New poll finds only privileged people will vote for Labour - but why?

Exactly
everyone I know who claims Benefits is absolutely a reform voter
they are completely oblivious to a small state cutting benefits

If we didn't sell arms, someone else would instead. It is some income for us.

They only lifted the 2-child cap under protest when it became clear that it was an "election liability". Nothing to do with their sense of concern for families and children living in poverty. Increasing the MW is the least they should be doing, but they're undoing that by creating a scarcity in the job market by everything else they're putting on employers. And they can stop supporting those overseas wars to help not prolong them by not selling weapons to aggressors.

Increasing in the national minimum wage and lifting the two child benefit cap are just two things they have done for those living in poorer areas. They can't do much about price rises caused by overseas wars.

Will be spoiling my paper again.

I don’t think many do anymore.

It's a shame the rest of the PLP don't see him as you do.

Yes I do think he is a strong leader and certainly stronger than Boris Johnson or Nigel Farage.

He has brought stability. He is factually clear.
He is not interested in being a ‘personality’.
U-turns aren’t a bad thing. It takes a strong leader to listen and back down. We are not infallible all of the time.
He is careful and diplomatic. Handling Trump, without drama, has been a good option.
It isn’t about him (unlike BJ,NF) it is about trying for the greater good.

He is making difficult decisions, constantly. Decisions that have to be based on sound legal and financial information. It has to happen.

It is so much easier for all of the other party leaders to admonish him and to make claims about what they are going to do…except they don’t have to.
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You make a valid point.

Regardless of who gets in the country is fucked. We can’t afford a high cost, high tax but low wage economy. And I don’t just mean the people being topped up by UC. I’m a high earner but if I was doing my job in a Western European country or the US I would be being paid a lot more. Wages are low in the UK because it’s the only way we are vaguely competitive but it’s unsustainable.

I think we need more social housing so at least rent money goes back to the state but we would also need a state builder because private companies rinse any contracts they get and local authorities are corrupt and give those same contracts to whoever has greased their palm. The nhs has to be changed and people have to start contributing financially to their healthcare and start looking after themselves so they cost less to patch up. Families need to be only having the kids they can afford and absent fathers should be paying a fair amount, fewer people should be receiving benefits and benefits should be increased for those with severe illnesses and disabilities so those people can have a better quality of life. We also need more jobs and even if a job isn’t quite what someone had in mind, it needs to be socially unacceptable to not work if you are able and also socially unacceptable to not be contributing to the pot - whether you’re a cash in hand dog walker or a billionaire.

@ProudAmberTurtle

Re that migration watch report. This bit :" Migrants compete with existing workers in the UK for jobs, but they also cause the number of jobs to increase"

That makes sense. And we are seeing it in the US just now. A cut in migration has forced the Trump admin to relax the agriculture visa requirements. So the job numbers are going up as these visas are processed.

I think of it this way. Go to a supermarket, and you might see a lot of low paid migrants. But the supermarket might only be there because there is a pool of migrant workers. The same with farming. If a farmer has a pool of low cost labour, then they can grow higher value labour intensive crops. No labour pool, and they will grow lower labour intensive crops that a farmer and a tractor can deal with.

Britain has fallen in the world because we mined out all our minerals and cut down our forests. We don't have raw materials any more. For a while, we survived by pillaging what other places had, aka "having an empire". We are dependent on imports for even essentials like food and energy. Attempts to reinvent ourselves as a "knowledge economy" are doomed to failure because ideas are easily stolen and the people of other countries are smart.

Attempts to "green" our energy supply are making this dependency on imports even worse, as we cover farmland with solar panels and wind turbines. These renewable options are expensive, prevent the use of the farmland as farmland save for limited grazing, and harm their immediate environment. What the turbine brigade won't tell you is how many birds and insects die on the blades of those things. The plants under solar panels are deprived of light and die.

What would get us out of a lot of this mess would be a commitment to building lots and lots of nuclear power stations, using the same small reactors that power submarines and aircraft carriers. The British and US implementations of this military technology are pretty safe, with the last major incident on a US vessel being in the late seventies using much older technology than we have now. The French have already widely adopted nuclear power for civilian electricity generation and are laughing all the way to the bank as they sell us their surplus electricity.

Having a benefit system that supports only the most severely-disabled will cost more in the long run and people will die. It's counter-productive.

Well, I suppose when you put a pile of claims in, you should be able to back them all up.

That document you posted. Key points in the header are:

• The number of jobs in the UK economy is not fixed. Migrants compete with existing workers in the UK for jobs, but they also cause the number of jobs to increase

• Research suggests that the impacts of migration on wages and employment prospects for UK-born workers are small

• Low-wage workers are more likely to lose out from immigration, while medium and high-paid workers are more likely to gain, but the effects are small

• The wage effects of immigration are likely to be greatest for resident workers who are migrants themselves

I have removed the links, because the article is there. I have bolded some bits.

But digging into the doc, we get :

First, immigration had little or no impact on average employment or unemployment of existing workers. Second, where an impact was found, it was usually concentrated among certain groups – i.e. a negative effect for those with lower education and a positive effect for those with higher levels of education. And third, the impact may depend on the economic cycle; some—though not all—studies have found adverse effects on employment or unemployment, specifically during downturns.

So the document you presented as evidence for that claim does not appear to backup your claim. A small negative impact on low skilled, and a small positive impact for skilled. And this of course.

"immigration had little or no impact on average employment or unemployment of existing workers. "

The biggest impact is on migrant workers themselves.

So good of you to be concerned about them.

That would be why The Times is saying today that moving Reeves would be catastrophic? Farage would have exactly the same effect as Truss. In all probability even worse.

@RedTagAlan

If you want some data on the schools front then that’s easily found online.

I actually noticed it as part of my choosing schools last year. But had a look again today when schools were bought up out of interest.

I don’t know where you live but if you go on this website… go to the map. Pick the most impoverished nearby area and click primary schools. You then select one, go to download data and there you will find the number of children with English as a first language.

In the poorest area near us (less than a mile away) the English as a first language are minority.

We are a stones throw away but can afford a house in a slightly nicer area and ours jumps to 70% English as first language.

Go to the little village 5 minute drive away and it jumps to 90% English as first language.

So whilst it’s not direct data on immigration and says as such in a big box at the top; imo it’s a proxy which I do think reflects reality that the parents they are conversing with at the school gate are more likely to be non British.

www.compare-school-performance.service.gov.uk

@ConstantlyPeeing

I actually think the politicians might prefer the IMF to come in and make the tough decisions and then they can hide behind them.

Nail on the head. I've said the same thing many times on threads like this. Our current political leaders are too scared/incompetent to make the changes we need, hence the re-arranging the deckchairs on the Titannic of the last couple of decades. They either don't know what to do or are too frightened of losing their political careers (and lucrative consultancy deals afterwards) to do what needs doing. Look at Starmer's U-turns forced by his back-benchers!

The thing that no one can really say is that the government has to subsidise wages with UC because people cannot sustain work and a state of productivity when they are unable to stay fed and housed. It isn't a softly-softly decision to top up people's wages if it's the only thing keeping them in work. There also aren't enough job vacancies going around for everyone who needs one, much less a surfeit of jobs suitable for anyone with a health condition or any kind of caring responsibility. Further impoverishing the workforce won't save the economy.

Agree. Circulate the money instead of it being hived off.

And yet all of @Amiacoolorwarmcolour's points are true.

We left the EU, the promised £350m per however-long-it-was for the NHS never materialised, yet people who voted Leave are planning to vote for Farage, the principal Leaver's, party. Explain why people are voting for someone who has already provably lied to them.

Explain why people on benefits are voting to cut benefits.

Explain why people don't seem to be able to do a basic cause-and-effect analysis on something as simple as "if Reform win and cut benefits, what will happen to my UC?"

If it's not that people are simply too stupid to figure it out, then why is it?

Yes a move left on borrowing and spending would do it.

Actually things in the UK are way worse than that. So many people don't understand our financial position at the moment. We need to take welfare of the 'scroungers' yes. We also unfortunately need to take welfare off lots of people who are probably genuine too. It needs to become a very basic bones safety net only for the most severely disabled.

The only sensible borrowing we should do is if it is to grow the country, boost the economy (in other words the borrowing will result in increased financial stability)

Lots of people will start shouting about should we just let people die in the gutters. Well we didn't have a welfare system 80 years ago or an NHS and given that we don't appear to be able to afford them anymore..............
Horrible that we are going backwards. Yes absolutely. Horrible the UK is now in decline after our glorious past as world leader. Yes awful. However that is the truth. What we could afford yesterday is not what we can afford today and the sooner we start recognising this the better.

Of course none of us want to live through this but we are going to be in deep shit if the borrowing dries up. I actually think the politicians might prefer the IMF to come in and make the tough decisions and then they can hide behind them.

This was your claim. Quote :

ProudAmberTurtle · Today 20:17
There's plenty of obvious reasons, but off the top of my head:
Immigrants, especially recent or lower-skilled arrivals, disproportionately enter low-wage, semi/unskilled service, care, construction and hospitality jobs. Poorer UK-born workers (lower education, bottom of wage distribution) compete most directly with them.
Rapid population growth from immigration increases demand for housing, especially in urban/low-cost areas.
Poorer natives compete for school places, GP appointments and social housing. Wealthier people use private alternatives and are less sensitive to queues or overcrowding.
Higher-income areas are more insulated, with better resources for integration and less direct exposure.

Do you have any data to back any of that up ? That is what I asked.

You replied, quote :

"Do I have any data to support points that state that wealthy people are more likely to send their children to private schools than poor people, or that immigration puts more pressure on housing?"

You never mentioned private schools in the bit I was asking for data for. You did mention housing pressure though. You mentioned a lot in fact. Any data ?