Very unenthusiastic Labour
It's good for the UK to have a Conservative Party as the main party of the right.
imagine actually thinking that
What are the alternatives? Reform, UKIP, and the various outright fascist (and worse) parties that have cropped up over the years. A (not necessarily the) Conservative Party is certainly preferable.
I mean at the end of the day the chips will fall where they may, but helping the Tories do better now is not what's going to prevent the British right from embracing far-right populism, given the Tories themselves have been at the forefront of that for the past 8 years.
Why shouldn't I prefer the Tories to them and, in an election where Labour is going to take over anyway and likely by a landslide, vote Tory (assuming I'm in a Tory-won constituency in 2019 anyhow)? Mind you I'd probably have voted Labour in 2019 or LD (depending on the constituency), and would have done the same in 2017 and 2015, so it's not like I'm pro Conservative. The Tories deserve to be defeated and they should be punished by voters. However, them getting, say, 150 seats is punishment enough.
So I guess you just have a contrarian bias. Okay I guess. I think it's silly to play this kind of games with your vote and generally better things happen when people vote for the party they actually prefer (or the party they prefer among those that have realistic prospects to win, under awful electoral systems like FPP).
That's an oversimplification, since I would have gone Labour in 1997. Labour under Blair would have got my vote in every election from '97 to 2010.
However, liberal has been my self ID for practically a decade at this point, and I was a huge remainer for years and even now I wish Brexit never happened (among other things, it denied Corbyn the PMship in retrospect). I'm pro globalization. I dislike the "populist right" way more than the Tories and I loathed the UKIP. Compounded with my constitutional conservativism (strong support for monarchy, House of Lords, etc) it's not strange I'd be willing to consider tactically voting Tory as long as a Labour Party-led government isn't at risk. It's no accident Clem is my favorite PM over the past 80 years.
Tactical voting isn't unusual in British elections. The threat of Reform this time suggests that the Conservatives is where I'd park my vote in 2024.
People deserting the Conservatives is of course justified in general. They've done a bad job and need time in opposition. But in 2024 I'm especially concerned with marginalizing Reform. The best way to do that is denying them room to claim ownership of the right.
I'm anti-Conservative but especially anti-"populist right" (in the UK anyhow) and the more the latter looks like it will matter the more the former matters less.
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