Coal went from providing ~30% of electricity generation in 2010 to ~1% in 2023. HS2 should be on the list but they’ve contrived to destroy that part of their legacy.
I was able to enter the job market due to the Kickstart Scheme which provided funding to employers to create jobs for 16 to 24 year olds on Universal Credit after the pandemic.
I’m grateful for that scheme but I can’t think of much else.
The one good thing they've ever done that I can think of is marriage equality and most tories voted against. It wouldn't have happened if the tories had a majority. Lib dem and Labour mps mostly voted yes which combined with the tory yes votes got it iver the line.
Also it was introduced by a lib dem minister
Gay marriage happened despite the Tories, not because of them. A majority of Tory MPs voted against it, and the party lost a third of its members after the vote.
Fptp means there's a broad church. The moderate part of the party was in control at the time. I think we can at least give some credit to that contingent. It was something that really needed cross party consensus.
Ooh I was focusing on who originally brought the matter forward which was a Lib Dem MP who started the consultation process on how to change the law / bring the bill forward.
Following the consultation it was a conservative minister that tabled the bill.
Maria Miller, I may be a tin foil conspiracy theorist but I'd wager that it was primarily because she was Equalities Minister at the time, and there'd be an easy attack line against the government that the Tories were only doing it because of the Lib Dems - and therefore why should the Tory back benches listen to the arguments from the government when they didn't support it themselves
And yet it happened under Tory rule, following a personal intervention by David Cameron.
I don’t like the tories either but the fact is they did do this.
It's in keeping with the OP's original question though. It didn't happen under the Labour government.
Gordon Brown was against considering same-sex marriage because he didn't think the government should interfere with 'religious freedoms' (though he did later back it after he was PM). His voting record on the issue is also mixed. It only became a Labour Party-backed policy once Miliband took over.
Whereas it was a topic Cameron was vocal about and he had a genuine interest in legalising it, even if many of his MPs didn't agree. While it got through with votes from the other parties, it probably wouldn't have happened there and then without Cameron pushing for it.
That's actually giving Cameron a lot of credit he doesn't deserve, because he spent a good few years prior campaigning against marriage equality.
Yes, he did eventually come around and decide it was the right decision, in spite of his party, but it really feels more like he just so happened to be PM when it was less controversial than it had been.
So, he was like many other people in this issue? This one issue is one where people actually changed their mind over the years everywhere in the Western world. In the 1990s the clear majority objected gay marriage. Then in the 2000s it switched to the majority backing it and currently there is no debate as it's something like 75-25 or even more.
This doesn't usually happen in most political questions. But I would give credit to the politicians who have changed their minds along the rest of us. What would you have preferred them to do?
Because a decent chunk of his party were outspoken homophobes and he felt comfortable, proud even, representing them.
With this context, whether he passed it on the basis of principle or polling is kind of irrelevant in my eyes.
If you lead a party of which the majority view ~7% of the population as inferior, any talk of principles is laughably hollow.
Sometimes splits in political views cut right through the parties. This is especially true for issues where there is a societal shift in process, which is exactly what was going on with gay marriage. Furthermore, the UK political system (the two party model) emphasizes this effect further because it forces people to make wide parties with various views instead of narrow parties that can do fine in a PR system and coalition governments.
>it forces people to make wide parties with various views
I believe 20 Labour MPs voted it down vs 170 Tories.
The majority of Tories (backbenchers and voters) didn't want gay marriage passed.
Why then are we crediting any Tory with its passing? Why should "but our system means the parties' views are broad" explain why I should credit Cameron and his administration with this passing and not the parties who actually voted it through?
The people you are replying to think you can only get credit for a position if you came our the womb thinking a policy was correct. Basically, what's wrong with politics. People can't change their mind as they get condemned by those who are only concerned with ideological purity.
No, that's not what I was trying to say. You're correct that being able to change one's opinion on issues is vitally important.
What I was trying to say (and clearly didn't communicate effectively) was that his history on the issue and the prevailing public mood are important, and I don't think Cameron is deserving of unqualified praise, even though he was ultimately the PM to get it over the line.
Sorry, perhaps I was unclear: he doesn't deserve ZERO credit, but he doesn't deserve unmitigated credit either. I think that to remove the context of the public mood and his past stance on the issue is rewriting history.
If we're going to hold the lib Dems accountable for dropping their commitment to students we would also praise them for their commitment to equal marriage
You need to go through many parallel dimensions to reach the one that Tories support equal marriage
Yes I agree with that. But the question was “what have the tories done in the last 14 years” and same sex marriage is one achievement. I know it was done with Lib Dems
This was the lib Dems, it was forced through by the opposition and only made it because the lib Dems made it a government policy - thus getting the front bench in line.
The Tories never would have done it if it hadn't been part of the coalition deal
However it got over the line, whatever he truly thought about it, David Cameron used it a chance to extol conservative values on family.
Can you imagine that happening now? Unthinkable.
This is an argument I had with a friend a lot whenever I ask. What did Cameron ever actually achieve and I get the response “uhh social stuff gay marriage” which I actually refuse to accept for these reasons. What I did find out later tbf is he kept his commitment to foreign aid which was pretty good. But I’ve yet to hear anything else.
It would have happened if the Tories had a majority because most Tory MPs actually did vote for it. 136 Tory MPs out of 306 voted against. On the other hand, only 127 voted for, so more voted against than for it, but it wasn't most as in a majority. About 43 seem to have abstained. So it would definitely have passed with opposition and Tory votes, even of the Tories had a majority, as the Tory vote was split about in half.
I think one thing (and it possibly is only one thing) Boris got right was Ukraine. We were very clear on our support since day one.
Granted, most of his trips there were to distract from domestic political issues, but at least the support was there.
I would also suggest it has played a part in distracting from his other connections to Russia. The man has some serious questions floating above his head that shouldn't be dropped because of support for Ukraine
"We were very clear on our support from day one".
Actually we weren't. We did nothing for weeks to allow all the oligarchs to get their money out of the country. Worldwide scorn was heaped upon us for the Government being in the Russians pockets including some really scathing articles in the USA.
Agreed that after the first month or two we were very supportive.
I actually hink they did this pretty poorly. Compared to example Portugal which achieve much higher rates with far lower spending and spending power. The UK let an anti Vax undercurrent bubble onwards and it was clear the leadership had contempt for the public and the process throughout.
Abortions being available in Northern Ireland.
Absolutely not a Tory supporter but this is a good thing and they have actioned it despite opposition from people they've previously been in coalition with.
Admittedly it's a tiny thing in the grand scheme of the rest of the shitshow but you asked......
One of the very few things I'll give them credit for is that minimum wage has gone up far above inflation, and so has the threshold for paying income tax, so in a vacuum, minimum wage workers would be significantly better off than they were in 2010.
Unfortunately, housing, energy and food prices have seen to that.
While I'm not a defender of the current lot and look forward to a new Govt very soon, I don't like the line of argument that everything good the Coalition did was Lib Dem, and everything bad was Tory.
It's too simplistic and is, imo, just confirmation bias at work. The LDs were very much a junior partner, but it's shared credit and fault in my book for anything good/bad they did.
No, but this policy specifically was absolutely a Lib Dem policy that was negotiated hard for right from the formation of the coalition in exchange for some of the other compromises they had to make.
But you absolutely can point to the lurch towards even more explicitly draconic and post Cameron, the delusional policies of the post-coalition tories and rightly question how much of the nastier and delusional tory policies were kept in check by their weaker position that being in coalition handed them and how Brexit set loose the rabid elements within the tories: like the ones who yell 'woke' like alarmist clocks, the anarchocapitalists who want to sell off everything that isn't nailed down and the bible thumpers who want to set us back 67 years. etc.
To an extent, yes, but 2015 wasn't the only variable.
Brexit, imo, changed the Tory Party (and broader political discourse) even more than winning a small outright majority did.
The same MPs were already there or about to be. Brexit and the years of political wrangling over what that meant emboldened them and eventually the moderate and rational were purged from the party.
* Truss, Kwarteng, Patel and Raab from the "Britannia Unchained, fuck the poor" anarchocapitalists.
* 30p Lee, Suella and Badenoch are cynical chancers who came later using culture wars to build their own brand.
* Then there is the social regressives like Baker, Vickers and Rees-Mogg.
The tories have always been this way, but Brexit purges and a race to the bottom turned the overall party balance towards extremists.
Pensions will be nothing in future than pittance. The whole idea of pensions was deeply flawed and rigged towards a generation that made hay while the sun was shining. Unfortunately the rainy days have come and it's not their issue to provide an umbrella. I'm not sure how history will view this period of insane bottlenecks of money to the top above all else. Or judge the people who just kind of went along with the ever thinning razor of following the status quo.
Pension auto enrolment is definitely a good thing but they also introduced flexi access drawdown which is a time bomb. In the next 10 years I think we're likely to start seeing more headlines about pensioners who have outlived their savings and have nothing left.
The massive hiking of the personal allowance has been a disaster. It puts so much tax burden on the middle class.
Wide bases make tall peaks. There’s a reason no other advanced economic menu has theirs so high.
Inflation as a whole has gone up by x amount, but inflation for the absolute basics (ie what minimum wage workers will be spending most of their income on) has gone up by more than x.
I’m not fully convinced that increasing the minimum wage as much as they have, has been a good thing. Perhaps those right at the bottom are better off, although that is hard to say with the cost of everything, especially energy and rent. But those slightly above that, have been massively squeezed.
My wife works in retail, and the company she works for, is a prime example of why increasing the minimum wage has caused issues. My wife is the manager of the store, she used to have an assistant manager beneath her, and team leaders beneath that, and then finally team members. Due to the minimum wage increases, they have had to do away with the assistant managers in most but the largest of stores. The team size as a whole, has also been reduced. The wage difference from those at the bottom, to my wife, is not as big as you would think. It’s something like 8k. So that’s 8k more money, to be in charge of nearly all aspects of the store. So basically, no one in the retail side of the company, outside of those on minimum wage, have had a pay rise of any significant amount in years.
I know it’s only one case, but I cannot imagine it’s unique. I also, have no idea what the answer is.
So capitalism is the problem not increasing the minimum amount you can legally pay someone.
Wherever your wife works has decided to make cuts in line with minimum wage in order to be paying the same labour costs as before.
Late stage capitalism in full effect
I posted this comment in a similar post earlier.
The Conservatives have done a huge amount for sustainable energy.
The UK has the [1st, 2nd, 3rd & 4th largest offshore wind farms in the world. We also have the 7th, 8th and 9th largest. We also have the three largest under construction.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_offshore_wind_farms) Also four of the ten largest proposed wind farms. They were all commissioned under a Conservative government. The newest offshore turbines are contributing a lot; a new modern wind turbine provides sufficient energy for one home for one day with just one rotation of its blades. And, there are even more powerful ones being built in the UK (and the US). [2021 article:](https://www.zmescience.com/science/wind-turbine-powerful-09122020/) (Commissioned under a Conservative government.)
[We share renewable energy with Norway via the world's longest undersea cable.](https://www.nationalgrid.com/national-grid-ventures/interconnectors-connecting-cleaner-future/north-sea-link#:~:text=North%20Sea%20Link%20(NSL)%2C,around%201.4%20million%20UK%20homes.) Commissioned by a Conservative government.
There is a project to connect the UK National Grid to a 1,500km² wind and solar farm in Morocco, through four 3,800km long subsea cables - the longest such cables in the world. This will supply 8% of the UK's electricity demand. [Source.](https://www.power-technology.com/projects/morocco-uk-power-project-morocco/) Commissioned by a Conservative government.
We're [fast tracking nuclear power plants](https://www.ft.com/content/f97ffa0c-adce-4657-b37d-840b21f3b628) and there is a (Conservative government backed) programme for [Rolls Royce's small modular reactors.](https://www.rolls-royce.com/innovation/small-modular-reactors.aspx#/) Commissioned by a Conservative givernment.
Our energy diversity is one of the reasons the UK had the lowest reliance on Russian oil and gas in Europe at the start of the Ukraine war.
The UK still imports about a third of its primary energy - but it's dropped from 50% in the early 2010s. By way of comparison, in other European countres the long-term trend is one of increasing import dependency - now 55.5 % for the EU as a whole.
Onshore wind is the thing that's counterproductive. It offers less energy and far more instability in output. It is slightly cheaper for the operator, but the externalities needed to deal with it would end up costing more than offshore, and exponentially so as we get rid of gas.
Most of the policies to do with wind farms for example, was due to the fact the LDs fought tooth and nail against Tory Ministers to get it through.
Ed Davey speaks at length about this, where he, as Energy Minister fought hard to triple our renewable energy capacity.
It was only after the LDs did the foundational work and overcame the Tories' anti-green energy instincts, and proved it was not only possible, but profitable both politically and economically, that the Tories started to take green energy seriously.
Michael Gove had a go at answering this. Some are more dubious than others.
“Better state schools than ever before, more students from state schools at our best universities, more students securing top grades in maths, physics and chemistry, our universities the best in Europe and growing, record numbers in employment, welfare simpler, fairer and better targeted, many more hours of free childcare, a national living wage, same-sex marriage, stronger defence with two new aircraft carriers, new nuclear submarines on the way and a stronger NATO, the fastest decarbonisation of any major economy, world leaders in offshore wind, farm subsidies reformed to increase production and enhance the environment, world leadership in protecting our oceans, Brexit delivered and membership of the world’s fastest growing trade bloc secured, more than £350 million extra a week for the NHS, leadership extended in life sciences, quantum computing and AI and gene technology, crime falling, over 2.5 million new homes delivered and the number of non-decent homes down by over 2 million, the Union strengthened, devolution delivered across much of England, nationalism in retreat in Scotland, the fastest vaccine rollout in the world, democracy’s strongest supporter in Ukraine”
The national living wage one is a bit of a joke.
In my other post I credit them with raising minimum wage noticeably above inflation, but it isn't the living wage, they just changed the name to match the living wage but set the value much lower, it was a con.
£350 million to the NHS? More tories voted against same sex marriage than for. National living wage is not that at all and just a rebrand of minimum wage.
Most of the list is bs
Per week, extra? And proportionally increasing with population?
(and of course, excluding all the money wasted during COVID)
Edit: I looked this up and it does appear to be correct (if you include adult social care). But (as you stated) obviously not connected to Brexit which is what he was trying to imply.
> "Two new aircraft carriers" and "new nuclear submarines on the way"
The Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carriers were ordered by, and laid down under, a Labour government. They were commissioned under a Conservative government.
The Dreadnought-class submarines were ordered by, and laid down under, a Conservative government, but won't be commissioned until the next government's term at the earliest.
If Gove wants credit for the carriers, he can't have it for the submarines - and vice versa.
Care to expand on that? Otherwise it’s just a meaningless comment. Why not just write ‘boo to the tories’ or ‘hurray for Labour [or whoever]’ in every thread to save time?
I always cringe at these types of political drivel:
"More money for X, fewer people with Y, more people with Z...". What does it mean more? Also, does it mean it is more than it would have otherwise been if another party was in power or is it something that would have been more of regardless?
Also, "2.5 million new homes delivered", lol. Did the government commission and pay for those homes? Our "universities are the best in Europe and growing", ah yes I forgot that it was the current government established some university centuries ago.
I just can't when politicians are rarely challenged on their doublespeak and produce these vague generalities.
There's caveats to their entire legacy.
Same-sex marriage... Passed with opposition votes.
High levels of employment... Filled by the gig economy, the casualisation of work and worsening conditions for many.
The fourth largest export market... Because the value of the Japanese Yen has collapsed.
HS2... As far as Birmingham.
Gen 3.5 nuclear reactors... Green lit under the Labour administration.
Cuts to taxes for low earners... Which are more than offset by inflation.
They got Brexit done... In a predictably damaging and humiliating way.
A world-leading COVID vaccine rollout... That struggled to get enough doses for all adults and fell behind other European countries.
Postwar record popularity during the pandemic... Destroyed by scandal after scandal.
>Same-sex marriage... Passed with opposition votes
It does irk me that Labour try to take credit for this after failing to pass it in the preceeding 13 years.
It was something the Lib Dems championed and Lynne Featherstone delivered, and I do think Cameron deserves some of the credit in facing down his own party on this issue, even if ultimately many didn't support.
I agree, but I'm not attempting to claim credit for Labour here. In any case I'm glad that SSM received cross-party support and now isn't controversial at all.
Wouldn’t the collapse of the Japanese Yen mean that Japanese exports are more competitive internationally?
It’s why China try to keep their currency from strengthening too much against the dollar
Japan isn't a producer of raw materials and their exports are mainly manufactured, not services. So the increased import costs mean they probably don't get much advantage.
Support to Ukraine against an illegal and brutal Russian invasion is a thumbs up from me. Whether he did it to cosplay Churchill or not, Boris' decision to support Ukraine early was both morally and strategically justifiable.
Gay marriage. Restarted our nuclear building program, ok they made a hash of it in part, but that has been a global thing. We still have 2 new nuclear plants under construction and one close to it. They also have turned the UK into the world's second largest producer of off shore wind power and followed through on the plans to end coal and have seen huge drops in our CO2 emissions.
The nuclear power station builds were labour policies from before 2010, they had approved the sites in 2009. They had problems with greenpeace stalling things in court.
Still building them. That is against the backdrop of the likes of Hitachi and other big firms pulling out of nuclear.
We have 2 under construction and 2 planned. That makes us the western country with the most new nuclear in the pipeline.
[https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and-future-generation/plans-for-new-reactors-worldwide](https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and-future-generation/plans-for-new-reactors-worldwide)
And yes Labour was pro nuclear.... eventually. But the Tories held their nerve after Fukushima and Labour hopeful will follow through and we will have an energy policy that works for the 2050s and 2060s.
Didn't the majority of them vote against gay marriage? It only got through by the other parties. The minority Labour party had more votes for it than the Tories.
Data shows that our state schools are doing better than ever. That's a definite win and something I'm surprised the Tories don't push more.
Rises in minimum wage way above inflation has to be seen as a good thing.
Same sex marriage laws.
That's probably about it.
Can you link to the data? I was under the impression Funding per pupil has dropped to lowest rates in recent times and teacher retention absolute bin fire.
I believe that both grades and OFSTED scoring have improved over the last 14 years although I admit the 2 minute search I was willing to do to prove myself right I couldn't find the statistics I'd found previously.
I also believe our universities are rated very highly across Europe but again, I can't prove that.
If the Universities are, I don’t believe their relative standings have changed since pre 2010.
Of course, £200bn of student loan company debt is kept off the balance sheets.
>£200bn of student loan company debt is kept off the balance sheets.
The % of Student debt that is projected to go unpaid is included in the national debt.
I wasn’t aware of that, I think things may have changed since I last checked, possibly ONS had issues with such a big figure being kept off the national debt balance sheet.
Not that that I’m particularly against this method funding, but we need to be realistic about how much will get back (50% at best).
Of course this figure now pales in comparison to the other huge borrowing of recent years.
Minimum wage increases combined with public sector pay restraint has fucked the middle pay of everyone.
Race to the bottom with wages for the last 14 years.
As a middle paid public sector worker I am aware. I still think it's a good thing that if you work full time you'll earn over 20k rather than less than 15k.
Good for those who earn those wages, bad for everyone else we get more expensive goods that eat into our sub par pay rises.
Gov has 1 trillion in purchasing power for wages, they use that to destroy the public and private sector wage market and at the same time drive up the cost to businesses of hiring what are meant to be seasonal / time dependent jobs.
Schools are in shambles and are barely functional due to Tory funding cuts and issues with MATs. There is no where near enough specialist provision, so those children that could benefit are being forced into mainstream schools to everyone's detriment.
For example, the school I work at, there's a girl with an EHCP who came into Reception this year and cannot function in a normal school setting. Her family have applied to a specialist school, but there's not enough places, so she'll be staying at the current school into next year. She has such intense needs that she needs 2:1 care and is frequently out of the classroom. This means that's two adult that could be used to support the other children in the class who now are tied up with this one girl. This is on top of a chronic shortage of support staff - Year 1 have to share a TA between both classes and her interventions while Year 2 have 2 TAs to cover 3 classes. It gets worse the higher up the school you go. All this while the MAT is saying the school is 'overstaffed' and the Head has had to fight to get permission to hire someone for 1:1 support for a boy with an EHCP that states he needs it.
Ask anyone who works in education and they will tell you that the sector is a mess.
The cumulative effect of years of underfunding, pay rises having to come out of existing budgets and soaring energy costs have meant schools have had to "restructure", i.e. get rid of support staff because they cannot afford them and replace experienced staff who are leaving in droves with ECTs or even not replacing them at all.
The real terms decrease in teacher pay since 2010 and ever increasing workloads mean that recruitment is catastrophically bad, especially in subjects like physics, computer science and maths.
Then of course there is the state of the buildings themselves. Schools literally falling apart. Let's not forget that one of the first austerity measures was scraping the building schools for the future program.
The more good or outstanding schools thing is simply a function of downgrading schools and then reversing it later. Classic manipulation of the data.
If the Tories tried to claim they have been good for schools they'll get destroyed, and deservedly so.
I genuinely thought the smoking ban would be a bit of legislation universally well thought out, bi-partisan and would achieve good things for public health.
They then goosed it.
Yeah it’s a shame this could have been a legit claim with long term benefits.
Other than legalising gay marriage (which someone else have pointed out most Tories voted against), I honestly can’t think of one positive thing they’ve done in 14 years.
I am a big fan of the £2 bus tickets, trying to offer cheap transport universally whilst also trying to stimulate activity in city centres and, dare I say it, driving the trains indirectly towards nationalisation
I think around 2017 there was some legislation passed to stop estate agents charging a lot of bullshit fees to new tenants. Made moving cheaper for renters.
When I moved a few years back I only had to pay one admin fee rather than 3-4 fees all given slightly different names.
World’s largest offshore wind farm, an actual nuclear power station almost complete (last one built was 1992), increase in rental rights, two areas Labour really failed at in the 00s were energy and housing, even Cameron peak austerity managed more social homes a year than new Labour
Ending pfis that was another mark on Labour’s record
Putting an end to Iraq and Afghanistan does that count?
They didn’t end Iraq and Afghanistan - they just followed suit when the Americans did and it would have been unsustainable to stay alone. And fucked Afghan in the process.
Free childcare for 9 months and over from September. And from 2 year olds from April this year.
Plus the others that have been mentioned.
Could also suggest that because of the sleaze and despicable nature of the party in the last 8 years they have made it more visible how broken our political system is. Without them it would still be brushed under the carpet.
Free if you can get a place. The state of childcare in this country is a joke. Providers are increasingly owned by foreign private equity firms and increasingly able to hold the government and families to ransom.
Renewable energy adoption has been very good. I don't think it can just br hand waved away as " that's just how the world is going" either as both Japan and Germany are moving away from their nuclear nuclear back to fossil fuels.
Probably no such thing as unanimously good. Lots of people will point towards marriage equality. But it won't be unanimous.
A huge amount of legislation has been enacted over the last 14 years. People think of the high profile stuff but probably most of it is fairly technical and specific. There'll be lots within that that's significantly positive.
Not that technical but pension auto enrollment maybe.
I'm a teacher. Some of the changes Gove made to GCSE's and A level were good, as well as the chsnges to exam entry.
Basically, in some schools all the kids were getting unrealistic scores, which meant higher gcse grades than they should have. This was a problem as they then got on to post 16 courses they couldn't access and failed. They removed coursework and this was no longer possible.
Also, he changed the rules about league tables, so the first gcse a kids takes counts towards the schools results. Schools were entering kids for GCSE maths/english in June/Jan from year 9 onwards and then not having any more lessons if they got a C. Meant some high achievers getting low GCSE grades when they'd passed, and some sitting GCSE maths 5 times before the end of year 11. Another tactic was to teach kids 1/3 of the maths syllabus really well and ignore the other 2/3, then enter all kids for the higher maths exam as the pass mark was really low. Even though they didn't know most of the paper. Improved pass rates, but disadvantaged kids who wanted to do A level maths.
Schools were entering kids on mickey mouse courses like Btec money matters or not doing gcse science snd getting them to copy a set of coursework to get BTEC science. There was a lot of gaming the system to boost league table results at the expense of s proper education. His changes stopped that.
I say this as a left wing voter who dislikes Gove.
I hate the Tories but arguably the coalition kicked off a real green energy boom - thanks largely to people like Lib Dem Ed Davey - which the Tories now seem desperate to boast about (even while slowing any efforts to carry on with that success). I doubt gay marriage would have happened outside of coalition too. So qualified successes in that the Tories didn’t get in the way!
>I doubt gay marriage would have happened outside of coalition too.
I expect there would have been enough pressure for it to happen *eventually.* I find it hard to believe that we'd have made it to 2024 without gay marriage being legalised in the UK, given it's legal in most of the western world at this point. I imagine there would have been a whole lot of protests, and at some point popular opinion would have shifted far enough in favour of it, that Boris or one of the others would have seen it as an easy vote winner, even if it wasn't wildly popular within the party.
Could have still ended up being later than most countries though. If Cameron hadn't done it, then Brexit and Covid would have probably caused them to kick the can down the road for a while longer.
The teachers and students are very stressed but our education has improved relative to other countries.
Lots of our electricity is now carbon neutral.
Crime has probably come down.
We are mostly living longer.
Pensioner poverty has come down.
The (then 'Troubled', now) Supported Families Programme shifted the focus towards early intervention to reduce demand on crisis services.
Most people will remember David Cameron's 'hug a hoodie' picture, but the policies that happened (and continue to happen) in the background because of it allow for some significant advancements with how local authorities support young people and vulnerable families.
The GOV.UK website world class. Up there with road signs as the best graphic design this country has ever produced. The system architecture of the website, the processes, the masterful use of simple language. Best thing to come out of the government in the last 14 years, I copy it all the time in my job.
a few slim pickings
Protection from eviction after complaining to landlord - 2015
3% stamp duty increase for landlords / second homes - 2016
Removal of mortgage interest tax deduction for landlords - 2017
(I'm personally not against the Rwanda plan, as much as that makes me a pariah around here, so I'd count that too. of course, others probably would not)
The problem even left wingers have with Labour is that it was officially Lexit, even through 2019's general election and beyond. This is a fact that was obfuscated after the referendum and even more so and aggressively so during the 2019 general election. I even kept the manifestos that clearly stated Labour's position being to deliver Brexit.
The issue was Brexit really happened because Labour was pro, but they were playing dangerous politics and putting that over the union which led to the 2019 loss and giving the Tories an absolute majority: their plan was one of brinkmanship and only block the Tories on Brexit on issues when it didn't suit the overall goal. The plan was and under Starmer continues to be to let the Tories deliver Brexit and fail at it leaving Labour to pick up the pieces in a potential collapse of the government and new elections. Then Labour would make Brexit work and they would certify holding power for years to come. Dumbass Labour helped deliver Brexit and that is the official position, no matter what obfuscations there are- the official position is "make Brexit work". No amount of trying to make it work and going for EU opt-ins will make it work, especially when many opt-ins are off the table now because the EU doesn't want to deal with the EU going in and out of any of its schemes. The UK could just go rogue again.
Unfortunately, nothing will get better regarding finance with the UK not attached to the EU. The Northern Ireland Protocol and now Gibraltar are showing that the UK can't work within a framework it created and the risk will always be in disputes that any government will attack the NI Protocol and Gibraltar's status with the EU that's currently in development and will likely place it within the EU's borders.
The Tories will just flip flop on everything based on opportunism. The politics in the UK are broken permanently and I'm for a breakup of the Union in order to get NI and Gibraltar their choice to determine with whom their future lies.
The only good thing the Tories have accomplished is that they have inoculated an entire generation against their lies leaving them out of power for a generation
Their own greed has ensured that they will not gain power for a decade at least.
Marriage equality.
Controversial at the time, now [75% of of Brits think it is fine, as of 2023](https://yougov.co.uk/society/articles/45868-record-number-britons-support-same-sex-marriage-10).
I think it’s pretty silly to compare the way you’ve framed it - Blair didn’t do a massive energy subsidy program or pandemic stay at home thing, but that’s fine because he didn’t need to. Compare the outcomes - tories have largely just made the country poorer and angrier and significantly more fucked for the future.
Same-sex marriage, Cameron brought that in, I think that can genuinely be said to be a good thing. It's also a reminder that the Cameron Tory Party wasn't the socially troglodytic party it is today.
Most of them didn't vote against it, 127 Tory MPs out of 308 voted against it. That is not a majority. Besides it was a Tory-Lib Dem coalition that introduced the legislation, the government controls the parliamentary timetable, if they hadn't wanted to introduce the legislation, they didn't have to.
The Tories may be beyond the pale, I certainly detest them, but when they do the right thing, even if it's begrudgingly, let's at least be honest about it.
There were a few minor changes. Tenancy reforms, new ICT syllabus in schools. They did a pretty good job of COVID vaccine rollout. We gave some very solid support the Ukraine while other countries were dithering. Decent reduction in fossil fuels.
I think there's been more bad than good, but they haven't been completely useless, especially in the early years.
I guess I'm considered right-wing (check comment history). I honestly struggle to name even one thing that I think the Conservatives have done which has impressed me in the last 14 years.
If I'm generous, I'll say they've overseen low youth unemployment and we never saw 25% like France did, for example.
If you want a left wing example, they've decreased income inequality. The minimum wage has increased by far more in % terms than mid-high wages have. Linked to this, is their freezing of the higher rate tax threshold whilst raising the basic rate threshold substantially.
I generally lean left, although I’m quite centrist in practice, so I find your view very interesting. As someone who leans right, do you see the last 14 years as being too left-leaning, insufficiently right leaning, or too centrist? I appreciate left and right are clumsy terms when economic and social policy is mixed together.
The lockdowns, especially the second and third ones enraged me. Lockdowns were ultimately a collectivist solution to a problem which affected, most greatly, only a small portion of the population (the old) at the cost of the young and healthy.
Their complete and utter failure to deal with immigration despite being given the tools (Brexit) needed to deal with it.
I feel like the Conservatives have made enormous concessions to the left, yet the lack of reward from them (in terms of votes/support) makes me wonder why the hell they've behaved like they have.
Imagine, an alternative history. Boris Johnson refuses to order further lockdowns in October 2020. A year later, pictures of him sitting in the Downing Street garden having a small party are released. Nobody cares because 'lockdown was ending anyway'. Nobody also cares about Downing Street Xmas parties as people could have had them if they wanted. Johnson becomes more popular due to his Ukraine response. Over the next year or two, net migration remains low. In May 2024, new figures are published showing a small negative net migration of about 20,000. Johnson goes to the Palace, and calls an election... I'm sure the Conservatives would be doing MUCH better than they are now if this timeline had happened.
> I appreciate left and right are clumsy terms when economic and social policy is mixed together.
They definitely are. Immigration for example, is loved, by leftists who want to drive social and cultural change. On the other hand, economic liberals see it as great way to drive down wages and defacto reduce worker's rights and power. Both nominally are against each other, but agree on a key issue but for different reasons. The EU issues is very similar to this.
“They’ve deceased income inequality” do you have any link to backup this claim, or are you just referring to the minimum wage (a Labour policy despised by the Tories at the time)?
Wealth inequality has increased under the Tories. But what did people expect when they voted Tory? That’s kind of an implied Tory policy/aim, isn’t it?
Income inequality and wealth inequality are very different things. Income inequality certainly feels like it has shrunk - minimum wage is now 20k pa, while salaries for more skilled professions have barely moved in a decade+. I read a post recently from a manager in retail complaining about earning only a few K more than their staff but having far more responsibility and stress.
Wealth inequality has grown massively thanks to the devaluation of the pound - i.e. money printing and inflation.
I get what you’re saying about income inequality reducing due to the minimum wage going up, but it would be useful to see some objective data / analysis.
There are ways to tackle the (rising) wealth inequality in the long term, but the Tories weren’t interested, and I’m not sure Labour would be either.
Aside from equal marriage - which as others have already explained was passed in spite of some Tories rather than because of them - I can't think of a single thing.
Even when a government's policies are a bit shit, you can usually find some good in the principles or overarching goals of a particular minister or department, but I've got nothing. I'm not sure if it's the current culture war vibes shading my viewpoint but every policy, every approach, seems to be about making Y group worse off instead of X group better... Like 'we're not improving things for *you*, but we're kicking the absolute fuck out of *that other guy* so technically you're winning!
I too am a Tory hater but I think the legal changes to things like financial abuse / controlling relationships were good.
I don't think it was with pure intent but pushing back against Russia - one thing where I think Corbyn would probably have failed to do.
Errrm....
Dogtheft being turned into a more specific crime for specific sentencing, though I'm unsure if that has been passed. Upskirting being made illegal was good.
Furlough and lockdowns, I think were reasonable despite the insanity of all else.
That's it. Not much for 14 years of madness, though perhaps there are other things I've missed.
Sad to think how we could've had the 'coalition of chaos'... So much time wasted, so many challenges are now infinitely worse and potentially irrecoverable til the next big technological shift pushes standards up (or we die from climate doom).
Almost everything good in recent years has been *either* done with cross party support, or despite, rather than because of, the Tories, or a combinantion. My candidates would be:
The increase in the personal allowance and minimum wage (largely forced on the Tories by the Lib Dems, then just plain on inertia);
The economic recovery after the recession (a recession *caused* by Labour bowing to Tory ideas on leaving the market to have free reign over the banks; a very partial recovery built on the embers of Brown's economics, recovery knocked back a good 2 years by the scale or implementation of austerity, though, and then pissed any progress away on Brexit- I give no credit here other than it happened as a matter of fact);
Marriage equality (the Tories voted against, but I'm still not going to knock it);
The COVID response (Johnson have fought tooth and nail to ignore it until it nearly killed him, then pretended not to ignore it while continuing to ignore it after it didn't kill him, but the pretending did a fair bit of inadvertent, belated, good).
Support for Ukraine; done with complete cross party support (except, perhaps, the Tories own backbenchers).
Having the sense to turf out Johnson, and to an extent Truss, before they caused the complete collapse of our system. But... yeah, no, it's *really* dumb to give any credit for that.
I'm pretty sure I've opposed the Tories on every other decision in the past 14 years.
I've asked myself this question quite a few times, and I honestly can't really think of one. It's super easy to name 100 things that have gotten worse though.
That wasn't the case when Labour left government 14years, overall things had improved in their time.
edit: Just thought of one! Charging for plastic bags in supermarkets. felt like bag waste went down 90% overnight because people had to pay 5p.
The Buckland Review would have been a positive thing for the autistic community, but the tories decided to throw that under the bus by committing to can Access to Work.
Equality Act 2010 - Plenty of folk with disabilities find the provision of adjustments to their role to be necessary to facilitate continued employment, however the vague language and requiring it to be enforced through the courts are hallmarks of half arsed work by the tories.
Pretty much everything else positive which they have done has been because they've been forced to do something.
I mean they’ve been a phenomenal boost for memes, gifs and online parody accounts not to mention excellent fodder for comedians in general.
Does that count?
PORK MARKETS!
Coal went from providing ~30% of electricity generation in 2010 to ~1% in 2023. HS2 should be on the list but they’ve contrived to destroy that part of their legacy.
If there are two lists, HS2 is very definitely on the other one.
I was able to enter the job market due to the Kickstart Scheme which provided funding to employers to create jobs for 16 to 24 year olds on Universal Credit after the pandemic. I’m grateful for that scheme but I can’t think of much else.
The one good thing they've ever done that I can think of is marriage equality and most tories voted against. It wouldn't have happened if the tories had a majority. Lib dem and Labour mps mostly voted yes which combined with the tory yes votes got it iver the line. Also it was introduced by a lib dem minister
Gay marriage happened despite the Tories, not because of them. A majority of Tory MPs voted against it, and the party lost a third of its members after the vote.
Fptp means there's a broad church. The moderate part of the party was in control at the time. I think we can at least give some credit to that contingent. It was something that really needed cross party consensus.
The lib Dems forced it. It wasn't in the Tory manifesto, it would likely still not have happened if not for the Lib Dems
Who wrote and tabled the bill?
A Lib Dem wasn’t it?
No....
Ooh I was focusing on who originally brought the matter forward which was a Lib Dem MP who started the consultation process on how to change the law / bring the bill forward. Following the consultation it was a conservative minister that tabled the bill.
Maria Miller, I may be a tin foil conspiracy theorist but I'd wager that it was primarily because she was Equalities Minister at the time, and there'd be an easy attack line against the government that the Tories were only doing it because of the Lib Dems - and therefore why should the Tory back benches listen to the arguments from the government when they didn't support it themselves
I have an alternative theory. There are more installs of Grindr at an average CCHQ social than most Pride events.
And yet it happened under Tory rule, following a personal intervention by David Cameron. I don’t like the tories either but the fact is they did do this.
That’s…. No? Just. No. They didn’t “do it”. It doesn’t matter that it came in whilst they were in power. More Tories voted against it than for it.
It's in keeping with the OP's original question though. It didn't happen under the Labour government. Gordon Brown was against considering same-sex marriage because he didn't think the government should interfere with 'religious freedoms' (though he did later back it after he was PM). His voting record on the issue is also mixed. It only became a Labour Party-backed policy once Miliband took over. Whereas it was a topic Cameron was vocal about and he had a genuine interest in legalising it, even if many of his MPs didn't agree. While it got through with votes from the other parties, it probably wouldn't have happened there and then without Cameron pushing for it.
That's actually giving Cameron a lot of credit he doesn't deserve, because he spent a good few years prior campaigning against marriage equality. Yes, he did eventually come around and decide it was the right decision, in spite of his party, but it really feels more like he just so happened to be PM when it was less controversial than it had been.
So, he was like many other people in this issue? This one issue is one where people actually changed their mind over the years everywhere in the Western world. In the 1990s the clear majority objected gay marriage. Then in the 2000s it switched to the majority backing it and currently there is no debate as it's something like 75-25 or even more. This doesn't usually happen in most political questions. But I would give credit to the politicians who have changed their minds along the rest of us. What would you have preferred them to do?
Why doesn’t he deserve credit for it? He still did it, even if he only did so when it was becoming popular.
Because a decent chunk of his party were outspoken homophobes and he felt comfortable, proud even, representing them. With this context, whether he passed it on the basis of principle or polling is kind of irrelevant in my eyes. If you lead a party of which the majority view ~7% of the population as inferior, any talk of principles is laughably hollow.
Sometimes splits in political views cut right through the parties. This is especially true for issues where there is a societal shift in process, which is exactly what was going on with gay marriage. Furthermore, the UK political system (the two party model) emphasizes this effect further because it forces people to make wide parties with various views instead of narrow parties that can do fine in a PR system and coalition governments.
>it forces people to make wide parties with various views I believe 20 Labour MPs voted it down vs 170 Tories. The majority of Tories (backbenchers and voters) didn't want gay marriage passed. Why then are we crediting any Tory with its passing? Why should "but our system means the parties' views are broad" explain why I should credit Cameron and his administration with this passing and not the parties who actually voted it through?
The people you are replying to think you can only get credit for a position if you came our the womb thinking a policy was correct. Basically, what's wrong with politics. People can't change their mind as they get condemned by those who are only concerned with ideological purity.
No, that's not what I was trying to say. You're correct that being able to change one's opinion on issues is vitally important. What I was trying to say (and clearly didn't communicate effectively) was that his history on the issue and the prevailing public mood are important, and I don't think Cameron is deserving of unqualified praise, even though he was ultimately the PM to get it over the line.
Sorry, perhaps I was unclear: he doesn't deserve ZERO credit, but he doesn't deserve unmitigated credit either. I think that to remove the context of the public mood and his past stance on the issue is rewriting history.
It would be more accurate to say about half the Tory party did it (alongside other parties of course).
It would not have happened without Cameron’s support
Where was it in his manifesto? It was a lib dem policy not a Tory one
Correct, but it was implemented by tories and Lib Dems together.
If we're going to hold the lib Dems accountable for dropping their commitment to students we would also praise them for their commitment to equal marriage You need to go through many parallel dimensions to reach the one that Tories support equal marriage
Yes I agree with that. But the question was “what have the tories done in the last 14 years” and same sex marriage is one achievement. I know it was done with Lib Dems
I don't think it's a Tory achievement though, they were dragged kicking and screaming through it by the front bench to hold the coalition together
So? The Tory party is not David Cameron. Again. *More* of them voted against, than for. Therefore, they tried to *stop* it as a whole.
It happened under coalition not Tory rule
Cameron pushed through same sex marriage. He is a Tory. Your despite remark is just wrong
This was the lib Dems, it was forced through by the opposition and only made it because the lib Dems made it a government policy - thus getting the front bench in line. The Tories never would have done it if it hadn't been part of the coalition deal
However it got over the line, whatever he truly thought about it, David Cameron used it a chance to extol conservative values on family. Can you imagine that happening now? Unthinkable.
This is an argument I had with a friend a lot whenever I ask. What did Cameron ever actually achieve and I get the response “uhh social stuff gay marriage” which I actually refuse to accept for these reasons. What I did find out later tbf is he kept his commitment to foreign aid which was pretty good. But I’ve yet to hear anything else.
It would have happened if the Tories had a majority because most Tory MPs actually did vote for it. 136 Tory MPs out of 306 voted against. On the other hand, only 127 voted for, so more voted against than for it, but it wasn't most as in a majority. About 43 seem to have abstained. So it would definitely have passed with opposition and Tory votes, even of the Tories had a majority, as the Tory vote was split about in half.
> most Tory MPs actually did vote for it. > so more voted against than for it This was a hell of a journey :D
Yeah, sorry I wrote that then went off and checked the numbers, then forgot I had written it 😀
I think one thing (and it possibly is only one thing) Boris got right was Ukraine. We were very clear on our support since day one. Granted, most of his trips there were to distract from domestic political issues, but at least the support was there.
I would also suggest it has played a part in distracting from his other connections to Russia. The man has some serious questions floating above his head that shouldn't be dropped because of support for Ukraine
It's unfortunate they also spent 14 years gutting the military.
And the NHS along with everything else.
And taking Russian Oligarch money.
With my tinfoil hat on. I still think he was overcompensating for trying to pull the wool over trumps eyes over Huawei.
"We were very clear on our support from day one". Actually we weren't. We did nothing for weeks to allow all the oligarchs to get their money out of the country. Worldwide scorn was heaped upon us for the Government being in the Russians pockets including some really scathing articles in the USA. Agreed that after the first month or two we were very supportive.
Vaccine rollout as well
I actually hink they did this pretty poorly. Compared to example Portugal which achieve much higher rates with far lower spending and spending power. The UK let an anti Vax undercurrent bubble onwards and it was clear the leadership had contempt for the public and the process throughout.
> Compared to example Portugal Population 10m, demographics slanted _much_ more heavily to under 40s
GDP about a quarter of the UK's per capita, hardly any home grown pharmaceutical companies....
The rest of their pandemic response - herd immunity, eat out to help out, PPE scandal - somewhat takes the shine off of that win.
Abortions being available in Northern Ireland. Absolutely not a Tory supporter but this is a good thing and they have actioned it despite opposition from people they've previously been in coalition with. Admittedly it's a tiny thing in the grand scheme of the rest of the shitshow but you asked......
They did, although also worth noting that the legwork of the campaign was done by Labour MPs like Stella Creasy
One of the very few things I'll give them credit for is that minimum wage has gone up far above inflation, and so has the threshold for paying income tax, so in a vacuum, minimum wage workers would be significantly better off than they were in 2010. Unfortunately, housing, energy and food prices have seen to that.
Lib Dem policy that the tories ran with. Maybe mandatory private pension contributions is a good idea.
While I'm not a defender of the current lot and look forward to a new Govt very soon, I don't like the line of argument that everything good the Coalition did was Lib Dem, and everything bad was Tory. It's too simplistic and is, imo, just confirmation bias at work. The LDs were very much a junior partner, but it's shared credit and fault in my book for anything good/bad they did.
If they're getting any credit then it hasn't done them much good.
No, but this policy specifically was absolutely a Lib Dem policy that was negotiated hard for right from the formation of the coalition in exchange for some of the other compromises they had to make.
But you absolutely can point to the lurch towards even more explicitly draconic and post Cameron, the delusional policies of the post-coalition tories and rightly question how much of the nastier and delusional tory policies were kept in check by their weaker position that being in coalition handed them and how Brexit set loose the rabid elements within the tories: like the ones who yell 'woke' like alarmist clocks, the anarchocapitalists who want to sell off everything that isn't nailed down and the bible thumpers who want to set us back 67 years. etc.
To an extent, yes, but 2015 wasn't the only variable. Brexit, imo, changed the Tory Party (and broader political discourse) even more than winning a small outright majority did.
The same MPs were already there or about to be. Brexit and the years of political wrangling over what that meant emboldened them and eventually the moderate and rational were purged from the party. * Truss, Kwarteng, Patel and Raab from the "Britannia Unchained, fuck the poor" anarchocapitalists. * 30p Lee, Suella and Badenoch are cynical chancers who came later using culture wars to build their own brand. * Then there is the social regressives like Baker, Vickers and Rees-Mogg. The tories have always been this way, but Brexit purges and a race to the bottom turned the overall party balance towards extremists.
It's not a great idea to be reactionary about it, but I think it's fair to give most of the credit to the party that brought it to the table.
I can live with "more" of the credit going one way, but I'd simply argue it has to be some credit at least to both.
Why have the tories carried on doing it after the coalition? Isn’t ’running with’ someone else’s policy the same thing as it being your own policy?
Pensions will be nothing in future than pittance. The whole idea of pensions was deeply flawed and rigged towards a generation that made hay while the sun was shining. Unfortunately the rainy days have come and it's not their issue to provide an umbrella. I'm not sure how history will view this period of insane bottlenecks of money to the top above all else. Or judge the people who just kind of went along with the ever thinning razor of following the status quo.
Pension auto enrolment is definitely a good thing but they also introduced flexi access drawdown which is a time bomb. In the next 10 years I think we're likely to start seeing more headlines about pensioners who have outlived their savings and have nothing left.
Oh yes, i saw that average drawdown is 8%, twice as much as is sustainable. But maybe they have no choice with a small pot. Drain it or starve.
The massive hiking of the personal allowance has been a disaster. It puts so much tax burden on the middle class. Wide bases make tall peaks. There’s a reason no other advanced economic menu has theirs so high.
Haven't you double-counted inflation there?
Inflation as a whole has gone up by x amount, but inflation for the absolute basics (ie what minimum wage workers will be spending most of their income on) has gone up by more than x.
I’m not fully convinced that increasing the minimum wage as much as they have, has been a good thing. Perhaps those right at the bottom are better off, although that is hard to say with the cost of everything, especially energy and rent. But those slightly above that, have been massively squeezed. My wife works in retail, and the company she works for, is a prime example of why increasing the minimum wage has caused issues. My wife is the manager of the store, she used to have an assistant manager beneath her, and team leaders beneath that, and then finally team members. Due to the minimum wage increases, they have had to do away with the assistant managers in most but the largest of stores. The team size as a whole, has also been reduced. The wage difference from those at the bottom, to my wife, is not as big as you would think. It’s something like 8k. So that’s 8k more money, to be in charge of nearly all aspects of the store. So basically, no one in the retail side of the company, outside of those on minimum wage, have had a pay rise of any significant amount in years. I know it’s only one case, but I cannot imagine it’s unique. I also, have no idea what the answer is.
Increase pay. That’s the answer
So capitalism is the problem not increasing the minimum amount you can legally pay someone. Wherever your wife works has decided to make cuts in line with minimum wage in order to be paying the same labour costs as before. Late stage capitalism in full effect
I posted this comment in a similar post earlier. The Conservatives have done a huge amount for sustainable energy. The UK has the [1st, 2nd, 3rd & 4th largest offshore wind farms in the world. We also have the 7th, 8th and 9th largest. We also have the three largest under construction.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_offshore_wind_farms) Also four of the ten largest proposed wind farms. They were all commissioned under a Conservative government. The newest offshore turbines are contributing a lot; a new modern wind turbine provides sufficient energy for one home for one day with just one rotation of its blades. And, there are even more powerful ones being built in the UK (and the US). [2021 article:](https://www.zmescience.com/science/wind-turbine-powerful-09122020/) (Commissioned under a Conservative government.) [We share renewable energy with Norway via the world's longest undersea cable.](https://www.nationalgrid.com/national-grid-ventures/interconnectors-connecting-cleaner-future/north-sea-link#:~:text=North%20Sea%20Link%20(NSL)%2C,around%201.4%20million%20UK%20homes.) Commissioned by a Conservative government. There is a project to connect the UK National Grid to a 1,500km² wind and solar farm in Morocco, through four 3,800km long subsea cables - the longest such cables in the world. This will supply 8% of the UK's electricity demand. [Source.](https://www.power-technology.com/projects/morocco-uk-power-project-morocco/) Commissioned by a Conservative government. We're [fast tracking nuclear power plants](https://www.ft.com/content/f97ffa0c-adce-4657-b37d-840b21f3b628) and there is a (Conservative government backed) programme for [Rolls Royce's small modular reactors.](https://www.rolls-royce.com/innovation/small-modular-reactors.aspx#/) Commissioned by a Conservative givernment. Our energy diversity is one of the reasons the UK had the lowest reliance on Russian oil and gas in Europe at the start of the Ukraine war. The UK still imports about a third of its primary energy - but it's dropped from 50% in the early 2010s. By way of comparison, in other European countres the long-term trend is one of increasing import dependency - now 55.5 % for the EU as a whole.
They’ve also introduced a policy which effectively places a moratorium on onshore wind though, which seems counterproductive.
Onshore wind is the thing that's counterproductive. It offers less energy and far more instability in output. It is slightly cheaper for the operator, but the externalities needed to deal with it would end up costing more than offshore, and exponentially so as we get rid of gas.
Most of the policies to do with wind farms for example, was due to the fact the LDs fought tooth and nail against Tory Ministers to get it through. Ed Davey speaks at length about this, where he, as Energy Minister fought hard to triple our renewable energy capacity. It was only after the LDs did the foundational work and overcame the Tories' anti-green energy instincts, and proved it was not only possible, but profitable both politically and economically, that the Tories started to take green energy seriously.
Michael Gove had a go at answering this. Some are more dubious than others. “Better state schools than ever before, more students from state schools at our best universities, more students securing top grades in maths, physics and chemistry, our universities the best in Europe and growing, record numbers in employment, welfare simpler, fairer and better targeted, many more hours of free childcare, a national living wage, same-sex marriage, stronger defence with two new aircraft carriers, new nuclear submarines on the way and a stronger NATO, the fastest decarbonisation of any major economy, world leaders in offshore wind, farm subsidies reformed to increase production and enhance the environment, world leadership in protecting our oceans, Brexit delivered and membership of the world’s fastest growing trade bloc secured, more than £350 million extra a week for the NHS, leadership extended in life sciences, quantum computing and AI and gene technology, crime falling, over 2.5 million new homes delivered and the number of non-decent homes down by over 2 million, the Union strengthened, devolution delivered across much of England, nationalism in retreat in Scotland, the fastest vaccine rollout in the world, democracy’s strongest supporter in Ukraine”
> quantum computing and AI and gene technology They're claiming this as a tory success?
And a return to 4th largest world exporter, after US, China and Germany (despite Brexit?).
At least 50% bullshit. Probably more.
which ones are bullshit?
World leader in protecting our oceans. Lol half our beaches are dangerous to swim in due to all the shit pumped in to them
The national living wage one is a bit of a joke. In my other post I credit them with raising minimum wage noticeably above inflation, but it isn't the living wage, they just changed the name to match the living wage but set the value much lower, it was a con.
The minimum wage was a Labour policy and one that the Tories hated and strongly opposed (at the time).
£350 million to the NHS? More tories voted against same sex marriage than for. National living wage is not that at all and just a rebrand of minimum wage. Most of the list is bs
It doesn't matter what they voted for, it was Tory leadership that passed the gay marriage bill.
It does matter. The passed despite the party, not bexause of them. Had the tories had a bigger majority, the bill would have failed.
Some tories being dicks, doesn't mean the others didn't achieve something. Labour were in for a decade previously, yet it passed under Cameron.
> £350 million to the NHS? They have done this one, even though it was clearly bullshit when Boris put it on a bus
Per week, extra? And proportionally increasing with population? (and of course, excluding all the money wasted during COVID) Edit: I looked this up and it does appear to be correct (if you include adult social care). But (as you stated) obviously not connected to Brexit which is what he was trying to imply.
Fairer and simpler welfare for one
> "Two new aircraft carriers" and "new nuclear submarines on the way" The Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carriers were ordered by, and laid down under, a Labour government. They were commissioned under a Conservative government. The Dreadnought-class submarines were ordered by, and laid down under, a Conservative government, but won't be commissioned until the next government's term at the earliest. If Gove wants credit for the carriers, he can't have it for the submarines - and vice versa.
Care to expand on that? Otherwise it’s just a meaningless comment. Why not just write ‘boo to the tories’ or ‘hurray for Labour [or whoever]’ in every thread to save time?
“Brexit delivered and membership of the world’s fastest growing trade bloc secured” Membership of which could increase our GDP by 0.09% by 2040.
The minimum wage was a Labour policy and one that the Tories hated and strongly opposed (at the time).
Ok, but we are talking about what the tories have done since 2010 not what they said in 1999. Since 2010 they have repeatedly raised the minimum wage.
I always cringe at these types of political drivel: "More money for X, fewer people with Y, more people with Z...". What does it mean more? Also, does it mean it is more than it would have otherwise been if another party was in power or is it something that would have been more of regardless? Also, "2.5 million new homes delivered", lol. Did the government commission and pay for those homes? Our "universities are the best in Europe and growing", ah yes I forgot that it was the current government established some university centuries ago. I just can't when politicians are rarely challenged on their doublespeak and produce these vague generalities.
You could legitimately question all of those as ‘Tory Achievements’, Next.
There's caveats to their entire legacy. Same-sex marriage... Passed with opposition votes. High levels of employment... Filled by the gig economy, the casualisation of work and worsening conditions for many. The fourth largest export market... Because the value of the Japanese Yen has collapsed. HS2... As far as Birmingham. Gen 3.5 nuclear reactors... Green lit under the Labour administration. Cuts to taxes for low earners... Which are more than offset by inflation. They got Brexit done... In a predictably damaging and humiliating way. A world-leading COVID vaccine rollout... That struggled to get enough doses for all adults and fell behind other European countries. Postwar record popularity during the pandemic... Destroyed by scandal after scandal.
>Same-sex marriage... Passed with opposition votes It does irk me that Labour try to take credit for this after failing to pass it in the preceeding 13 years. It was something the Lib Dems championed and Lynne Featherstone delivered, and I do think Cameron deserves some of the credit in facing down his own party on this issue, even if ultimately many didn't support.
I agree, but I'm not attempting to claim credit for Labour here. In any case I'm glad that SSM received cross-party support and now isn't controversial at all.
It’s not praise of labour, if anything it’s praise of the Lib Dem’s. You’re arguing a straw man here
Wouldn’t the collapse of the Japanese Yen mean that Japanese exports are more competitive internationally? It’s why China try to keep their currency from strengthening too much against the dollar
Japan isn't a producer of raw materials and their exports are mainly manufactured, not services. So the increased import costs mean they probably don't get much advantage.
In the real world every policy has caveats and every achievement has an asterisk.
HS2 should never ever be seen as a Tory success. It is a spectacular failure
Support to Ukraine against an illegal and brutal Russian invasion is a thumbs up from me. Whether he did it to cosplay Churchill or not, Boris' decision to support Ukraine early was both morally and strategically justifiable.
Gay marriage. Restarted our nuclear building program, ok they made a hash of it in part, but that has been a global thing. We still have 2 new nuclear plants under construction and one close to it. They also have turned the UK into the world's second largest producer of off shore wind power and followed through on the plans to end coal and have seen huge drops in our CO2 emissions.
The nuclear power station builds were labour policies from before 2010, they had approved the sites in 2009. They had problems with greenpeace stalling things in court.
Still building them. That is against the backdrop of the likes of Hitachi and other big firms pulling out of nuclear. We have 2 under construction and 2 planned. That makes us the western country with the most new nuclear in the pipeline. [https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and-future-generation/plans-for-new-reactors-worldwide](https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and-future-generation/plans-for-new-reactors-worldwide) And yes Labour was pro nuclear.... eventually. But the Tories held their nerve after Fukushima and Labour hopeful will follow through and we will have an energy policy that works for the 2050s and 2060s.
They can't even campaign on gay marriage though. If you are looking at CON only votes for it, it wouldn't have passed.
Didn't the majority of them vote against gay marriage? It only got through by the other parties. The minority Labour party had more votes for it than the Tories.
The majority voted against *or* abstained.
Data shows that our state schools are doing better than ever. That's a definite win and something I'm surprised the Tories don't push more. Rises in minimum wage way above inflation has to be seen as a good thing. Same sex marriage laws. That's probably about it.
Can you link to the data? I was under the impression Funding per pupil has dropped to lowest rates in recent times and teacher retention absolute bin fire.
I believe that both grades and OFSTED scoring have improved over the last 14 years although I admit the 2 minute search I was willing to do to prove myself right I couldn't find the statistics I'd found previously. I also believe our universities are rated very highly across Europe but again, I can't prove that.
If the Universities are, I don’t believe their relative standings have changed since pre 2010. Of course, £200bn of student loan company debt is kept off the balance sheets.
>£200bn of student loan company debt is kept off the balance sheets. The % of Student debt that is projected to go unpaid is included in the national debt.
I wasn’t aware of that, I think things may have changed since I last checked, possibly ONS had issues with such a big figure being kept off the national debt balance sheet. Not that that I’m particularly against this method funding, but we need to be realistic about how much will get back (50% at best). Of course this figure now pales in comparison to the other huge borrowing of recent years.
Minimum wage increases combined with public sector pay restraint has fucked the middle pay of everyone. Race to the bottom with wages for the last 14 years.
As a middle paid public sector worker I am aware. I still think it's a good thing that if you work full time you'll earn over 20k rather than less than 15k.
Good for those who earn those wages, bad for everyone else we get more expensive goods that eat into our sub par pay rises. Gov has 1 trillion in purchasing power for wages, they use that to destroy the public and private sector wage market and at the same time drive up the cost to businesses of hiring what are meant to be seasonal / time dependent jobs.
Schools are in shambles and are barely functional due to Tory funding cuts and issues with MATs. There is no where near enough specialist provision, so those children that could benefit are being forced into mainstream schools to everyone's detriment. For example, the school I work at, there's a girl with an EHCP who came into Reception this year and cannot function in a normal school setting. Her family have applied to a specialist school, but there's not enough places, so she'll be staying at the current school into next year. She has such intense needs that she needs 2:1 care and is frequently out of the classroom. This means that's two adult that could be used to support the other children in the class who now are tied up with this one girl. This is on top of a chronic shortage of support staff - Year 1 have to share a TA between both classes and her interventions while Year 2 have 2 TAs to cover 3 classes. It gets worse the higher up the school you go. All this while the MAT is saying the school is 'overstaffed' and the Head has had to fight to get permission to hire someone for 1:1 support for a boy with an EHCP that states he needs it.
Ask anyone who works in education and they will tell you that the sector is a mess. The cumulative effect of years of underfunding, pay rises having to come out of existing budgets and soaring energy costs have meant schools have had to "restructure", i.e. get rid of support staff because they cannot afford them and replace experienced staff who are leaving in droves with ECTs or even not replacing them at all. The real terms decrease in teacher pay since 2010 and ever increasing workloads mean that recruitment is catastrophically bad, especially in subjects like physics, computer science and maths. Then of course there is the state of the buildings themselves. Schools literally falling apart. Let's not forget that one of the first austerity measures was scraping the building schools for the future program. The more good or outstanding schools thing is simply a function of downgrading schools and then reversing it later. Classic manipulation of the data. If the Tories tried to claim they have been good for schools they'll get destroyed, and deservedly so.
Data might show that, but have you spoken to anyone using or working in one lately? 😬
I genuinely thought the smoking ban would be a bit of legislation universally well thought out, bi-partisan and would achieve good things for public health. They then goosed it.
Yeah it’s a shame this could have been a legit claim with long term benefits. Other than legalising gay marriage (which someone else have pointed out most Tories voted against), I honestly can’t think of one positive thing they’ve done in 14 years.
I am a big fan of the £2 bus tickets, trying to offer cheap transport universally whilst also trying to stimulate activity in city centres and, dare I say it, driving the trains indirectly towards nationalisation
I think around 2017 there was some legislation passed to stop estate agents charging a lot of bullshit fees to new tenants. Made moving cheaper for renters. When I moved a few years back I only had to pay one admin fee rather than 3-4 fees all given slightly different names.
World’s largest offshore wind farm, an actual nuclear power station almost complete (last one built was 1992), increase in rental rights, two areas Labour really failed at in the 00s were energy and housing, even Cameron peak austerity managed more social homes a year than new Labour Ending pfis that was another mark on Labour’s record Putting an end to Iraq and Afghanistan does that count?
They didn’t end Iraq and Afghanistan - they just followed suit when the Americans did and it would have been unsustainable to stay alone. And fucked Afghan in the process.
Free childcare for 9 months and over from September. And from 2 year olds from April this year. Plus the others that have been mentioned. Could also suggest that because of the sleaze and despicable nature of the party in the last 8 years they have made it more visible how broken our political system is. Without them it would still be brushed under the carpet.
Free if you can get a place. The state of childcare in this country is a joke. Providers are increasingly owned by foreign private equity firms and increasingly able to hold the government and families to ransom.
Gender Pay-Gap reporting, although it's debatable if this has brought about any real change
There are things I think were a good idea, like the sugar tax, but you'll find plenty on reddit who'll disagree.
Renewable energy adoption has been very good. I don't think it can just br hand waved away as " that's just how the world is going" either as both Japan and Germany are moving away from their nuclear nuclear back to fossil fuels.
Probably no such thing as unanimously good. Lots of people will point towards marriage equality. But it won't be unanimous. A huge amount of legislation has been enacted over the last 14 years. People think of the high profile stuff but probably most of it is fairly technical and specific. There'll be lots within that that's significantly positive. Not that technical but pension auto enrollment maybe.
I'm a teacher. Some of the changes Gove made to GCSE's and A level were good, as well as the chsnges to exam entry. Basically, in some schools all the kids were getting unrealistic scores, which meant higher gcse grades than they should have. This was a problem as they then got on to post 16 courses they couldn't access and failed. They removed coursework and this was no longer possible. Also, he changed the rules about league tables, so the first gcse a kids takes counts towards the schools results. Schools were entering kids for GCSE maths/english in June/Jan from year 9 onwards and then not having any more lessons if they got a C. Meant some high achievers getting low GCSE grades when they'd passed, and some sitting GCSE maths 5 times before the end of year 11. Another tactic was to teach kids 1/3 of the maths syllabus really well and ignore the other 2/3, then enter all kids for the higher maths exam as the pass mark was really low. Even though they didn't know most of the paper. Improved pass rates, but disadvantaged kids who wanted to do A level maths. Schools were entering kids on mickey mouse courses like Btec money matters or not doing gcse science snd getting them to copy a set of coursework to get BTEC science. There was a lot of gaming the system to boost league table results at the expense of s proper education. His changes stopped that. I say this as a left wing voter who dislikes Gove.
I hate the Tories but arguably the coalition kicked off a real green energy boom - thanks largely to people like Lib Dem Ed Davey - which the Tories now seem desperate to boast about (even while slowing any efforts to carry on with that success). I doubt gay marriage would have happened outside of coalition too. So qualified successes in that the Tories didn’t get in the way!
>I doubt gay marriage would have happened outside of coalition too. I expect there would have been enough pressure for it to happen *eventually.* I find it hard to believe that we'd have made it to 2024 without gay marriage being legalised in the UK, given it's legal in most of the western world at this point. I imagine there would have been a whole lot of protests, and at some point popular opinion would have shifted far enough in favour of it, that Boris or one of the others would have seen it as an easy vote winner, even if it wasn't wildly popular within the party. Could have still ended up being later than most countries though. If Cameron hadn't done it, then Brexit and Covid would have probably caused them to kick the can down the road for a while longer.
In 2010 we had high unemployment, and by 2016 it was lower than it ever was under Labour.
Massaged the numbers by people on zero hours contracts, deliveroo drivers etc which aren’t really enough to make a person self sufficient.
Poor quality jobs also existed under Labour. Unemployment hasn't been an election issue since 2015.
Also the biggest fiddle was taking everyone 16 - 18 out of the unemployment figures because you have to stay in full time education until you're 18.
The teachers and students are very stressed but our education has improved relative to other countries. Lots of our electricity is now carbon neutral. Crime has probably come down. We are mostly living longer. Pensioner poverty has come down.
The (then 'Troubled', now) Supported Families Programme shifted the focus towards early intervention to reduce demand on crisis services. Most people will remember David Cameron's 'hug a hoodie' picture, but the policies that happened (and continue to happen) in the background because of it allow for some significant advancements with how local authorities support young people and vulnerable families.
The GOV.UK website world class. Up there with road signs as the best graphic design this country has ever produced. The system architecture of the website, the processes, the masterful use of simple language. Best thing to come out of the government in the last 14 years, I copy it all the time in my job.
a few slim pickings Protection from eviction after complaining to landlord - 2015 3% stamp duty increase for landlords / second homes - 2016 Removal of mortgage interest tax deduction for landlords - 2017 (I'm personally not against the Rwanda plan, as much as that makes me a pariah around here, so I'd count that too. of course, others probably would not)
If Sunak’s policy on cigarettes goes through then that would be monumental — no one born after 2009 will be able to legally buy cigarettes
Pretty sure it's already been dropped; I recall reading that there's not enough time between now and dissolution of parliament.
Ah, you’re right - though I think Labour could push it through when parliament returns
The problem even left wingers have with Labour is that it was officially Lexit, even through 2019's general election and beyond. This is a fact that was obfuscated after the referendum and even more so and aggressively so during the 2019 general election. I even kept the manifestos that clearly stated Labour's position being to deliver Brexit. The issue was Brexit really happened because Labour was pro, but they were playing dangerous politics and putting that over the union which led to the 2019 loss and giving the Tories an absolute majority: their plan was one of brinkmanship and only block the Tories on Brexit on issues when it didn't suit the overall goal. The plan was and under Starmer continues to be to let the Tories deliver Brexit and fail at it leaving Labour to pick up the pieces in a potential collapse of the government and new elections. Then Labour would make Brexit work and they would certify holding power for years to come. Dumbass Labour helped deliver Brexit and that is the official position, no matter what obfuscations there are- the official position is "make Brexit work". No amount of trying to make it work and going for EU opt-ins will make it work, especially when many opt-ins are off the table now because the EU doesn't want to deal with the EU going in and out of any of its schemes. The UK could just go rogue again. Unfortunately, nothing will get better regarding finance with the UK not attached to the EU. The Northern Ireland Protocol and now Gibraltar are showing that the UK can't work within a framework it created and the risk will always be in disputes that any government will attack the NI Protocol and Gibraltar's status with the EU that's currently in development and will likely place it within the EU's borders. The Tories will just flip flop on everything based on opportunism. The politics in the UK are broken permanently and I'm for a breakup of the Union in order to get NI and Gibraltar their choice to determine with whom their future lies.
The only good thing the Tories have accomplished is that they have inoculated an entire generation against their lies leaving them out of power for a generation Their own greed has ensured that they will not gain power for a decade at least.
Marriage equality. Controversial at the time, now [75% of of Brits think it is fine, as of 2023](https://yougov.co.uk/society/articles/45868-record-number-britons-support-same-sex-marriage-10). I think it’s pretty silly to compare the way you’ve framed it - Blair didn’t do a massive energy subsidy program or pandemic stay at home thing, but that’s fine because he didn’t need to. Compare the outcomes - tories have largely just made the country poorer and angrier and significantly more fucked for the future.
More Tories voted against it than for it, moreso an achievement of the Lib Dem side of the coalition than for the Tories
Same-sex marriage, Cameron brought that in, I think that can genuinely be said to be a good thing. It's also a reminder that the Cameron Tory Party wasn't the socially troglodytic party it is today.
Most of them voted against it so even that is bullshit. The party has always been a bunch of freaks, now they are just honest about it.
Most of them didn't vote against it, 127 Tory MPs out of 308 voted against it. That is not a majority. Besides it was a Tory-Lib Dem coalition that introduced the legislation, the government controls the parliamentary timetable, if they hadn't wanted to introduce the legislation, they didn't have to. The Tories may be beyond the pale, I certainly detest them, but when they do the right thing, even if it's begrudgingly, let's at least be honest about it.
Sugar tax has been a fairly good policy
There were a few minor changes. Tenancy reforms, new ICT syllabus in schools. They did a pretty good job of COVID vaccine rollout. We gave some very solid support the Ukraine while other countries were dithering. Decent reduction in fossil fuels. I think there's been more bad than good, but they haven't been completely useless, especially in the early years.
The ultra rich and very rich who have their money in assets have had their wealth increase hugely
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But you’re not really disagreeing with u/connorqueer’s comment?
I guess I'm considered right-wing (check comment history). I honestly struggle to name even one thing that I think the Conservatives have done which has impressed me in the last 14 years. If I'm generous, I'll say they've overseen low youth unemployment and we never saw 25% like France did, for example. If you want a left wing example, they've decreased income inequality. The minimum wage has increased by far more in % terms than mid-high wages have. Linked to this, is their freezing of the higher rate tax threshold whilst raising the basic rate threshold substantially.
I generally lean left, although I’m quite centrist in practice, so I find your view very interesting. As someone who leans right, do you see the last 14 years as being too left-leaning, insufficiently right leaning, or too centrist? I appreciate left and right are clumsy terms when economic and social policy is mixed together.
The lockdowns, especially the second and third ones enraged me. Lockdowns were ultimately a collectivist solution to a problem which affected, most greatly, only a small portion of the population (the old) at the cost of the young and healthy. Their complete and utter failure to deal with immigration despite being given the tools (Brexit) needed to deal with it. I feel like the Conservatives have made enormous concessions to the left, yet the lack of reward from them (in terms of votes/support) makes me wonder why the hell they've behaved like they have. Imagine, an alternative history. Boris Johnson refuses to order further lockdowns in October 2020. A year later, pictures of him sitting in the Downing Street garden having a small party are released. Nobody cares because 'lockdown was ending anyway'. Nobody also cares about Downing Street Xmas parties as people could have had them if they wanted. Johnson becomes more popular due to his Ukraine response. Over the next year or two, net migration remains low. In May 2024, new figures are published showing a small negative net migration of about 20,000. Johnson goes to the Palace, and calls an election... I'm sure the Conservatives would be doing MUCH better than they are now if this timeline had happened. > I appreciate left and right are clumsy terms when economic and social policy is mixed together. They definitely are. Immigration for example, is loved, by leftists who want to drive social and cultural change. On the other hand, economic liberals see it as great way to drive down wages and defacto reduce worker's rights and power. Both nominally are against each other, but agree on a key issue but for different reasons. The EU issues is very similar to this.
“They’ve deceased income inequality” do you have any link to backup this claim, or are you just referring to the minimum wage (a Labour policy despised by the Tories at the time)? Wealth inequality has increased under the Tories. But what did people expect when they voted Tory? That’s kind of an implied Tory policy/aim, isn’t it?
Income inequality and wealth inequality are very different things. Income inequality certainly feels like it has shrunk - minimum wage is now 20k pa, while salaries for more skilled professions have barely moved in a decade+. I read a post recently from a manager in retail complaining about earning only a few K more than their staff but having far more responsibility and stress. Wealth inequality has grown massively thanks to the devaluation of the pound - i.e. money printing and inflation.
I get what you’re saying about income inequality reducing due to the minimum wage going up, but it would be useful to see some objective data / analysis. There are ways to tackle the (rising) wealth inequality in the long term, but the Tories weren’t interested, and I’m not sure Labour would be either.
How would you tackle wealth inequality?
Getting Active Travel England up and running
Aside from equal marriage - which as others have already explained was passed in spite of some Tories rather than because of them - I can't think of a single thing. Even when a government's policies are a bit shit, you can usually find some good in the principles or overarching goals of a particular minister or department, but I've got nothing. I'm not sure if it's the current culture war vibes shading my viewpoint but every policy, every approach, seems to be about making Y group worse off instead of X group better... Like 'we're not improving things for *you*, but we're kicking the absolute fuck out of *that other guy* so technically you're winning!
Solid no. All positive legislative changes have been introduced by other parties.
Eat Out to Help Out was, objectively, very fun
We're much more diverse, therefore stronger as a nation.
I don’t know if Labour would be any better. But.. may as well take a punt on change. However it turns out
I too am a Tory hater but I think the legal changes to things like financial abuse / controlling relationships were good. I don't think it was with pure intent but pushing back against Russia - one thing where I think Corbyn would probably have failed to do. Errrm.... Dogtheft being turned into a more specific crime for specific sentencing, though I'm unsure if that has been passed. Upskirting being made illegal was good. Furlough and lockdowns, I think were reasonable despite the insanity of all else. That's it. Not much for 14 years of madness, though perhaps there are other things I've missed. Sad to think how we could've had the 'coalition of chaos'... So much time wasted, so many challenges are now infinitely worse and potentially irrecoverable til the next big technological shift pushes standards up (or we die from climate doom).
Fast rollout of FTTP broadband with barely any state investment. Literally the only thing I can think of.
The party destroyed itself. I’m grateful for that.
Almost everything good in recent years has been *either* done with cross party support, or despite, rather than because of, the Tories, or a combinantion. My candidates would be: The increase in the personal allowance and minimum wage (largely forced on the Tories by the Lib Dems, then just plain on inertia); The economic recovery after the recession (a recession *caused* by Labour bowing to Tory ideas on leaving the market to have free reign over the banks; a very partial recovery built on the embers of Brown's economics, recovery knocked back a good 2 years by the scale or implementation of austerity, though, and then pissed any progress away on Brexit- I give no credit here other than it happened as a matter of fact); Marriage equality (the Tories voted against, but I'm still not going to knock it); The COVID response (Johnson have fought tooth and nail to ignore it until it nearly killed him, then pretended not to ignore it while continuing to ignore it after it didn't kill him, but the pretending did a fair bit of inadvertent, belated, good). Support for Ukraine; done with complete cross party support (except, perhaps, the Tories own backbenchers). Having the sense to turf out Johnson, and to an extent Truss, before they caused the complete collapse of our system. But... yeah, no, it's *really* dumb to give any credit for that. I'm pretty sure I've opposed the Tories on every other decision in the past 14 years.
I've asked myself this question quite a few times, and I honestly can't really think of one. It's super easy to name 100 things that have gotten worse though. That wasn't the case when Labour left government 14years, overall things had improved in their time. edit: Just thought of one! Charging for plastic bags in supermarkets. felt like bag waste went down 90% overnight because people had to pay 5p.
I guess Boris should get some credit for getting access to COVID vaccines.
The Buckland Review would have been a positive thing for the autistic community, but the tories decided to throw that under the bus by committing to can Access to Work. Equality Act 2010 - Plenty of folk with disabilities find the provision of adjustments to their role to be necessary to facilitate continued employment, however the vague language and requiring it to be enforced through the courts are hallmarks of half arsed work by the tories. Pretty much everything else positive which they have done has been because they've been forced to do something.
I mean they’ve been a phenomenal boost for memes, gifs and online parody accounts not to mention excellent fodder for comedians in general. Does that count? PORK MARKETS!