To feel like I'm not sure where I sit politically anymore, and to worry about it.

Now that the powers that be have access to AI, robots, etc, that they think are going to be the answer to everything, I have many days now when I feel they think we ordinary humans are utterly dispensable. And the more disabled or vulnerable we are, the more dispensable we are, in their eyes. Genetic testing of babies, withdrawal of rights and SEN, making food and medicine and accommodation eyewateringly expensive - all of these together have depressingly logical outcomes.

I've always had a tendency towards the Greens, I was always staunch labour in elections though due to our stupid first past the post electoral system. That's actual labour, not the populist Muppets we currently have in power. I would never have believed things could be this bad and badly thought through under a so called labour bunch.

They are handing the country to Reform on a plate, can't wait for a world where 18 year old posh kids, mostly male. are put in charge of children's welfare everywhere. (Reference is to Leicestershire though you can see these pampered rich kids with little if any life experience everywhere you look that Reform succeeded in the recent elections).

@HarkerandBarker I would argue crime is more to do with attitude and not caring about where you live. I agree pretty well offf people don’t commit neighbourhood crimes but the dc of ordinary folk certainly do. They are not all poor by any means. It’s attitude and their idea of fun that’s wrong. In the countryside we get racing cars. Young men speeding and racing each other on motor bikes or cars. They are not poor! It’s attitude and how they get their kicks. The police are presumably having their cocoa when this is going on.

A huge percentage of the prison population are non-British born. I can’t understand why they’re not deported rather than being fed and housed at the tax payers expense.

@Glitchymn1 ”In the next 10years it's estimated that there will be 20 million more people in this country.”

Where have you got this stat from, as it sounds extremely unlikely! I agree population growth exclusively as a result of immigration is a challenge for the UK (and seemingly universally unpopular) - but that figure sounds far too high.

If that does happen mn is a good record on why and how.

I don’t think we’re ever going to be 100% content with one political party but we have to go with the one that is the closest to what we believe and feel/trust. The only alternative would be to not have a party but whenever there is a big issue which needs to be voted on (I am aware there are tons) we are asked to vote as a demographic nation.

Western families are having less children while immigrants legal and illegal especially of certain religions are very family oriented. Language is a big barrier too. My nan was here for nearly 20years and hardly spoke a word of English. I'm torn between empathy and practicalities. The tragedy is people come here for a better life and for those from war torn countries its better than the fate that they might have had but its still a poor life. In the next 10years it's estimated that there will be 20 million more people in this country. How can this be sustained. Also there won't be enough water for everyone as the resoviours are low already. Water will have to be rationed, along with everything else. We're already in a housing crisis. It was Tony Blair who opened the borders. Keir Starmer took Tony Blair's government to court to give illegal immigrants the right to claim benefits and won under the human rights laws. The Conservative's couldn't really do much about that one tbh. I dread the future for the younger generations in this country. Especially these born and bred here. We've got to stop over sentimentalising and think of our kids futures in my opinion. I'm voting reform. Not because I'm racist but because they are the only party that will have a fair immigration system point driven like it was before no matter where in the world you come from. The subject of illegal immigration is something else. And should be even tougher.
We're letting our bleeding hearts stop us from thinking with our heads and the future of our kids. Saying all of that, no government can deliver everything it sets out to. They are always in between a rock and a hard place. Although I do think Labour is to be trusted the least. I'm grateful to be born here, as are many children of immigrants but the younger generations of a certain demographic have been brain washed and have so much hatred for the country they were born in. They're just waiting to be enough in numbers so they can have an uprising. Religion does have a big role to play in it for them. This will become an Islamic country one day. Same as many other countries which grew in numbers and everyone had to convert. I pray I don't live to see it 🙏

I agree with every single word of this. This will be an Islamic country one day- I hope and pray I’ll never see that day.

I'd like the Wilson governments of the 60s and 70s back. Labour party of today are just watered-down Tories, they're little different from the Heath Tory government of the same era.

The proposed new party of the left gives me some hope, but it's probably futile. It all makes me glad I'm old, tbh, I'm sick and tired of all our public services going to shit and people getting poorer.

I also feel politically homeless. I've also (almost always) been a Labour voter but I feel they've lost their way so much in the past year I struggle to believe they are in charge.

For me it's not particularly about immigration (although I acknowledge why it's a concern). Above all it's about longstanding economic decline which no government in the past 15-16 years has touched the sides of tackling. Our living standards are so palpably worse than they were when I was in my 20s, there's no apparent plan to tackle this and its hard to see a way out of it. Brexit obviously was a disaster for the UK but that ship has sailed and Europe overall is suffering from a similar malaise so there's more to it than this. There's just an overwhelming sense in this country at the moment of things going backwards, of people feeling anxious and gloomy and impotent about their own ability to influence their futures. Yes we still have, relatively speaking, a good standard of living by comparison with poorer countries but we should be doing better than that. I live in London and the standard of living here has visibly deteriorated since COVID.

I'm worried about what this means for my daughter and her generation (teenager) and I would urge her not to pursue a life in the UK after she's old enough to choose.

But at the same time I would rather die than vote Reform or Tory and while I think the Lib Dems are the closest we have to a credible centre left party there's no way they are being elected where I live. So I continue to hold my nose and vote for Labour as the least worst option but without any real conviction and with growing frustration.

Couldn’t have said it better. This isn’t 2017 anymore. The landscape has changed enormously.

I think they could get away with tax rises when it was positioned as funding the NHS, as everyone uses it and wants the service to be good.

These tax rises are… to support a growing number of workless households claiming PIP (alongside other benefits) - when most voters seem to be very sceptical about the sudden rise in people claiming. And of course the growing cost of pensions and pension benefits - while pensioners already have higher disposable incomes than workers, and most younger workers don’t seem confident they’ll be getting that pension themselves anyway…

‘Starmer was also happy to take money off disabled people’.

There needs to be a rational discussion about the expansion of PIP claimants. The number of claimants has increased by 50% in 5 years and shows no signs of slowing.

I don’t think anyone genuinely resents supporting those genuinely unable to work - but I think querying the expansion of the definition of ‘disability’ to support what is now millions of people is fair.

You can’t have worker A working 40+ hours a week and paying a 40-50% marginal tax rate inc student loans, while living in a flat share and not being able to afford a family - while funding family B to claim housing benefit, UC and PIP to live in a house and have two kids.

And that’s how it’s starting to look to even the left-leaning middle classes - they are struggling to get ahead and achieve stability, yet the government want more and more from them to fund those out of work - while not actually addressing the ballooning cost of supporting those people.

Same OP. I come from a poor background in a mining community. Have always voted Labour but voted Conservative for the first time after researching what Labour wanted to do to my work sector, and being brought up to believe that any kind of independent vote was a wasted vote. My work sector (Early Years) is now being destroyed daily.

I feel exactly the same way OP. I am finally politically homeless whereas up until now I could still manage to weigh up my own values and still vote even though it felt like a major compromise. For example I still voted labour even though I am GC.

I can’t contemplate not voting though as I believe if we don’t, it’s not a useful protest position and we are then no different from the people who complain nothing changes but don’t do anything to influence change.

I also consider myself left wing but am having a bit of a political identity crisis.

The ‘solution’ of taxing working people more and more each year, to the detriment of their own standard of living, to support those who are not working (both those claiming welfare, disability support and pensioners) - while being unable to actually address these ballooning costs in any way… I don’t think anyone really supports this.

I have also simultaneously hit a point where I pay a lot of tax, but am excluded from eg childcare support, so am vastly less well off than one might expect, while paying one of the highest tax rates on earth… but also being excluded from the generous public services (childcare) I am finding for others. We are not, it seems, in all this together.

I think there has been a lot of hysteria over welfare reform - and it’s pitched as ‘you must have disabled people’.

I don’t think anyone resents supporting those who genuinely are unable to work due to disability - but I think a lot of us are sceptical about the expansion of what ‘disabled’ seems to mean in context of claiming additional welfare.

And then the great untouchable mass, the 13 million pensioners in Britain. Again - the triple lock in unsustainable. Non means tested benefits are unsustainable. The average pensioner is better off than the average worker now due to the huge wealth held by this age group… yet the triple lock persists. The second unspoken pension crisis is government pensions, which are again completely unsustainable and many councils etc are facing bankruptcy because of them… but again they seem untouchable.

And to touch on your point on immigration OP - I think that a lot of people are confused that almost 10 years post brexit, a conservative government that presents itself as limiting immigration, we saw last year record net immigration levels. No one seems to be able to get a grip on this - despite the public having made their feelings on it very clear.

Yes. I can relate to all of this. I grew up in a socialist household and I feel the same way you do.

They are indeed, I don't know if you've heard David Betz, professor of war studies at KCL who has been on the podcast circuit for about 6 months, warning that in the near enough future there is going to be nationwide civil disturbance on par with Northern Ireland during the troubles. It is interesting that he's coming from such an establishment institution and is appearing in some places generally considered high unsavoury by his ilk - not sure what to make of it

That is a depressing thought. There’s still the narrative we must do this from many. You see it on here.

You're right.
Public services are dire but most people seem unwilling to pay the taxes needed for decent services. Fwiw, I earn £40k so not a high earner but well above the average wage and I think that I'm undertaxed.

I was thinking exactly all of this yesterday and then woke up to see this thread. I have spent my whole career in social/environmental public service and have SEN children.

Politicians pandering to lower/mid range earners to the point where they feel entitled to everything yet pay very little for it.

We have an unfortunate situation where those on median salaries for example, feel they pay their way when they clearly don’t.

If we want to match other Western European economies which have better public services then we need to increase the basic rate of income tax to around 30% to match them. Can you imagine the uproar if any political party suggested that. As a result we are in a doom loop where the ratio or net contributors to non net contributors is getting ever more skewed and is pretty much unsustainable.

I think it’s very interesting. The poor or lower class, however you like to describe people, have been mentioning the same thing for years and years, as it was them directly affected and they were called raciest and pathetic and uneducated scum. Now these matters have escalated so far they are now also having a direct impact on the working/middle class, so people are now noticing things that a few years ago they would call raciest themselves. It’s now got so bad people are now calling it general concerns.
When something directly affects them, they suddenly have a different perspective. It is interesting.

One reason people leave their own countries is because they are terribly corrupt. I lived in the far east years ago and I remember my cook crying because they didn't have an apple to give to their child to take to school to give to the teacher, If you didn't gift your teacher you were ignored in school.

I also lived in the UAE states years ago, women were jeered and whistled at if in the street - women should be covered and with a male if outside. Also north africa, very sexist, but it's the men coming here, as usual women are just left to struggle through life.

With the large numbers coming these attitudes won't disappear for a few generations imv.

Another immigrant here who has had the uncomfortable realisation that the UK is now experiencing immigration which appears to be a net drain. Both financially, socially and culturally.

A decade ago I would have argued immigration was only a benefit. But my own eyes aren't lying to me.

Ironically my own country is far more hostile to immigration and culturally protective. I love the UK, it has been a safe haven from a much crueller world. I felt proud to contribute.

I dread to think it won't exist as a culture in a few decades, because it's kindness is being taken advantage of. I can't see any wag to save it.

That's stating the bleeding obvious. What is the root cause of it?