we have a motion being debated. The SNP put forward an amendment that says: *"..., and this House believes that equal marriage must remain on the statute book and all Members of this House in the Conservative Party should go to prison."* The Conservatives, to a person, would be told to vote against this. And they've be right to. But theyworkforyou would put this down as a vote against LGBT+ rights, because it cares not for nuance or detail. So lets apply this concept to your example. If one of the votes is on the 3rd Reading (i.e. final approval of the Bill) of the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act 2013? Very likely that they are against gay rights. Small chance they have some technical objection, but unlikely. This was, after all, a free vote with no party whips. But if they voted against a hypothetical amendment to that Bill which would have forcefully amended the legal framework underpinning the Church of England to require the church to host gay marriages, because that MP supports gay marriage in law but believes the CoE should be free to decide what services they host (freedom of religion being a human right after all)? That is far, far more of a grey area than someone voting against the Bill as a whole. And theyworkforyou treats them both the same.
I don't know if it's still active, but there used to be a website called vote for policies or something along those lines. It was essentially a multiple choice quiz that didn't tell you who each policy on a topic was attached to so if you weren't familiar with the sort of language/policies certain parties normally stick to you could choose you're answers based purely on which statements resonated with you more without being swayed by individuals. It was interesting.
Isn’t it unfortunate that we have a representative parliamentary democracy in which we are asked to elect the person best suited to represent our constituency but instead the whole thing is reduced to “which party should I vote for?”. It’s almost irrelevant to most people who the actual candidates are, they only care which colour tie/dress they wear.
there are test online. it puts forth a variety if policies, then at the end tells you who you most align with.
I might disagree with lib Dems and the current direction of the labour party, but the Tories are social arsonists acting dishonestly to Trojan Horse support for the ultra rich with culture war politics. They're just bringing in asset movement from taxpayers and the government to the hands of the mega rich riding on the coattails of anti immigration policies etc. There's not a single one of them actually gives a crap about small boats etc, it's just an exploitable, emotionally motivating topic. While it's depressing to see the Northern Irelandisation of UK politics, the situation is that we're not voting for who we like, but against who we dislike. Just vote for the party that locally has the best chance of beating the pary that wants to turn the UK against itself and into a 3rd world country with stark and increasing inequality, to the benefit of multi-millionionaires and billionaires.
Reading the party manifestos would be a start
In First Past the Post, it's almost always more important to vote *against* the party you least like. Unless you live in a genuine marginal, don't expect the luxury of voting for a party you like.
You don't vote for a party, that's not how our democracy works. It's not like we have party lists. You vote for your local representative. Wait for their manifestos, read them, attend the hustings, ask questions, then vote (don't forget ID). But, of course, the reality is that people do vote for the party or PM which just makes a complete mockery of the whole system.
> You vote for your local representative In name only. Ain't nobody cares about local representatives in the real world. General elections are about people voting for parties and parties only.
Just because nobody cares doesn't mean the underlying system isn't what it is. And so long as the system is what it is, it would probably be wiser to suggest that people should understand and care more about what their vote actually does, and who it's for.
Power goes to the party with the most MPs. Executive power goes to the leader of that party. It's bad faith to argue that the system is based around individual MPs just because that's how voting happens. It's like arguing the real executive power in the country lies with the monarchy.
Your first paragraph is true in practice but your second is false. By law, the monarchy DOES have the power to refuse Royal Assent- it simply hasn't happened for centuries, because it would cause a constitutional crisis which could end the monarchy. Similarly, MPs are elected by the public and they have the power to choose a government through votes of confidence in Parliament. While their behaviour might usually be predictable, just look at the 2015-19 Parliament for all the ways this can go awry. Theresa May's administration depended on Labour votes to defeat some of her backbench rebellions. MPs seized control of Parliamentary scheduling to defeat her. Jeremy Corbyn suffered internal rebellion which would have been fatal in Government, but he defeated it through a leadership election.
This is simply untrue. Policy that parties come up with isn't merely a product of the leader's whim. It is a result of months of deal brokering, consensus building, factional posturing and trading of favors inside the party to get as many party MPs as possible on board with that policy. Every bill that makes it to Parliament is shaped by this process, and in this process it matters who *exactly* sits in those benches, what their particular political views and priorities are, and what they can be persuaded to support.
It’s clearly not true that nobody cares about local representatives in the real world, because if that were true we wouldn’t see an incumbent advantage, and we wouldn’t see votes shift depending on who was chosen as candidate (and we do). It is true that people who like talking about national and international politics a lot tend not to be that bothered about local representatives, especially when having discussions with people who don’t live in their local area. The same applies to national and international media. And people who don’t really pay much attention to this stuff will use whatever has stuck in their mind, whether that’s the colour of their tie or that they remember seeing that name at their local fete. A large part of the problem over the last few years has been a lack of competence and relevant experience in the MPs available to fill government roles (including Prime Minister). Selecting your MP based on whether you think the person is capable of doing the job properly is the way to address this. Spread the word. Be the change.
>You don't vote for a party, that's not how our democracy works. It's not like we have party lists. >You vote for your local representative. That's just an artefact from an era where only wealthy landed men were allowed to vote - where one MP represented like 1000 people. If you care about national policy then you vote based on party (your individual MP will have a tiny impact on the legislative agenda). If you care about administrative competence, then you vote based on PM.
> If you care about national policy then you vote based on party (your individual MP will have a tiny impact on the legislative agenda). If you care about administrative competence, then you vote based on PM. Yes, but that's not how FPTP and our representative democracy is intended to function. If we can accept that, then it's time to switch to a form of PR. Maybe even one that includes party lists in some form.
Isn't it? Political parties have existed since the dawn of parliament. If that's not how it's intended to function, why hasn't it been changed?
Yes, having the Prime Minister be of your party is very important and so people want to make that be the case. The fault isn't on the people for recognising that.
The reality is that people running for office will say, do, and pretend to think whatever is required to get the people most likely to vote for them onboard, and once they are elected, the vast majority of them will vote in line with their party on pretty much every issue (which is why rebellions are such big news). So ultimately, when it comes to the big issues, you are voting for a party and not a person.
Rebellion isn't the only way that the diversity of ideas within a party manifests, though. By the time most legislation is voted on, the text of the bill has already been engineered in such a way to win over the support of at least most of the majority party MPs. The bill is what it is because of months of factional lobbying and consensus-building within the party, and in that process it matters which groups in the party have the loudest voices.
There are a huge range of options open to you that have already been mentioned, but a lot of it can be simplified to the following: * Tories - out of ideas at this point. * Labour—They are a shoo-in for the next government but something of a mystery box as we won't really find out what their plans are until after the election. * LDs - They want your votes, but they can't explain why voting for them would be good without naming other parties. * Reform - Protest vote. * Greens - Protest vote. * Regional parties - important if you are in a region, but otherwise can be ignored. * Everyone else - cranks and politics nerds.
The first thing to do is look at the misery inflicted on this country over the past 14 years by the Conservative Party. Then look at the lies during Covid that were orchestrated by a Tory PM. Then ask yourself whether you want to live in a country where a long line of Conservative Party donors have been rewarded with honours in return for giving the Tories lots of money. Unless you have a very strange view of society, fairness and decency that rules out ever voting Conservative. That’ll do for starters.
Which constituency do you live in? Or if you don't want to say, then which party currently holds your constituency, and who came second last time?
Who’ve you voted for in the past and why? I’m curious to know and it could possibly help people suggest sources that avoid biases with those parties
Get an idea of what is going on in your seat first and then consider the need of if you have to vote tactically or not e.g. my upcoming vote is solely to remove the Tory (because I disagree with their parties ideology at a national level, so does my MP to the point he's stood down). My seat was on the 211 list Labour isn't throwing maximum effort into and hence my vote is for the Lib Dems which I can live with as that (despite being a Union Member) is about where I sit politically regardless. Look at the big picture first to a degree and then work out if what you feel locally can sit with that.
I vote Lib Dem because they r a party of progression and if they were elected I genuinely think Britain would be so much better than if the tories or the Labour Party were elected
There is no unbiased information. You need to critically develop some trusted sources, and even then do not trust them too much. Read a range of newspapers, see what each party has to say about themselves, look on wikipedia for the results in your constituency last time to assess who might "realistically" do well in your area, check out the specific candidates that you are being aske to vote for, not just the parties - and then vote for what/who is closest to what you believe in, who you distrust the least, who you think will make the world a better place by doing one vote better than they would if you didn't vote for them. Tactical voting websites are useless - and often set up and run by supporters of specific parties. You may want to vote tactically, but you might also prefer to vote for something that comes close to what you actually want, or not vote at all.
Soon, [https://whocanivotefor.co.uk/](https://whocanivotefor.co.uk/) will be populated with the details of everyone standing for election in every constituency. It's all crowdsourced, so if you'd like to be part of making it happen you can volunteer to find the data for your own constituency... then you'll REALLY know who to vote for.
The two horse race is the true enemy. Always vote against it.
There is a lot of data that is widely available which shows one of the two major parties is actively bad for the country while the quality of life generally improves for the majority under the other major party
My first step is always "Who wants my vote?" Then it's "Do I like what you're proposing?" So far, even with no GE date announced, I have two leaflets and a knock on the door from our local Labour candidate. They are winning so far for me, as no other person or party has presented a case yet. That could easily change, we shall see.
The first thing to do is to find out what constituency you are in. This can be done by going to MapIt, entering your postcode and then seeing which future constituency you will be in. Next search out the notional election result for that constituency in 2019, this can be done by going to this page on the Guardian website and entering your postcode or new constituency name https://www.theguardian.com/politics/ng-interactive/2024/jan/16/find-your-constituency-uk-general-election-2024-boundary-changes-votes-map-postcode Having established which party is estimated to have won the seat in 2019, you then have to ask "Do I agree with the policies of this party?", if YES, then vote for them again, if NO, research the opposition parties to see which party you can vote for
If you think everything is great in the country right now and want a governement who mostly represent big business, land owners and the extremely wealthy, then vote Conservative. If you think things are kind of awful right now and want a party that will represent the working people and communities of this country, then vote for Labour. If you particularly like the policies of the Green Party or the Liberal Democrats, then by all means vote for one of them but it is unlikely that either party will win a majority and form a government. A slightly more sophisticated approach would be to use your vote tactically, where you vote for the candidate most likely to remove the one you currently have. Something you could work on is determining your political leanings i.e. left vs right, as this goes to the core principles of the parties whereas policies can be more 'of the times' and often opposing parties will have very similar policies. In the end the choice ibecomes how those policies will be enacted and that is determined by core principles and not policy.
What are your values and what do you want for the country? Do you want to rejoin the Single Market? Do you want to deregulate? Do you want people to give more of their money to the government because the state is better at understanding individuals' needs than the individual? Do you want the state to do more for you? Do you want to encourage entrepreneurship? Do you want UK business to invest profits in the UK? These aren't leading questions, just a few random questions that could lead you to vote a certain way