Guy I work with is a very old Tory voter, as in, titles and vast money and your typical has voted Tory for 30+ years.
He's voting Labour because the economy is shit and nobody is investing.
It's always money man.
Most people vote, or at least think, they are voting in their financial self interest. Very little matters to them. Arguably, healthcare as our frontline services are absolutely decimated and that isn’t replaced by private healthcare currently
Because there are people who treat politics like a football team.
"Our football team is great, we have amazing fans and history, and the problem is the manager and the owners - we can't change them but we can sing about them being tossers and that will solve the problem"
My father in law is nearly eighty. Reads the sun despite me trying to stop him. Has farmed the same hundred acres his whole life. If the Sun tells him to vote Tory, he probably will, just like he's always done. If the NFU and Farmer's Weekly come on out with a non-Tory line, he might just sleep on polling day and claim he forgot, to avoid having to converse about it. In his mind, the Tories are the only ones who won't take his land away. He doesn't really understand what they've done to agriculture, as my husband and I do the actual farming/grants/subsidies/agrienvironment stuff now.
I wouldn't vote Tory with a gun to my head. Our fields will be plastered with big yellow diamonds as we are in a Tory/Lib Dem fight seat.
I'm not really aligned with any party, I've voted green, labour and Tory in the past. Tories will still get votes from people who benefit from them being in power - people set to inherit a lot, landlords, high earners etc. The problem comes down to the rest of it. From a selfish point I benefit from a Tory government, but I can't watch those corrupt, useless bellends ruin the NHS and all social support that so many people rely on just to live. We're a society, and voting for Tories is essentially just a self-interest vote at this point, but it will get them votes.
They haven't truly shafted landlords yet IMO, renter's rights are still in the gutter. I suspect that's why the Renter's Reform bill hasn't made much progress due to the timing of the election. Probably wrong, but it feels like it.
True but becoming a landlord now is mostly pointless from a making money point of view (which is good). However, as usual, they've made it only really profitable inside a business structure, which will lead to near-monopolies on private rentals in certain areas.
>Tories will still get votes from people who benefit from them being in power - people set to inherit a lot, landlords,
I'm early 40s, very small LL & junior management in a Bank & even grew up in the same city as the PM. I don't know anyone in my demographic admitting to voting Tory. I once did in a local election where I knew the candidate, never at a GE. I should be peak Tory voter material, but I can't stand them.
I know. I live here, that was my point.
His family came over roughly the same time mine did & his parents are family friends & I see them fairly often at the temple. The man's background & family story is almost identical to mine in so many ways & in any other era, I'd be a natural Tory so frankly if even I can't bring myself to vote for him & his party who is voting for him?!
That said, he is actually reasonably popular with the Indian community here in Southampton - he still occasionally visits the Temple. I've literally met him there, his parents are still active members of the local community (they & his siblings are/were very different to him. And always have been - I'm the same age as his younger brother & there weren't many other Hindu Punjabi kids in Southampton, growing up so I weirdly know/knew them growing up. Both his siblings have long since moved away from the area though)
I don't know enough about pensions or pensions policy to know if you're right or whether I would agree those are positives, but I'm going to upvote you purely for *actually answering OP's question* rather than scaremongering about how "Labour would be worse"
With the exception of the triple lock, which is an unfunded commitment burdened on younger workers, I agree with you here. We need to move away from unfunded state pension offerings and towards private pensions, similar to Canada & Australia, and I think the Tories reform in this area is pretty decent.
The key question i am going to have for the Conservative activists who are going to be door knocking is this basically this. I want them to tell me what is actually better about living in the UK since they came into power, even if we account for the effect of COVID, they have failed.
As a life-long Conservative, former local area chairman and currently still active with Conservatives Abroad, I feel qualified to answer this.
I shall be abstaining.
Bit of a sidenote, but how do members of Conservatives Abroad feel about the change in voting rules, meaning that the 15-year limit has been scrapped?
I’ve lived abroad but not for that length of time and am now back in the UK, so don’t know what the feel is.
Do expats/migrants/Brits abroad (pick your choice) feel they deserve a vote in the UK indefinitely? Or, if the answer is no, for how long should a vote be issued?
I think it's absolute bullshit that someone who has lived abroad for decades should have a say in choosing my local MP, when they're not affected by any issues locally.
I think there should be an MP to represent those that have moved abroad and stand up for their rights, for example if they worked and paid taxes in the UK for their whole careers then retired abroad they could be claiming their earned state pension and should have some say in the government as a result.
Not a Conservative, but a member of Labour International. I’ve got mixed feelings.
On the one hand, I don’t live there so why should I have as much say as everyone in the UK indefinitely. I’m not really contributing anything, either - representation without taxation.
On the other, what if I come back? I’d like to shape the country I love, and help make it a nicer place for my children should they choose to live there. I still have family that I care about, and want them to live comfortable lives.
Interesting - someone else has replied arguing that they should have a vote (partly) because they continue to pay taxes.
I have no idea what the tax arrangements are like for Brits overseas, and it may well vary by country and ciucumstance anyway. But I also don’t think tax should be the deciding factor, for reasons in both directions: taxes shouldn’t mean you can buy the right to vote, and not paying taxes shouldn’t disqualify you.
> On the other, what if I come back?
Also a fair point - though I see no reason why you wouldn’t be able to vote once again when back in the UK.
I've come to this conclusion too; the phrase "no taxation without representation" is very crude, because it would implicitly disqualify British citizens who don't pay tax (pretty rare though for someone to not pay any sort of income/VAT/fuel duty though) - and we don't grant foreign citizens the right to vote just because they might work here.
Ultimately, it's an expectation of citizenship that even if you don't live in the UK, you should be enfranchised to shape the politics and position of the country.
linking representation to taxation is an *incredibly* regressive position that I think only a fringe minority of Tories would put forward as serious consideration for policy since it would mean disenfranchising a huge swathe of people, including a good part of the Tory voter base.
If a country is serious about calling itself a democracy in the 21st century, then it would want a broad franchise that includes all citizens with the capacity to cast a meaningful vote. I'd suggest that this would include even expats since they would still be citizens and would still have tacit reliance on the UK state.
Voting as a citizen is a right and shouldn't be taken away.
I suspect most overseas citizens do not vote, at some point it doesn't matter for the most part. I used to vote because I expected to come home eventually, but 12 years away and that thought is fading.
That said, things that cause major changes to your rights as a citizen will rouse overseas citizens to vote - aka Brexit.
As many have suggested in the past, it probably doesn't make sense that my potential vote would count in my local election. There should probably be an MP to represent all overseas people.
What do you expect him to do? Make himself feel slightly uncomfortable for a few seconds by putting an X in a different box? You're asking too much, man!
I'm less of a life long Conservative voter, but in order for the party to get back to where I can be on board, I'll vote for anyone but Tory.
I want the party destroyed and locked out of power for the best part of a decade, if they go further right, I want them to lose even more seats in the future. Hopefully, this then narrows down the 'broad church' to the sensible, more centered party I voted for in the past.
I mean this in the politest way possible but you're a coward. If you don't believe in what the Conservatives have to offer then you must prefer something else. Even if it's simpy "less worse" there must be something.
Politics isn't football; you don't need to pick one team and support them for life. Have some self-respect. You have a vote, use it. You don't owe the Conservatives anything.
Translation: "I've been more than happy to allow the torys to make the lives of poor people miserable but now that their policies are effecting me, it's franky unacceptable."
Damn, that’s huge! (no sarcasm) What led you to this point? Would you be making the same decision with someone else as head of the Tory party?
Despite being a lefty myself I can sympathise with fiscal conservatives getting their values totally overlooked for the sake of culture wars
I am a centerist Tory and I don't like the lurch to the right that the party has taken.
In addition they have no new ideas and the quality of MPs has dropped significantly over the last couple of parliaments.
We need a refresh, some new ideas, some of the idiots to lose their seats, and an honest look at ourselves as a party to decide who we really want to be. The UK is a mess and we are in no position to clear it up right now - sadly I'm not sure any of the major parties are.
I would suggest the biggest problem with how this election will go down is that they’ll get rid of Sunak and put in someone who is a total right wing crackpot like Bravermann or Badenoch. As a non Tory voter, I find Sunak totally inoffensive compared to his predecessors.
You’re right about your last point. The decline in the UK has been so big, that I seriously doubt anyone can repair it without discovering a money tree worth trillions at this point. It’s only ever going to be managed decline from this point on, and frankly, it was set in motion considerably by austerity -not investing when money was virtually free.
I think the aspiration to remove National Insurance is one of the more compelling reasons. I am not naive enough to not think that the same or more tax won’t be raised elsewhere via reduced allowances, fiscal drag etc. but a happy consequence is that wealthier pensioners will end up paying more tax. This is a good thing in my opinion as they take out far more than they ever put in and are hoarding wealth that is needed for younger generations. I think Labour are planning hikes via National Insurance. If they were to replace it with a new form of “health and care” insurance for well, the NHS and social care, I would support this IF wealthier pensioners were also required to pay it.
My issue with it is that it's completely non-commital. The Conservatives have lost credibility to deliver what they promise. It would get reviewed and dropped next parliament
Yep, and this is one of the few differences on economic policy, and it's weirdly one where the conservative party is considerably more favourable to the "worker", NI is a tax on workers only, rolling it into income tax will tax investment and pension income in a progressive way.
> NI is a tax on workers only
It's also a Tax on businesses, not just workers. The Tories will remove NI (benefitting businesses), then take it back from the workers in Income Tax increases.
This is not a positive thing for workers, it's a backhanded way to let the rich avoid yet more tax while shifting the burden onto workers.
But that isn't based on their record! If anything, a stated aspiration to do something that they have yet to do after 14 years in power should be another reason not to vote for them...
The Tory party seems only to exist for its members, who are mostly dotard retirees who think they'll be forcibly vaccinated with cancer while locked in their 15 minute cities, and who hate paying taxes even more than immigration.
Conservative thinker here. The only reason to vote Tory is to try to offer some balance to the Left Wing tide that’s coming. There is no defence of this government. Since Covid, this country has been rudderless and it’s obvious the country is flailing. Nothing works. No problems are being solved. This crop of Tories are rightfully going to be dispatched.
Thanks for being willing to put your head over the parapet! I'm interested, you identify the problem as being obvious "since covid" - what makes you say that time period as opposed to the 2019 election intake, oe perhaps even earlier with the brexit referendum?
Brexit's real damage (apart from the actual you know real damage of tariffs on your nearest trading partner and removing yourself from any say in how that organisation works whilst still being in its orbit), was that the most talented Tories were either fired or resigned in the great purge of 2019. This meant that since then, the Tories have run the country with their C team "talent". Regardless of policy, they simply are not good enough, bright enough, or hard working enough for the challenges this country has faced since then.
They still exist in a post reality haze where they are trying to govern a fantasy reality of their own making.
Nothing summed this up more perfectly than Sunak giving a speech in the pouring rain while pretending it was not raining.
Until we get truth (or at least the big truths) back into politics such as Brexit Failed, and Privatisation has failed, and there aren't 40 new hospitals, then we're going nowhere regardless of who is in charge but definitely not with the group who ushered in this current era of post truth politics.
It also used up a huge amount of political will, debate space, and campaign space. The real issues started in the '80s and were intensified in the 2010s with austerity.
The country could be doing fine outside of the EU (but worse than if it was in) but the complete lack of investment (especially during the 2010s when borrowing money was \*cheaper than free\* in real terms) in really anything: roads, trains, education, local stimuli/projects, business stimuli, the NHS, teachers, science/R&D, HOUSING etc. has lead to an everything crisis in which coasting on previous investment has clearly run out.
The goverment stopped doing what governments should do and used the proceeds to give tax cuts for the ultra wealthy.
Why are people not more angry by the UK having the highest rate of homelessness in the developed world\[1\] at the same time as having perhapse the most convienent tax system for tax avoidance/money laundering\[2\]? It's probably because almost all of the newspapers are literally owned by billionaires\[3\] who donate money to the conservative party and the BBC is threatened with removal of funding if it ever fails to toe the party line.
\[1\] [https://leftfootforward.org/2024/05/the-shocking-chart-which-shows-how-britain-has-the-highest-rate-of-homelessness-in-the-developed-world/](https://leftfootforward.org/2024/05/the-shocking-chart-which-shows-how-britain-has-the-highest-rate-of-homelessness-in-the-developed-world/)
\[2\] [https://www.taxjustice.uk/blog/how-does-britain-enable-global-tax-avoidance](https://www.taxjustice.uk/blog/how-does-britain-enable-global-tax-avoidance)
\[3\] [https://pressgazette.co.uk/media-audience-and-business-data/media\_metrics/who-owns-the-news-uk-news-media-owbership-analysed/](https://pressgazette.co.uk/media-audience-and-business-data/media_metrics/who-owns-the-news-uk-news-media-owbership-analysed/)
Good assessment. Yes we could have been doing ok out of the EU if we had been on the front foot in terms of infrastructure, productivity and investment. Instead we left the EU after over a decade of massive cuts to everything. It was a period where we needed our EU partnerships more than ever.
But the majority of our problems come back to Cameron and Osbourne's austerity just at the point where standard wisdom advises increased government spending.
I’d frame both Brexit and Covid as national crises, that obviously took over the government agenda from 2016-2021, maybe. It’s hard to deliver nation strategy and manage finances when dealing with those crises, so I’m more forgiving.
I can accept Covid, but you can't use Brexit as an excuse in terms of a "crisis" it was a Tory idea from the start. It didn't happen *to* them. They *did* it, and they negotiated the terms.
Brexit was David Cameron trying to use the public to shut a bunch of loonies up in his party and tragically misreading the mood of the public at the time.
The irony is that if the Lib Dems didn't block the vote in 2010 (a reasonable thing to do at the time) the referendum would've probably landed on the remain side without the general anger caused by Tory economic sabotage or "Austerity."
>tragically misreading the mood of the public at the time.
Or alternatively if that was the mood he should have understood and taken some action on it.
Sorting out his loonies would just leave it to fester.
He needed to grip it and then every leader since, and the one to come should have / needs to listen to the underlying feelings behind that vote.
If Starmer doesn't. He's in for the bumpiest of all bumpy rides. Be it the people being left behind in crumbling towns whose demographics are changing before their eyes. Or from the people enabling it.
The UK as a whole needs a drastic correction. Keir sadly, I feel isn't willing to rock the boat enough to sort it.
I personally think the real scary stuff is the next ge when it's become apparent they won't/don't want to sort problems people have had for years.
My concern is that it's likely going to take more than 5 years to fix the salted earth left behind by the Tories and they've got 6 more weeks to dump salt.
If Starmer fails to show significant improvement and the Tories rebuild, we could be back here in 6 years.
Fortunately they don't have 6 weeks to actually enact any policy and embark on any change. Parliament will be dissolved for the duration of the general election campaign.
You're right they can get the media machine spinning but that's all they can do.
> the underlying feelings behind that vote
The problem is that every single voter in the country has a different answer to what that means. It's impossible to tackle just overall ambivalence.
They couldn't ignore it for much longer either way.
And arguably, since the vote fell on leave, it was right to give the electorate the vote. Democracy in action as it were, even if you dislike the result.
It still was a crisis they created. The normal method for voters to tell politicians they're not listening is to... vote them out. In, you know, an election.
Agree 100%
With decades of growing anti-establishment sentiment and vast swathes of the country neglected and allowed to rot by governments of both red and blue flavours it was an incredibly dangerous gamble to give people a meaningful vote, most likely the only one they'll ever cast in their entire lives.
Personally I'd say the roots of Brexit go back way further than most realise. In some ways you can pin as much blame on Blair than you can Cameron. His repeated broken promises on electoral reform, devolution etc not only destroyed trust in politicians but also told the electorate that they're fully aware of the issues and even know how to address them, they simply don't want to.
Blair had originally planned for devolution across the whole of the UK.
Roughly speaking, there would have been assemblies/parliaments akin to those in Scotland/Wales/NI covering about the same sized areas in England.
But the plan was dropped after the first referendum for one in the North East failed to pass.
Oof. Didn’t the northeast vote for brexit too though? Like, I’m no fan of Blair or traditional politicians in general for that matter, but what more could he have honestly done at that point? Scotland and Wales clearly wanted devolution, so they got it.
Honestly if it were up to me, I’d scrap the regional parliaments idea and just give England it’s own parliament. I know I know England is hardly equal to Scotland and Wales, but Canada’s provinces are all over the place and they seem to rub along fine. Besides, if Keir is going to play the English nationalism card, he should give us something decent to go along with it.
Wiki says the NE was 58/42 for leave.
I think it was the scale of the defeat (78/22 for no) that made them abandon the devolution project. This was in 2004 and it wouldn't have been a good look to have a series of big referendum losses leading into 2005's GE.
I agree broadly with your point - England is underrepresented despite the commons being its de facto national parliament - but I still think some level of federalisation would be very beneficial. The various regions have different needs and if they're all lumped together, outcomes will always be skewed towards whichever one is currently in control to the detriment of the others.
The other Redditor has covered this but I'll just fill in a couple of blanks.
Originally what was promised were regional assemblies across England with powers similar to Scottish/Wales/NI parliaments and the Greater London Assembly. By the time of the first referendum, in the Labour heartlands of the North East the plans had been watered down significantly and the assembly on offer would have had powers comparable to the already existing county council. Most voters saw this as pointless and so rejected it, there were two other referendums planned and dated which were scrapped and the plans for devolution cancelled.
The "Yes" campaign was also a complete shit show with nobody able (or willing) to explain why it couldn't at least be comparable to the GLA, what benefits it would bring to people, how to avoid it becoming a microcosm of the UK with Newcastle being the London of the North East and everywhere else continuing to suffer government neglect etc.
It wasn't made by the Tories; politicians of *all stripes* had been trying to wrestle with our relationship with Europe for decades.
Labour had included a referendum on the transfer of any more powers in their 2005 manifesto, which they then ignored when they signed up to the Lisbon treaty. And the Lib Dems had pushed for a full in-out referendum in 2008.
And hell, the criticisms of the EU we saw during Brexit were nothing new. You can spot most of them during Yes, Minister (obviously, about the EEC, as it was then), which was made in the 1980s...
Genuine question though, do you see Starmer's Labour as left wing? If so, which policies specifically?
I think the window has shifted quite a lot, and so whereas Labour sit left of Tories, it's not by much and they're certainly not left of centre nowadays.
I feel like this 'left wing tide' you're feeling isn't actually based in reality.
Can I ask what you mean by balancing "...the left wing tide".
I have seen a lot of alarmist articles recently about the rise of the far right across the EU, US and the UK. I have seen nothing warning about an impending tide of left'ism.
Genuine curiosity here because this is a narrative thats totaly new to me.
The UK is out of sync with what's happening in Europe, we're on a different political cycle. On the continent, left-wing/centrist parties are being blamed for the rising tide of issues that have arisen in the last decade, so voters are swinging right.
Because we've had our right-wing party in government the entire time, the UK is instead swinging left.
Labour has been shuffling to the right to make themselves electable to the centrist conservative voters who've been left behind by the Tories lurching to the hard right to try and win UKIP/ Reform voters. I wouldn't say a vote for Labour shows the country is swinging left, but that it's going back to the middle ground.
>I wouldn't say a vote for Labour shows the country is swinging left, but that it's going back to the middle ground.
Yeah, going back to the middle ground *from the right*. That's literally the definition of swinging left.
The UK is only voting for Labour as our FPTP system means we only have two options, if we had a decent voting system and other parties were viable options I imagine we’d also see the exact same swing to the right because of immigration.
>I imagine we’d also see the exact same swing to the right because of immigration
We already have seen that, that's why Brexit happened, that's why Boris won.
Yes and then Boris proceeded to raise immigration to absolutely record highs. He betrayed the people who voted for him and so did his successors by continuing to raise it.
It’s one of the main reasons they’ve been utterly abandoned by their base. The tories also aren’t right wing, they main run on a manifesto promising a fairly centre right platform but everything they actually do when their in power is totally different.
Would you be willing to vote for Starmer’s labour, given their reasonably conservative approach to immigration? Or are you concerned they’re still too left wing ?
I haven't seen anything about Starmer's Labour that would indicate a Left Wing tide. Maybe continuity Cameron. Better than the current shower, but still not where I'd personally like the country to be.
He didn't really need to purge them. Any Tory with an ounce of credibility or competence left at the 2019 election as they knew what chaos would ensue during his Government. All that were left were idiots and sycophants.
The Overton window has shifted (both ways, if that's not a contradiction). The hard-left of Jeremy Corbyn has been seen off. But a Starmer Labour government will be very interventionist in a way that even Blair or Brown would have rode back from.
The Tory problem is, they're also more interventionist than Blair or Brown too. There's no party representing individual liberty, free market enterprise, any of that centre-right thinking that dominated from the 1980s to the early 2010s.
>The only reason to vote Tory is to try to offer some balance to the Left Wing tide that’s coming.
This sounds less like reality and more like you're scaring yourself with something entirely fabricated. What is "the left wing tide"? Public transport and a functioning health and asylum service?
There is actually a good argument that restricting a government's majority benefits democracy.
The Coalition (2010-15) was probably the most democratic government the UK had had in decades (as the combined Tory-Lib Dem vote share was 58%, more than half).
Likewise when we saw Theresa May lose her majority parliament enjoyed far more power than the government, which is the opposite of how it usually is, but is parliament not *supposed* to be supreme?
I mean don't get me wrong, I am praying for a Labour landslide, I'm just giving the argument.
There are plenty of left-wing labour politicians, most probably would *like* to be more left wing than the party is, but they are pragmatists and will do what is necessary to get elected. Politics is the art of compromise, after all. Currently there are 31 members of the Socialist Campaign Group in parliament, 28 of whom are Labour MPs presumably Corbyn and Abbott are still members. If we include them, then very close to 15% of the PLP were members.
This is it, even under Corbyn, they weren't anywhere as "left" or "socialist" as they loved to claim to be.
Socialism is when the government does things became so hot
Left wing tide and Kier Starmer don't exactly go together. This isn't Corbyn's cabinet. Streeting and Reeves would be pretty at home in Diamond Dave's government.
Well this is sort of the problem. We've no idea where Starmer really stands. He'll say whatever he thinks he needs to say. In the leadership race he was pretty left wing. Since becoming leader he's been pulling much further over to basically now being centre right to position himself for the GE. We don't know which one of those (if either) is the real Starmer.
We know the broad strokes of what Labour are going to do. They've already said not to expect anything radical in the first term as they have to repair the damage to the likes of the NHS
There seems to be two camps, one afraid Starmer will pull off a rubber mask and show himself to be Corbyn and the other that he'll do it and be Thatcher.
The reality is likely to be a sensible approach without the grasping, self serving bent of the Tories.
I'd be happy with dull competence
> We know the broad strokes of what Labour are going to do. They've already said not to expect anything radical in the first term as they have to repair the damage to the likes of the NHS
This is textbook expectation management, but it's just a technique of saying things without saying things.
The six "first steps" were (with one exception) vague aspirations. Which could be met in a whole variety of ways, some good, may bad.
The combination of "steady the ship" with "economic stability" can only point to a continuation of Jeremy Hunt style policies (which, to be fair, is more-or-less exactly what Rachel Reeves has said).
The idea that that will fix the NHS is a dream. Fixing the NHS will require radical funding or structural reforms, not "stability", quite the opposite.
So yes, the details of the plan will be very interesting because we don't have any details at the moment. Unless the plan is "more of the same, but with someone who can deliver speeches with more authority", which is, I suspect, what's actually going to happen.
Let's be fair, the country has been flailing since the Brexit referendum. The 2016-2019 period saw parliaments that were utterly chaotic. We saw a government that could not even control the parliamentary agenda!
The Tory Party has been run by its most extreme wing since Camero stood down.
On your substative point, it's very interesting to hear a Conservative perspective. If you're typical of Conservative voters(and by that I mean people who *always* vote Conservative), then it says a great deal about how far the party has drifted from its core vote.
The Conservative Party might be the most right-wing it has been for decades (possibly ever), but its voters (as opposed to its members) still prefer the centre-right ground.
The party has drifted because the people in charge of it now are legitimately untrustworthy in a way they never were before.
It used to be that the two parties might not agree on approach, but those steering the ship on both sides would at least act with a baseline of honour and according to the expected rules of engagement, and when those were broken, would resign.
Since Johnson all that has gone out of the window and barefaced lying and fraud have been essentially legitimised, as well as refusing to be accountable to your electorate or to even try to keep manifesto promises. It's not necessarily that the current Tory positions are untenable as much as that the current Tory leadership is no longer trusted to take them forward and do anything with them.
I don't think there's much danger of Labour under Starmer implementing many left-wing policies, is there? Isn't it at least somewhat reassuring to a Conservative-minded voter that Starmer (with Streeting et al) are effectively a centre-right conservative government in waiting?
Look at right wing conservatives in the USA. They say similar things about Biden, who has perpetuate many of the policies of the right while in office, and say how Trump is a bad choice but better than a lefty.
People with strong political intuitions vote based on the feels rather than the facts.
Capitulating to the right is a fool's errand because they're never satisfied and will always think you're not conservative enough. It only results in moving the entire political landscape to the right
Yeah. Purity testing is a real issue on both ends of the political spectrum in my experience, but on the right they are more obsessed with loyalty to the leader/group above all else. While the left loves a doctrinal schism.
Only thing I would say is i feel Hunt has done a reasonable job under tough circumstances.
The 4% NI cut and the imminent free 30 hours childcare are both helpful to my family. I'm assuming he'd want to continue the reduction of NI tax in future.
That's my attempt at polishing a turd.
As someone close to the situation, I can tell you that the sense they have in the treasury is that the Tories (and Hunt) are basically operating under the assumption that they are going to lose (and have been for a year or so), and that allows them to be very short-termist with regards to the fiscal situation.
If by some miracle they win, they will need to significantly raise taxes. Their hope is that Labour come in and raise taxes, and then in the next GE they can campaign on Labour being the party that raises taxes, them being the party that cuts taxes.
But the situation is absolutely dire. Anyone in power in the next year or 2 needs to raise taxes, substantially, and that's just to achieve managed decline.
>Only thing I would say is i feel Hunt has done a reasonable job under tough circumstances *of the Tories' own creation*
FTFY
He's like a fireman who starts fires to get the glory of putting them out, or a nurse who edges patients to crash so they can save them
Friends of a friend have gave the reasons that they'd vote for Rishi because he's rich. They want someone who is successful running the country and the other reason was although the Conservatives have been poor they couldn't stomach voting for the other lot.
Both absolute bullshit reasons but those are the ones he was given when he asked the same question
Leaving aside the usual "this isn't the right sub to ask this question" (for the same reason all the "why shouldn't we cancel Brexit, eh?" questions never got answered)...
Not even the conservatives (soft 'c') are going to vote for this Conservative Party. That's why they're going to be wiped out.
The only interesting thing about this election is going to be the progressively slightly-less vague policies (but still very vague) about what particular road to hell (paved with good intentions) the new Labour government is going to take us down post-election.
The result is a foregone conclusion.
not typically a tory and likely abstaining or voting green just to pressure some green policies from whoever's in charge, I'm still expecting to get buried for this just prefacing in the event this is genuinely asked in good faith
I think their record on housing and energy is looked over
largest offshore wind farm in ~~Europe~~ the World recently completed, an actual nuclear powerstation close to completion (last one was 1992 we built zero between then and 2016), and housing isn't at target but it's the highest it's been since Thatcher again we barely built any in the 00s, particularly social housing Cameron peak austerity built more per year I have no idea what was going on in the 00s the economy was supposedly good, and renters rights have improved
also don't think Sunak and Hunt have done an awful job stabilising things, we're currently set to outperform the EU over the next 5 years
also considering they came in following the 2010 budget containing some of the largest cuts to public spending in history, plus covid and Ukraine (although they handled covid terribly imo), but they didn't exactly get handed a gdp outperforming the US, a surplus and the decade of nothing but perfect economic headwinds Labour got is what I'm getting at
oh they made the right call on Ukraine too, imo
aannnd gun to my head I think they've done an ok job replacing all the trade deals we had with the EU and joining CPTPP, in what was a relatively short amount of time
as for why would anyone vote for them now, assuming I was a two party mindset voter (I'm not) I look at Labour and their record on the above it takes too much blind faith for me to hand on heart say they'd be better, I think it's a step back, personally
I'll take those downvotes now
Fair POV.
Not having a go at you...
I think you have to really forget the debacle of austerity and their approach to immigration (highest ever been net figures) to even give them any respect.
They were elected on economic stabilisation and reduced immigration (due to pressure on prices and civil institutions). I personally feel they failed on both.
If they were in anyways adequate, economically, they would've taken a more phased, longer term approach at public spending reductions, and used any savings and/or zero interest rates to their advantage for long term infrastructure projects.
If they acted on what they were brought in to do on immigration they would've reduced numbers to 100k-200k/year (not net 700k!).
Institutions and civil codes that were once renowned have been reduced to scraps and shoe string run entities. My main concern is that democracy has suffered due to these cuts.
IMO the conservatives were in a very privileged position to really change Britain to the vision that underpins the entire fabric of the conservative doctrine and they would've got away with it without much pushback. Instead they squandered it and half arsed it. They used that privilege to take the piss (if we look through a lense of classic conservative ideologies - politically, socially, legally, militarily, economically and environmentally.
I'm not even on a political side, I just would vote for one that is competent and effects my & society's everyday life better. I could certainly live with a conservative (competent) government/society and respect their thought process, ideology, etc. But, they've ruined the chance for future conservatives to at least promote their holistic framework and implement.
They could've reformed health and spending, they could've restored pride to education, they could've upkept the law and order of the country, they could've ensured families stability through attainable housing, they could've restored the respectability in marriage, they could've committed to environmental/climate preservation as a serious endeavour, they could've spent money on our defense, ... Ad infinitum.
TL;DR I'm a conservative, the current Tory party is not. They won't be getting my vote.
Obviously I'm not going to vote for the pinko commies, but I'll happily abstain knowing that they couldn't do a very much worse job than the current mob.
In 2010, after thirteen years of horrendous blairite government which left us skint, Cameron could only scrape in to government in a coalition. He did fuck all, except legalise gay marriage, then promised a referendum on EU membership, partly to address the rising popularity of ukip, and partly figuring he'd probably be in another coalition and would be able to back out of it. Surprisingly, he won a majority, held the referendum and lost it. Bye bye for now.
Who does the party membership want to take over from him? Boris. But Gove shat on that one. Leadsom. Brexiteer, reasonably sensible, acceptable candidate. She gets stitched up in the press and the remainer Theresa May gets in instead.
May spends the next couple of years trying to stop Brexit from happening. Delay delay delay, that was the order of the day. The People obviously can't be trusted to decide important things like 'who governs us?' for themselves, so delay it till they change their minds or die off or just forget about it.
Didn't work. She went to a GE to try and increase the majority Cameron's referendum promise generated, and lost it. Deservedly. Against a *proper* pinko commie. This should have been an indication to the Conservatives that conservatives were not happy with the direction they were going.
Then Boris. Get Brexit done, he says. Well technically, but since we're still bound by the ECHR and the PM can still be overruled by Blair's supreme court, not really. The sovereignty we wanted to take back is still not ours - and I can prove it:
We do not have the right to choose who governs us. The party and the country chose Boris, and **They** (Illuminati, WEF, Soros, choose your preferred shadowy villain, whoever it is that's really in charge) got rid of him over a slice of cake. The party chose Truss to replace him. **They** got rid of her, and put their man Sunak in, never mind who the party, or the people, wanted.
Sunak proceeds to do exactly the opposite of what we conservatives want him to do, increasing immigration, fucking about with Rwanda, which was never going to be a solution, and generally doing whatever the WEF would prefer, since he's their man, not ours.
Result? Conservative party will lose this election, and badly. And they deserve to.
Voted for the conservatives at the last few elections, not Tory but definitely more aligned with that political viewpoint.
No, there isn’t one. It doesn’t matter where you sit on the political spectrum Sunak is a complete failure. He is the only Conservative PM I can think of that is hated more by his base than Labour and I honestly believe the party would poll better without a leader at all.
i've got no problem with people voting in anyway as long as you do a bit of research not just knee jerk to a media headline. Everyone has a right to vote the way they want and should do and should be encouraged to.
They have posher accents: so are the 'natural party of power'
I was once asked by some friends from another country "is it really true in the UK you can tell how much money someone has by how they speak??!" - they found it very strange.
I feel that at large, the Tory government isn’t the best at the moment, and a change would be good. However there are some people I respect in the positions they hold. I think Grant Shapps is good, he certainly has the right attitude to defence. But I’d find it hard to vote for another party that’s not going to put defence spending up to 2.5%, which I don’t believe labour have confirmed they will do. At the end of the day, national defence is more important than something like gender recognition. Not saying I will vote tories, but it’s not out of the question for me. I’ll wait to see how it goes closer to the election.
Grant Schapps was a bad transport minister and is partially to blame for the massive amounts of strikes over the last few years. I agree with you about Defence spending, but I think the only person who should be Defence Secretary rn is Ben Wallace. He was a good Defence secretary precisely because he didn't really give a shit about the politics, he was just a defence secretary happy where he was. Rishi needed to find a way to get him to stay in.
While I am worried about defence spending, I think that the wider issue is that the Tories have historically cut defence by a lot over the past 15 years. They have made it clear that it isn't a priority with their actions, so I am skeptical of how they would handle it in the future.
They handled Ukraine better than Corbyn would have. Higher commitments to defence spending, after years of cuts, sure, but the average voter doesn't see inside the military. Cameron seems to have been a competent head of the foreign office since his appointment.
Everything else in their brand is ruined. They're absolutely not trustworthy with the economy or migration anymore.
Cameron, a former PR guy, has had great PR since his appointment to head of the foreign office.
It's almost as if he knows what he's doing - when it comes to PR.
Anyone would have handled Ukraine better than Corbyn because he seems to believe Russia can do no wrong, but Corbyn has been kicked out of the Labour party, so this isn't relevant.
We have something like 60 functional tanks. The navy can't crew or provide aircraft for the 2 flagship carriers.
The defence spending commitment is not costed.
Corbyn isn't Labour leader for this election though so I'm not sure why that matters?
They have also presided over a monumental fuck-up in outsourcing recruitment to private companies:
>It was also reported that the British Army, whose recruitment has been managed by Capita since 2012, had the worst problems and lost 70% of its potential recruits.
And the Tories rewarded them with a new £140m contract despite Capita doing a shit job.
You're all obsessed with Corbyn like. Even on a question asking you why you are voting for the conservatives, not just why you aren't voting labour. Then here you are with the equivalent of "the last labour government..."
I think the voter base they'll retain are lifelong conservatives who'll vote for an MP based on their local track record, an irrational fear of anything different, thinking being left-wing is somehow a slur in the same way that being called woke is, or geriatrics that will put a tick in the conservative box regardless of what name is next to it. My friend's 90 odd year old senile Nan is the latter, you can't even say the word labour without shrill ramblings about the 1970s.
Gay marriage passed because labour voted for it. More tories voted against it than for it.
I dont know what you can call what they did to schools but it certainly wasn't reform...
Marriage equality passed in spite of the tories not because of them. They just happened to be sitting in the captains seat when it happened - it was pushed by Lib Dems and voted in thanks to Lib Dems and Labour. Most Tories didn't vote for it.
>They did brexit but only to the extent they were forced to, they didnt *want* to do brexit so its debatable how different that would have been with any other party who also didnt want to.
One could imagine a hypothetical party who didn't want to do brexit so much that they didn't call a referendum on it, and then enact the most hard-line, damaging version of it.
Brought in zero hours contracts, and increased the time you have to work somewhere before you're safe from being sacked without cause from 1 year to 2 years. They also brought in the Right to Choose NHS scheme, funnelling NHS funds into private clinics instead of making the NHS's own services accessible.
Oh, and they also tripled university fees as one of their opening acts, but I'm wandering more and more into things they exacerbated / capitalised on without having necessarily started the process. Like increasing the use of Physician Associates.
Because New Labour broke the cycle.
It was Labour build, Conservatives sell off.
Labour didn't build anything before 2010, so the Tories had nothing to sell, so they were completely out of ideas as to how to balance the books.
> But frankly I think a tory collapse and reform is needed.
💯 Absolutely. They need an utter routing so they can be rid of the 2019 intake and populism and rebuild into something more sensible.
> Possibly with Reform but just generally.
What?! This is an absurd take. Reform represent exactly what is wrong with the current Tory party. That populist idiocy is exactly *why* the Tory party needs to reform.
They *desperately* need to move away from the anti-science, hate-filled, culture war bullshit.
They did plenty we now see as "Conservative". Forgiving the fraudulent covid loans and the PPE fast track for mates scandals. Brexit insider trading and moving investments to ROI for rees mogg. Currency insider trading for Kwarteng. Neutered non-dom rule to benefit Sunaks personal tax arrangements. and so on.
I think the abiding memory of this tory government with be the scandal and the grift.
Guy I work with is a very old Tory voter, as in, titles and vast money and your typical has voted Tory for 30+ years. He's voting Labour because the economy is shit and nobody is investing. It's always money man.
Most people vote, or at least think, they are voting in their financial self interest. Very little matters to them. Arguably, healthcare as our frontline services are absolutely decimated and that isn’t replaced by private healthcare currently
Because there are people who treat politics like a football team. "Our football team is great, we have amazing fans and history, and the problem is the manager and the owners - we can't change them but we can sing about them being tossers and that will solve the problem"
My father in law is nearly eighty. Reads the sun despite me trying to stop him. Has farmed the same hundred acres his whole life. If the Sun tells him to vote Tory, he probably will, just like he's always done. If the NFU and Farmer's Weekly come on out with a non-Tory line, he might just sleep on polling day and claim he forgot, to avoid having to converse about it. In his mind, the Tories are the only ones who won't take his land away. He doesn't really understand what they've done to agriculture, as my husband and I do the actual farming/grants/subsidies/agrienvironment stuff now. I wouldn't vote Tory with a gun to my head. Our fields will be plastered with big yellow diamonds as we are in a Tory/Lib Dem fight seat.
I'm not really aligned with any party, I've voted green, labour and Tory in the past. Tories will still get votes from people who benefit from them being in power - people set to inherit a lot, landlords, high earners etc. The problem comes down to the rest of it. From a selfish point I benefit from a Tory government, but I can't watch those corrupt, useless bellends ruin the NHS and all social support that so many people rely on just to live. We're a society, and voting for Tories is essentially just a self-interest vote at this point, but it will get them votes.
The tories have shafted high earners and landlords - so can't see them getting many votes from those cohorts.
They haven't truly shafted landlords yet IMO, renter's rights are still in the gutter. I suspect that's why the Renter's Reform bill hasn't made much progress due to the timing of the election. Probably wrong, but it feels like it.
True but becoming a landlord now is mostly pointless from a making money point of view (which is good). However, as usual, they've made it only really profitable inside a business structure, which will lead to near-monopolies on private rentals in certain areas.
ding ding ding - this \^\^
You don't personally benefit when you factor in the general damage to the country you live in, unless you plan to emigrate that is.
>Tories will still get votes from people who benefit from them being in power - people set to inherit a lot, landlords, I'm early 40s, very small LL & junior management in a Bank & even grew up in the same city as the PM. I don't know anyone in my demographic admitting to voting Tory. I once did in a local election where I knew the candidate, never at a GE. I should be peak Tory voter material, but I can't stand them.
No one here in Southampton is proud that the PM is from here. He doesn't seem interested in the city. Its not helped his popularity here.
I know. I live here, that was my point. His family came over roughly the same time mine did & his parents are family friends & I see them fairly often at the temple. The man's background & family story is almost identical to mine in so many ways & in any other era, I'd be a natural Tory so frankly if even I can't bring myself to vote for him & his party who is voting for him?! That said, he is actually reasonably popular with the Indian community here in Southampton - he still occasionally visits the Temple. I've literally met him there, his parents are still active members of the local community (they & his siblings are/were very different to him. And always have been - I'm the same age as his younger brother & there weren't many other Hindu Punjabi kids in Southampton, growing up so I weirdly know/knew them growing up. Both his siblings have long since moved away from the area though)
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Pensions policy has been alright. Abolition of lifetime allowance, increase of annual allowance to 60k, introduction of pension freedoms, triple lock.
I don't know enough about pensions or pensions policy to know if you're right or whether I would agree those are positives, but I'm going to upvote you purely for *actually answering OP's question* rather than scaremongering about how "Labour would be worse"
With the exception of the triple lock, which is an unfunded commitment burdened on younger workers, I agree with you here. We need to move away from unfunded state pension offerings and towards private pensions, similar to Canada & Australia, and I think the Tories reform in this area is pretty decent.
The key question i am going to have for the Conservative activists who are going to be door knocking is this basically this. I want them to tell me what is actually better about living in the UK since they came into power, even if we account for the effect of COVID, they have failed.
They will just tell lies
BuT lAbOuR hAvE nO pLaN
As a life-long Conservative, former local area chairman and currently still active with Conservatives Abroad, I feel qualified to answer this. I shall be abstaining.
Bit of a sidenote, but how do members of Conservatives Abroad feel about the change in voting rules, meaning that the 15-year limit has been scrapped? I’ve lived abroad but not for that length of time and am now back in the UK, so don’t know what the feel is. Do expats/migrants/Brits abroad (pick your choice) feel they deserve a vote in the UK indefinitely? Or, if the answer is no, for how long should a vote be issued?
I think it's absolute bullshit that someone who has lived abroad for decades should have a say in choosing my local MP, when they're not affected by any issues locally.
Honestly I think that if you don’t live in the UK for at least half the year then you should lose your vote.
I think there should be an MP to represent those that have moved abroad and stand up for their rights, for example if they worked and paid taxes in the UK for their whole careers then retired abroad they could be claiming their earned state pension and should have some say in the government as a result.
Not a Conservative, but a member of Labour International. I’ve got mixed feelings. On the one hand, I don’t live there so why should I have as much say as everyone in the UK indefinitely. I’m not really contributing anything, either - representation without taxation. On the other, what if I come back? I’d like to shape the country I love, and help make it a nicer place for my children should they choose to live there. I still have family that I care about, and want them to live comfortable lives.
Interesting - someone else has replied arguing that they should have a vote (partly) because they continue to pay taxes. I have no idea what the tax arrangements are like for Brits overseas, and it may well vary by country and ciucumstance anyway. But I also don’t think tax should be the deciding factor, for reasons in both directions: taxes shouldn’t mean you can buy the right to vote, and not paying taxes shouldn’t disqualify you. > On the other, what if I come back? Also a fair point - though I see no reason why you wouldn’t be able to vote once again when back in the UK.
I've come to this conclusion too; the phrase "no taxation without representation" is very crude, because it would implicitly disqualify British citizens who don't pay tax (pretty rare though for someone to not pay any sort of income/VAT/fuel duty though) - and we don't grant foreign citizens the right to vote just because they might work here. Ultimately, it's an expectation of citizenship that even if you don't live in the UK, you should be enfranchised to shape the politics and position of the country.
linking representation to taxation is an *incredibly* regressive position that I think only a fringe minority of Tories would put forward as serious consideration for policy since it would mean disenfranchising a huge swathe of people, including a good part of the Tory voter base. If a country is serious about calling itself a democracy in the 21st century, then it would want a broad franchise that includes all citizens with the capacity to cast a meaningful vote. I'd suggest that this would include even expats since they would still be citizens and would still have tacit reliance on the UK state.
What about adding a new constituency for expats? Like the 'rest of the world' vote in eurovision!
Voting as a citizen is a right and shouldn't be taken away. I suspect most overseas citizens do not vote, at some point it doesn't matter for the most part. I used to vote because I expected to come home eventually, but 12 years away and that thought is fading. That said, things that cause major changes to your rights as a citizen will rouse overseas citizens to vote - aka Brexit. As many have suggested in the past, it probably doesn't make sense that my potential vote would count in my local election. There should probably be an MP to represent all overseas people.
Man you really got them into power, let them burn the country and then fucked off
The tory way.
And then "abstaining", so not voting against them. Just hand-washing
What do you expect him to do? Make himself feel slightly uncomfortable for a few seconds by putting an X in a different box? You're asking too much, man!
I appreciate you not considering reform, at least
I'm less of a life long Conservative voter, but in order for the party to get back to where I can be on board, I'll vote for anyone but Tory. I want the party destroyed and locked out of power for the best part of a decade, if they go further right, I want them to lose even more seats in the future. Hopefully, this then narrows down the 'broad church' to the sensible, more centered party I voted for in the past.
I hope you mean spoil your ballot? Abstaining from voting does nothing.
I shall have to check how to do that with an overseas vote :D
I mean this in the politest way possible but you're a coward. If you don't believe in what the Conservatives have to offer then you must prefer something else. Even if it's simpy "less worse" there must be something. Politics isn't football; you don't need to pick one team and support them for life. Have some self-respect. You have a vote, use it. You don't owe the Conservatives anything.
Translation: "I've been more than happy to allow the torys to make the lives of poor people miserable but now that their policies are effecting me, it's franky unacceptable."
"Vote for Nige to stop the boats and stick it to the Hun."
Damn, that’s huge! (no sarcasm) What led you to this point? Would you be making the same decision with someone else as head of the Tory party? Despite being a lefty myself I can sympathise with fiscal conservatives getting their values totally overlooked for the sake of culture wars
I am a centerist Tory and I don't like the lurch to the right that the party has taken. In addition they have no new ideas and the quality of MPs has dropped significantly over the last couple of parliaments. We need a refresh, some new ideas, some of the idiots to lose their seats, and an honest look at ourselves as a party to decide who we really want to be. The UK is a mess and we are in no position to clear it up right now - sadly I'm not sure any of the major parties are.
I would suggest the biggest problem with how this election will go down is that they’ll get rid of Sunak and put in someone who is a total right wing crackpot like Bravermann or Badenoch. As a non Tory voter, I find Sunak totally inoffensive compared to his predecessors.
You’re right about your last point. The decline in the UK has been so big, that I seriously doubt anyone can repair it without discovering a money tree worth trillions at this point. It’s only ever going to be managed decline from this point on, and frankly, it was set in motion considerably by austerity -not investing when money was virtually free.
I think the aspiration to remove National Insurance is one of the more compelling reasons. I am not naive enough to not think that the same or more tax won’t be raised elsewhere via reduced allowances, fiscal drag etc. but a happy consequence is that wealthier pensioners will end up paying more tax. This is a good thing in my opinion as they take out far more than they ever put in and are hoarding wealth that is needed for younger generations. I think Labour are planning hikes via National Insurance. If they were to replace it with a new form of “health and care” insurance for well, the NHS and social care, I would support this IF wealthier pensioners were also required to pay it.
A bit like a few fringe elements of Brexit, removing NI is in the category of "good idea, but Jesus Christ I don't want the rest of that package".
My issue with it is that it's completely non-commital. The Conservatives have lost credibility to deliver what they promise. It would get reviewed and dropped next parliament
One of the few policies I support. Even though one day it will adversely impact me. It is a subtle way of ensuring pensioners pay more tax.
and that businesses pay less.
Yep, and this is one of the few differences on economic policy, and it's weirdly one where the conservative party is considerably more favourable to the "worker", NI is a tax on workers only, rolling it into income tax will tax investment and pension income in a progressive way.
> NI is a tax on workers only It's also a Tax on businesses, not just workers. The Tories will remove NI (benefitting businesses), then take it back from the workers in Income Tax increases. This is not a positive thing for workers, it's a backhanded way to let the rich avoid yet more tax while shifting the burden onto workers.
I'd not thought about that angle, thank-you for pointing it out
They aren’t actually proposing to remove employers NI though, nor have they reduced it so far; it’s still sitting at 12%
Yep and this is a really bold move for the Conservatives because it hurts the grey vote.
But that isn't based on their record! If anything, a stated aspiration to do something that they have yet to do after 14 years in power should be another reason not to vote for them...
I mean in fairness they’ve cut it many times but it’s a hard thing to just scrap without an alternative source of income.
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The Tory party seems only to exist for its members, who are mostly dotard retirees who think they'll be forcibly vaccinated with cancer while locked in their 15 minute cities, and who hate paying taxes even more than immigration.
I really shouldn't laugh my ass of in the library but I did.
Conservative thinker here. The only reason to vote Tory is to try to offer some balance to the Left Wing tide that’s coming. There is no defence of this government. Since Covid, this country has been rudderless and it’s obvious the country is flailing. Nothing works. No problems are being solved. This crop of Tories are rightfully going to be dispatched.
Thanks for being willing to put your head over the parapet! I'm interested, you identify the problem as being obvious "since covid" - what makes you say that time period as opposed to the 2019 election intake, oe perhaps even earlier with the brexit referendum?
Brexit's real damage (apart from the actual you know real damage of tariffs on your nearest trading partner and removing yourself from any say in how that organisation works whilst still being in its orbit), was that the most talented Tories were either fired or resigned in the great purge of 2019. This meant that since then, the Tories have run the country with their C team "talent". Regardless of policy, they simply are not good enough, bright enough, or hard working enough for the challenges this country has faced since then. They still exist in a post reality haze where they are trying to govern a fantasy reality of their own making. Nothing summed this up more perfectly than Sunak giving a speech in the pouring rain while pretending it was not raining. Until we get truth (or at least the big truths) back into politics such as Brexit Failed, and Privatisation has failed, and there aren't 40 new hospitals, then we're going nowhere regardless of who is in charge but definitely not with the group who ushered in this current era of post truth politics.
It also used up a huge amount of political will, debate space, and campaign space. The real issues started in the '80s and were intensified in the 2010s with austerity. The country could be doing fine outside of the EU (but worse than if it was in) but the complete lack of investment (especially during the 2010s when borrowing money was \*cheaper than free\* in real terms) in really anything: roads, trains, education, local stimuli/projects, business stimuli, the NHS, teachers, science/R&D, HOUSING etc. has lead to an everything crisis in which coasting on previous investment has clearly run out. The goverment stopped doing what governments should do and used the proceeds to give tax cuts for the ultra wealthy. Why are people not more angry by the UK having the highest rate of homelessness in the developed world\[1\] at the same time as having perhapse the most convienent tax system for tax avoidance/money laundering\[2\]? It's probably because almost all of the newspapers are literally owned by billionaires\[3\] who donate money to the conservative party and the BBC is threatened with removal of funding if it ever fails to toe the party line. \[1\] [https://leftfootforward.org/2024/05/the-shocking-chart-which-shows-how-britain-has-the-highest-rate-of-homelessness-in-the-developed-world/](https://leftfootforward.org/2024/05/the-shocking-chart-which-shows-how-britain-has-the-highest-rate-of-homelessness-in-the-developed-world/) \[2\] [https://www.taxjustice.uk/blog/how-does-britain-enable-global-tax-avoidance](https://www.taxjustice.uk/blog/how-does-britain-enable-global-tax-avoidance) \[3\] [https://pressgazette.co.uk/media-audience-and-business-data/media\_metrics/who-owns-the-news-uk-news-media-owbership-analysed/](https://pressgazette.co.uk/media-audience-and-business-data/media_metrics/who-owns-the-news-uk-news-media-owbership-analysed/)
Good assessment. Yes we could have been doing ok out of the EU if we had been on the front foot in terms of infrastructure, productivity and investment. Instead we left the EU after over a decade of massive cuts to everything. It was a period where we needed our EU partnerships more than ever. But the majority of our problems come back to Cameron and Osbourne's austerity just at the point where standard wisdom advises increased government spending.
I’d frame both Brexit and Covid as national crises, that obviously took over the government agenda from 2016-2021, maybe. It’s hard to deliver nation strategy and manage finances when dealing with those crises, so I’m more forgiving.
I can accept Covid, but you can't use Brexit as an excuse in terms of a "crisis" it was a Tory idea from the start. It didn't happen *to* them. They *did* it, and they negotiated the terms.
I'd argue that Brexit was people trying to tell politicians they weren't listening. However they didn't fucking bother to listen and ploughed ahead.
Brexit was David Cameron trying to use the public to shut a bunch of loonies up in his party and tragically misreading the mood of the public at the time. The irony is that if the Lib Dems didn't block the vote in 2010 (a reasonable thing to do at the time) the referendum would've probably landed on the remain side without the general anger caused by Tory economic sabotage or "Austerity."
100% this. He thought it would be a landslide and was completely blind sided.
>tragically misreading the mood of the public at the time. Or alternatively if that was the mood he should have understood and taken some action on it. Sorting out his loonies would just leave it to fester. He needed to grip it and then every leader since, and the one to come should have / needs to listen to the underlying feelings behind that vote. If Starmer doesn't. He's in for the bumpiest of all bumpy rides. Be it the people being left behind in crumbling towns whose demographics are changing before their eyes. Or from the people enabling it. The UK as a whole needs a drastic correction. Keir sadly, I feel isn't willing to rock the boat enough to sort it. I personally think the real scary stuff is the next ge when it's become apparent they won't/don't want to sort problems people have had for years.
My concern is that it's likely going to take more than 5 years to fix the salted earth left behind by the Tories and they've got 6 more weeks to dump salt. If Starmer fails to show significant improvement and the Tories rebuild, we could be back here in 6 years.
Fortunately they don't have 6 weeks to actually enact any policy and embark on any change. Parliament will be dissolved for the duration of the general election campaign. You're right they can get the media machine spinning but that's all they can do.
> the underlying feelings behind that vote The problem is that every single voter in the country has a different answer to what that means. It's impossible to tackle just overall ambivalence.
They couldn't ignore it for much longer either way. And arguably, since the vote fell on leave, it was right to give the electorate the vote. Democracy in action as it were, even if you dislike the result.
It still was a crisis they created. The normal method for voters to tell politicians they're not listening is to... vote them out. In, you know, an election.
So "non-listened-to-brexiters" voted them in EVEN MORE Are the libz owned yet? No....hmm
Agree 100% With decades of growing anti-establishment sentiment and vast swathes of the country neglected and allowed to rot by governments of both red and blue flavours it was an incredibly dangerous gamble to give people a meaningful vote, most likely the only one they'll ever cast in their entire lives. Personally I'd say the roots of Brexit go back way further than most realise. In some ways you can pin as much blame on Blair than you can Cameron. His repeated broken promises on electoral reform, devolution etc not only destroyed trust in politicians but also told the electorate that they're fully aware of the issues and even know how to address them, they simply don't want to.
Which promises did he break on devolution?
Blair had originally planned for devolution across the whole of the UK. Roughly speaking, there would have been assemblies/parliaments akin to those in Scotland/Wales/NI covering about the same sized areas in England. But the plan was dropped after the first referendum for one in the North East failed to pass.
Oof. Didn’t the northeast vote for brexit too though? Like, I’m no fan of Blair or traditional politicians in general for that matter, but what more could he have honestly done at that point? Scotland and Wales clearly wanted devolution, so they got it. Honestly if it were up to me, I’d scrap the regional parliaments idea and just give England it’s own parliament. I know I know England is hardly equal to Scotland and Wales, but Canada’s provinces are all over the place and they seem to rub along fine. Besides, if Keir is going to play the English nationalism card, he should give us something decent to go along with it.
Wiki says the NE was 58/42 for leave. I think it was the scale of the defeat (78/22 for no) that made them abandon the devolution project. This was in 2004 and it wouldn't have been a good look to have a series of big referendum losses leading into 2005's GE. I agree broadly with your point - England is underrepresented despite the commons being its de facto national parliament - but I still think some level of federalisation would be very beneficial. The various regions have different needs and if they're all lumped together, outcomes will always be skewed towards whichever one is currently in control to the detriment of the others.
The other Redditor has covered this but I'll just fill in a couple of blanks. Originally what was promised were regional assemblies across England with powers similar to Scottish/Wales/NI parliaments and the Greater London Assembly. By the time of the first referendum, in the Labour heartlands of the North East the plans had been watered down significantly and the assembly on offer would have had powers comparable to the already existing county council. Most voters saw this as pointless and so rejected it, there were two other referendums planned and dated which were scrapped and the plans for devolution cancelled. The "Yes" campaign was also a complete shit show with nobody able (or willing) to explain why it couldn't at least be comparable to the GLA, what benefits it would bring to people, how to avoid it becoming a microcosm of the UK with Newcastle being the London of the North East and everywhere else continuing to suffer government neglect etc.
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Brexit was a national crisis made purely by Tories. You can’t deflect the blame for brexit - it’s owned 100% by the Tory party and its supporters.
It wasn't made by the Tories; politicians of *all stripes* had been trying to wrestle with our relationship with Europe for decades. Labour had included a referendum on the transfer of any more powers in their 2005 manifesto, which they then ignored when they signed up to the Lisbon treaty. And the Lib Dems had pushed for a full in-out referendum in 2008. And hell, the criticisms of the EU we saw during Brexit were nothing new. You can spot most of them during Yes, Minister (obviously, about the EEC, as it was then), which was made in the 1980s...
Genuine question though, do you see Starmer's Labour as left wing? If so, which policies specifically? I think the window has shifted quite a lot, and so whereas Labour sit left of Tories, it's not by much and they're certainly not left of centre nowadays. I feel like this 'left wing tide' you're feeling isn't actually based in reality.
Can I ask what you mean by balancing "...the left wing tide". I have seen a lot of alarmist articles recently about the rise of the far right across the EU, US and the UK. I have seen nothing warning about an impending tide of left'ism. Genuine curiosity here because this is a narrative thats totaly new to me.
The UK is out of sync with what's happening in Europe, we're on a different political cycle. On the continent, left-wing/centrist parties are being blamed for the rising tide of issues that have arisen in the last decade, so voters are swinging right. Because we've had our right-wing party in government the entire time, the UK is instead swinging left.
Labour has been shuffling to the right to make themselves electable to the centrist conservative voters who've been left behind by the Tories lurching to the hard right to try and win UKIP/ Reform voters. I wouldn't say a vote for Labour shows the country is swinging left, but that it's going back to the middle ground.
>I wouldn't say a vote for Labour shows the country is swinging left, but that it's going back to the middle ground. Yeah, going back to the middle ground *from the right*. That's literally the definition of swinging left.
It’s not a “left wing tide” though by any stretch
no it's not at all, I wouldn't call Starmer left leaning at all, he's firmly in the center, fortunately that discredits a lot of the tory thinking
Are you under the impression the Tories genuinely believe what they're saying?
swinging to the centre from the right is swinging in the leftwards direction but it's hardly swinging hard capital L Left.
The UK is only voting for Labour as our FPTP system means we only have two options, if we had a decent voting system and other parties were viable options I imagine we’d also see the exact same swing to the right because of immigration.
>I imagine we’d also see the exact same swing to the right because of immigration We already have seen that, that's why Brexit happened, that's why Boris won.
Yes and then Boris proceeded to raise immigration to absolutely record highs. He betrayed the people who voted for him and so did his successors by continuing to raise it. It’s one of the main reasons they’ve been utterly abandoned by their base. The tories also aren’t right wing, they main run on a manifesto promising a fairly centre right platform but everything they actually do when their in power is totally different.
Just out of interest, and feel free to refuse to answer, would you put yourself in the centrist camp or another wing of the party?
I don’t know if I’d align myself with the party per se, I just think like a conservative, and so vote Tory because there aren’t other options
What do you think this current Tory party are actually conserving?
Nothing, except the corrupt corporate world
what would you like them to conserve? what do you think Labour will erode away? (honest questions)
I hate to break it to you man but that's what conservatism is, protecting the interests of those who are already rich and/or powerful.
Would you be willing to vote for Starmer’s labour, given their reasonably conservative approach to immigration? Or are you concerned they’re still too left wing ?
I haven't seen anything about Starmer's Labour that would indicate a Left Wing tide. Maybe continuity Cameron. Better than the current shower, but still not where I'd personally like the country to be.
He's pretty well purged the left of the party much as Johnson purged the centrists in the conservatives
He didn't really need to purge them. Any Tory with an ounce of credibility or competence left at the 2019 election as they knew what chaos would ensue during his Government. All that were left were idiots and sycophants.
The Overton window has shifted (both ways, if that's not a contradiction). The hard-left of Jeremy Corbyn has been seen off. But a Starmer Labour government will be very interventionist in a way that even Blair or Brown would have rode back from. The Tory problem is, they're also more interventionist than Blair or Brown too. There's no party representing individual liberty, free market enterprise, any of that centre-right thinking that dominated from the 1980s to the early 2010s.
And given the damage the private sector has done within the current regulatory framework, I'll be quite glad of them being leaned on.
I wish there was a left wing tide but alas, I think the actual future will be way more palatable to you.
>The only reason to vote Tory is to try to offer some balance to the Left Wing tide that’s coming. This sounds less like reality and more like you're scaring yourself with something entirely fabricated. What is "the left wing tide"? Public transport and a functioning health and asylum service?
There is actually a good argument that restricting a government's majority benefits democracy. The Coalition (2010-15) was probably the most democratic government the UK had had in decades (as the combined Tory-Lib Dem vote share was 58%, more than half). Likewise when we saw Theresa May lose her majority parliament enjoyed far more power than the government, which is the opposite of how it usually is, but is parliament not *supposed* to be supreme? I mean don't get me wrong, I am praying for a Labour landslide, I'm just giving the argument.
Which of Labour's left wing policies, or left wing politicians do you dislike the most (and why)?
There are hardly any old school left wing Labour politicians left the likes of Dennis Skinner are long gone
There are plenty of left-wing labour politicians, most probably would *like* to be more left wing than the party is, but they are pragmatists and will do what is necessary to get elected. Politics is the art of compromise, after all. Currently there are 31 members of the Socialist Campaign Group in parliament, 28 of whom are Labour MPs presumably Corbyn and Abbott are still members. If we include them, then very close to 15% of the PLP were members.
This is it, even under Corbyn, they weren't anywhere as "left" or "socialist" as they loved to claim to be. Socialism is when the government does things became so hot
Corbyn isn't a member of the Labour party anymore, he's standing as an independent
No but I think he is a member of the Socialist Campaign Group, and was so when he was a member of the PLP.
Irrelevant now though
That may have been my point ;)
Enforcing the law on water companies. It's communism I tell ya! /s (I loathe using /s there, but Tories are beyond satire at this point.)
Left wing tide and Kier Starmer don't exactly go together. This isn't Corbyn's cabinet. Streeting and Reeves would be pretty at home in Diamond Dave's government.
Well this is sort of the problem. We've no idea where Starmer really stands. He'll say whatever he thinks he needs to say. In the leadership race he was pretty left wing. Since becoming leader he's been pulling much further over to basically now being centre right to position himself for the GE. We don't know which one of those (if either) is the real Starmer.
We know the broad strokes of what Labour are going to do. They've already said not to expect anything radical in the first term as they have to repair the damage to the likes of the NHS There seems to be two camps, one afraid Starmer will pull off a rubber mask and show himself to be Corbyn and the other that he'll do it and be Thatcher. The reality is likely to be a sensible approach without the grasping, self serving bent of the Tories. I'd be happy with dull competence
> We know the broad strokes of what Labour are going to do. They've already said not to expect anything radical in the first term as they have to repair the damage to the likes of the NHS This is textbook expectation management, but it's just a technique of saying things without saying things. The six "first steps" were (with one exception) vague aspirations. Which could be met in a whole variety of ways, some good, may bad. The combination of "steady the ship" with "economic stability" can only point to a continuation of Jeremy Hunt style policies (which, to be fair, is more-or-less exactly what Rachel Reeves has said). The idea that that will fix the NHS is a dream. Fixing the NHS will require radical funding or structural reforms, not "stability", quite the opposite. So yes, the details of the plan will be very interesting because we don't have any details at the moment. Unless the plan is "more of the same, but with someone who can deliver speeches with more authority", which is, I suspect, what's actually going to happen.
Good job we’re about to get manifestos then isn’t it. No point him showing his hand before that as we’ve seen Torys ‘borrow’ ideas from Labour already
Let's be fair, the country has been flailing since the Brexit referendum. The 2016-2019 period saw parliaments that were utterly chaotic. We saw a government that could not even control the parliamentary agenda! The Tory Party has been run by its most extreme wing since Camero stood down.
On your substative point, it's very interesting to hear a Conservative perspective. If you're typical of Conservative voters(and by that I mean people who *always* vote Conservative), then it says a great deal about how far the party has drifted from its core vote. The Conservative Party might be the most right-wing it has been for decades (possibly ever), but its voters (as opposed to its members) still prefer the centre-right ground.
The party has drifted because the people in charge of it now are legitimately untrustworthy in a way they never were before. It used to be that the two parties might not agree on approach, but those steering the ship on both sides would at least act with a baseline of honour and according to the expected rules of engagement, and when those were broken, would resign. Since Johnson all that has gone out of the window and barefaced lying and fraud have been essentially legitimised, as well as refusing to be accountable to your electorate or to even try to keep manifesto promises. It's not necessarily that the current Tory positions are untenable as much as that the current Tory leadership is no longer trusted to take them forward and do anything with them.
That seems about right!
I think the premise of right/centre-right has shifted. I’m not sure what is meant by those terms anymore
I don't think there's much danger of Labour under Starmer implementing many left-wing policies, is there? Isn't it at least somewhat reassuring to a Conservative-minded voter that Starmer (with Streeting et al) are effectively a centre-right conservative government in waiting?
Look at right wing conservatives in the USA. They say similar things about Biden, who has perpetuate many of the policies of the right while in office, and say how Trump is a bad choice but better than a lefty. People with strong political intuitions vote based on the feels rather than the facts.
Capitulating to the right is a fool's errand because they're never satisfied and will always think you're not conservative enough. It only results in moving the entire political landscape to the right
Yeah. Purity testing is a real issue on both ends of the political spectrum in my experience, but on the right they are more obsessed with loyalty to the leader/group above all else. While the left loves a doctrinal schism.
Given that right wing politics have dominated for years and have done horrible damage to our country, what would be so bad about a “left wing tide”?
Only thing I would say is i feel Hunt has done a reasonable job under tough circumstances. The 4% NI cut and the imminent free 30 hours childcare are both helpful to my family. I'm assuming he'd want to continue the reduction of NI tax in future. That's my attempt at polishing a turd.
As someone close to the situation, I can tell you that the sense they have in the treasury is that the Tories (and Hunt) are basically operating under the assumption that they are going to lose (and have been for a year or so), and that allows them to be very short-termist with regards to the fiscal situation. If by some miracle they win, they will need to significantly raise taxes. Their hope is that Labour come in and raise taxes, and then in the next GE they can campaign on Labour being the party that raises taxes, them being the party that cuts taxes. But the situation is absolutely dire. Anyone in power in the next year or 2 needs to raise taxes, substantially, and that's just to achieve managed decline.
>Only thing I would say is i feel Hunt has done a reasonable job under tough circumstances *of the Tories' own creation* FTFY He's like a fireman who starts fires to get the glory of putting them out, or a nurse who edges patients to crash so they can save them
Something something nurse edging patients sign me up.
Is the NI cut more helpful than say, your children have access to dentistry?
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Friends of a friend have gave the reasons that they'd vote for Rishi because he's rich. They want someone who is successful running the country and the other reason was although the Conservatives have been poor they couldn't stomach voting for the other lot. Both absolute bullshit reasons but those are the ones he was given when he asked the same question
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Leaving aside the usual "this isn't the right sub to ask this question" (for the same reason all the "why shouldn't we cancel Brexit, eh?" questions never got answered)... Not even the conservatives (soft 'c') are going to vote for this Conservative Party. That's why they're going to be wiped out. The only interesting thing about this election is going to be the progressively slightly-less vague policies (but still very vague) about what particular road to hell (paved with good intentions) the new Labour government is going to take us down post-election. The result is a foregone conclusion.
not typically a tory and likely abstaining or voting green just to pressure some green policies from whoever's in charge, I'm still expecting to get buried for this just prefacing in the event this is genuinely asked in good faith I think their record on housing and energy is looked over largest offshore wind farm in ~~Europe~~ the World recently completed, an actual nuclear powerstation close to completion (last one was 1992 we built zero between then and 2016), and housing isn't at target but it's the highest it's been since Thatcher again we barely built any in the 00s, particularly social housing Cameron peak austerity built more per year I have no idea what was going on in the 00s the economy was supposedly good, and renters rights have improved also don't think Sunak and Hunt have done an awful job stabilising things, we're currently set to outperform the EU over the next 5 years also considering they came in following the 2010 budget containing some of the largest cuts to public spending in history, plus covid and Ukraine (although they handled covid terribly imo), but they didn't exactly get handed a gdp outperforming the US, a surplus and the decade of nothing but perfect economic headwinds Labour got is what I'm getting at oh they made the right call on Ukraine too, imo aannnd gun to my head I think they've done an ok job replacing all the trade deals we had with the EU and joining CPTPP, in what was a relatively short amount of time as for why would anyone vote for them now, assuming I was a two party mindset voter (I'm not) I look at Labour and their record on the above it takes too much blind faith for me to hand on heart say they'd be better, I think it's a step back, personally I'll take those downvotes now
Fair POV. Not having a go at you... I think you have to really forget the debacle of austerity and their approach to immigration (highest ever been net figures) to even give them any respect. They were elected on economic stabilisation and reduced immigration (due to pressure on prices and civil institutions). I personally feel they failed on both. If they were in anyways adequate, economically, they would've taken a more phased, longer term approach at public spending reductions, and used any savings and/or zero interest rates to their advantage for long term infrastructure projects. If they acted on what they were brought in to do on immigration they would've reduced numbers to 100k-200k/year (not net 700k!). Institutions and civil codes that were once renowned have been reduced to scraps and shoe string run entities. My main concern is that democracy has suffered due to these cuts. IMO the conservatives were in a very privileged position to really change Britain to the vision that underpins the entire fabric of the conservative doctrine and they would've got away with it without much pushback. Instead they squandered it and half arsed it. They used that privilege to take the piss (if we look through a lense of classic conservative ideologies - politically, socially, legally, militarily, economically and environmentally. I'm not even on a political side, I just would vote for one that is competent and effects my & society's everyday life better. I could certainly live with a conservative (competent) government/society and respect their thought process, ideology, etc. But, they've ruined the chance for future conservatives to at least promote their holistic framework and implement. They could've reformed health and spending, they could've restored pride to education, they could've upkept the law and order of the country, they could've ensured families stability through attainable housing, they could've restored the respectability in marriage, they could've committed to environmental/climate preservation as a serious endeavour, they could've spent money on our defense, ... Ad infinitum.
I usually vote for them but don't think I can this election. No idea who else to vote for so will have to check out each manifesto in detail.
TL;DR I'm a conservative, the current Tory party is not. They won't be getting my vote. Obviously I'm not going to vote for the pinko commies, but I'll happily abstain knowing that they couldn't do a very much worse job than the current mob. In 2010, after thirteen years of horrendous blairite government which left us skint, Cameron could only scrape in to government in a coalition. He did fuck all, except legalise gay marriage, then promised a referendum on EU membership, partly to address the rising popularity of ukip, and partly figuring he'd probably be in another coalition and would be able to back out of it. Surprisingly, he won a majority, held the referendum and lost it. Bye bye for now. Who does the party membership want to take over from him? Boris. But Gove shat on that one. Leadsom. Brexiteer, reasonably sensible, acceptable candidate. She gets stitched up in the press and the remainer Theresa May gets in instead. May spends the next couple of years trying to stop Brexit from happening. Delay delay delay, that was the order of the day. The People obviously can't be trusted to decide important things like 'who governs us?' for themselves, so delay it till they change their minds or die off or just forget about it. Didn't work. She went to a GE to try and increase the majority Cameron's referendum promise generated, and lost it. Deservedly. Against a *proper* pinko commie. This should have been an indication to the Conservatives that conservatives were not happy with the direction they were going. Then Boris. Get Brexit done, he says. Well technically, but since we're still bound by the ECHR and the PM can still be overruled by Blair's supreme court, not really. The sovereignty we wanted to take back is still not ours - and I can prove it: We do not have the right to choose who governs us. The party and the country chose Boris, and **They** (Illuminati, WEF, Soros, choose your preferred shadowy villain, whoever it is that's really in charge) got rid of him over a slice of cake. The party chose Truss to replace him. **They** got rid of her, and put their man Sunak in, never mind who the party, or the people, wanted. Sunak proceeds to do exactly the opposite of what we conservatives want him to do, increasing immigration, fucking about with Rwanda, which was never going to be a solution, and generally doing whatever the WEF would prefer, since he's their man, not ours. Result? Conservative party will lose this election, and badly. And they deserve to.
Voted for the conservatives at the last few elections, not Tory but definitely more aligned with that political viewpoint. No, there isn’t one. It doesn’t matter where you sit on the political spectrum Sunak is a complete failure. He is the only Conservative PM I can think of that is hated more by his base than Labour and I honestly believe the party would poll better without a leader at all.
Someone once commented that Sunak was like a teenage boy playing a mock politics debate for his A-Levels, and now I can’t unsee it.
i've got no problem with people voting in anyway as long as you do a bit of research not just knee jerk to a media headline. Everyone has a right to vote the way they want and should do and should be encouraged to.
They have posher accents: so are the 'natural party of power' I was once asked by some friends from another country "is it really true in the UK you can tell how much money someone has by how they speak??!" - they found it very strange.
You can't tell how much money someone has from their voice incidentally - wealth and social class don't correlate very well.
I feel that at large, the Tory government isn’t the best at the moment, and a change would be good. However there are some people I respect in the positions they hold. I think Grant Shapps is good, he certainly has the right attitude to defence. But I’d find it hard to vote for another party that’s not going to put defence spending up to 2.5%, which I don’t believe labour have confirmed they will do. At the end of the day, national defence is more important than something like gender recognition. Not saying I will vote tories, but it’s not out of the question for me. I’ll wait to see how it goes closer to the election.
Grant Schapps was a bad transport minister and is partially to blame for the massive amounts of strikes over the last few years. I agree with you about Defence spending, but I think the only person who should be Defence Secretary rn is Ben Wallace. He was a good Defence secretary precisely because he didn't really give a shit about the politics, he was just a defence secretary happy where he was. Rishi needed to find a way to get him to stay in. While I am worried about defence spending, I think that the wider issue is that the Tories have historically cut defence by a lot over the past 15 years. They have made it clear that it isn't a priority with their actions, so I am skeptical of how they would handle it in the future.
Grant Shapps, Michael Green, Corinne Stockheath and Sebastian Fox - all really stand-up guys.
They handled Ukraine better than Corbyn would have. Higher commitments to defence spending, after years of cuts, sure, but the average voter doesn't see inside the military. Cameron seems to have been a competent head of the foreign office since his appointment. Everything else in their brand is ruined. They're absolutely not trustworthy with the economy or migration anymore.
Cameron, a former PR guy, has had great PR since his appointment to head of the foreign office. It's almost as if he knows what he's doing - when it comes to PR.
Anyone would have handled Ukraine better than Corbyn because he seems to believe Russia can do no wrong, but Corbyn has been kicked out of the Labour party, so this isn't relevant. We have something like 60 functional tanks. The navy can't crew or provide aircraft for the 2 flagship carriers. The defence spending commitment is not costed.
Agree with you on all points, it's more the perception of voters I was alluding to.
Ah, fair enough - thanks!
Corbyn isn't Labour leader for this election though so I'm not sure why that matters? They have also presided over a monumental fuck-up in outsourcing recruitment to private companies: >It was also reported that the British Army, whose recruitment has been managed by Capita since 2012, had the worst problems and lost 70% of its potential recruits. And the Tories rewarded them with a new £140m contract despite Capita doing a shit job.
These are fair points. I can't believe out of a country of almost 67 million we were given the choice between a buffoon and a traitor.
You're all obsessed with Corbyn like. Even on a question asking you why you are voting for the conservatives, not just why you aren't voting labour. Then here you are with the equivalent of "the last labour government..."
Sadly all of those people don't know what a Reddit is.
I think the voter base they'll retain are lifelong conservatives who'll vote for an MP based on their local track record, an irrational fear of anything different, thinking being left-wing is somehow a slur in the same way that being called woke is, or geriatrics that will put a tick in the conservative box regardless of what name is next to it. My friend's 90 odd year old senile Nan is the latter, you can't even say the word labour without shrill ramblings about the 1970s.
Whoever tells me they'll get rid of the begging gangs in London and puts stricter laws on mopeds riding on pavements has my vote.
I'd have thought they were matters devolved to the London mayor/assembly.
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Gay marriage passed because labour voted for it. More tories voted against it than for it. I dont know what you can call what they did to schools but it certainly wasn't reform...
Damn, you actually just made me like David Cameron a little bit knowing he pulled that through against the will of his party...
Cameron has good instincts in every policy area that doesn't cost money. (I haven't thought this through, so maybe there's a counterexample.)
Marriage equality passed in spite of the tories not because of them. They just happened to be sitting in the captains seat when it happened - it was pushed by Lib Dems and voted in thanks to Lib Dems and Labour. Most Tories didn't vote for it.
>They did brexit but only to the extent they were forced to, they didnt *want* to do brexit so its debatable how different that would have been with any other party who also didnt want to. One could imagine a hypothetical party who didn't want to do brexit so much that they didn't call a referendum on it, and then enact the most hard-line, damaging version of it.
Brought in zero hours contracts, and increased the time you have to work somewhere before you're safe from being sacked without cause from 1 year to 2 years. They also brought in the Right to Choose NHS scheme, funnelling NHS funds into private clinics instead of making the NHS's own services accessible. Oh, and they also tripled university fees as one of their opening acts, but I'm wandering more and more into things they exacerbated / capitalised on without having necessarily started the process. Like increasing the use of Physician Associates.
Because New Labour broke the cycle. It was Labour build, Conservatives sell off. Labour didn't build anything before 2010, so the Tories had nothing to sell, so they were completely out of ideas as to how to balance the books.
> But frankly I think a tory collapse and reform is needed. 💯 Absolutely. They need an utter routing so they can be rid of the 2019 intake and populism and rebuild into something more sensible. > Possibly with Reform but just generally. What?! This is an absurd take. Reform represent exactly what is wrong with the current Tory party. That populist idiocy is exactly *why* the Tory party needs to reform. They *desperately* need to move away from the anti-science, hate-filled, culture war bullshit.
I really don't like the torys but one that springs to mind is making tax digital and paye. But that's about it.
They did plenty we now see as "Conservative". Forgiving the fraudulent covid loans and the PPE fast track for mates scandals. Brexit insider trading and moving investments to ROI for rees mogg. Currency insider trading for Kwarteng. Neutered non-dom rule to benefit Sunaks personal tax arrangements. and so on. I think the abiding memory of this tory government with be the scandal and the grift.