If you tend to vote conservative can I ask a few questions - let’s keep it light and respectful!

[Holidayhavanas]

Full disclosure I tend to vote Labour, but I’m really interested to know if you tend to vote for the tories, what is your reasoning behind. the real shortage of qualified public sector workers for example teachers, social workers, police. A health service and education system on it’s knees. Police forces like Manchester and Met in special forces. I think that it’s symptomatic of years of underfunding. I work in the public sector and feel on a daily basis that the country is absolutely screwed. I assume most tory supporters would say it’s down to austerity but I feel it’s ideological cutting back on public funding. I’mgenuinely open to hear other views as I find it so depressing and just hope that it’s something I am missing. Let’s try and keep this respectful 😊

I have never voted Tory, only ever Labour or otherwise tactically to keep Conservative out.

I think though, I will now identify as a floating voter, as quite frankly I think no one will do a good job. If it wasn't for suffrage I would spoil my ballot paper at the next election, or not vote, as I see it pointless. I will however carry on voting against the Tory's main opposition.

To me this suggests that there is something very wrong with how money is managed by our government (I don't mean this one specifically, I'm talking generally).

Completely agree. I suppose an ageing population plays a part, and I don't know if there's been an increase in the proportion of people on benefits and unable to work. Both of which mean that the working population struggles to provide adequate services for the country as a whole.

It may be completely unfair as I only see the public sector as a user, not an employee but I've seen a fair amount of inefficiency and, on occasions, some poor attitudes that would have resulted being sacked at my company.

I have friends in the civil service and NHS that work very hard in difficult conditions. But some public sector employees seem to be as unhelpful as possible. I was at an outpatient appointment at one of the big London hospitals and a new patient from the US wanted to either email or print some test results to take into his appointment. The admin staff were rude and completely unhelpful and suggested he take it up with his consultant.

There's also often a long line of patients waiting to book their appointments while the reception staff ignore them and chat about their plans for going out at the weekend or last night's television program. That's not ok. If you have a work issue that needs discussing, fair enough but acknowledge them and say you'll be with them in a couple of minutes. I've been going to the clinic for 15 years and it's always been the same. It may be free (at the point of care) but there should be a basic level of courtesy shown to patients.

Similar scenario with passports as the government website showed conflicting information about whether under 18s needed 3 or 6 months left on their passport to enter an EU country. Passed from pillar to post between the passport office, FCDO and the Portuguese embassy. No one took the time to answer the question beyond standard emails which directed me back to the same webpages I was querying or tried to pass the buck to another department. There must be lots of other people with the same query yet I had to give up and hope for the best when my son goes on holiday in a few weeks. It's infuriating.

Floating voter here have generally voted Tory or LibDem in the past. I now feel politically homeless. The LibDems have completely lost the plot and there is no way I would vote for a hard right Tory government. I'm essentially a Centrist and hoped Starmer would bring Labour back towards the Centre to make them an option but he has been a big disappointment so far.

@Holidayhavanas on the tax question, we have the highest personal tax levels (as opposed to taxes on business/companies) in 70 years.

I didn't miss your point.
I disagree with the statement 'mumsnet does not appear to [see the nuance]'. As I described in my earlier post.

You said my post lacked nuance. The point of my post was to suggest that I don't see nuance on mumsnet, not that I don't see it myself - I do. The issues are so complex and no government will actually resolve them.

This is the first thread I have seen in a long while where there is nuanced debate/a calmer putting forward of views. I see 'Tory' banded as a insult and a position to be defended constantly on mumsnet. You don't, that's fine.

Jeremy Corbyn and Angela Raynor are the reasons I would veer towards voting Tory. Corbyn's Marxism is a frightening prospect and there are still many of his supporters in the Labour Party. Extreme left wing members, and Angela raynors awful Tory scum ranting are such a turn off, and she's just JC in a skirt.

To call any person scum based on their beliefs is a truly worrying mindset for a potential leader of the Labour Party.

So it's not the Tory party that attracts me, it's fear of the extremists in the Labour Party

Yes this is the first thread I’ve seen in last few years that haven’t descended into left insulting Cons voters

You persist in saying this @MarshaBradyo despite having it endlessly pointed out to you that the insults travel in both directions.

The thing that really frustrates me about these threads is the amount of opinion that flies in the face of fact. It really worries me that so many people are basing their voting decisions on fiction. And that applies to voters on both sides.

The principle was great, but unfortunately it turned into “university, university, university’ when we really needed to promote life long learning and training opportunities for all. Too much focus on everyone getting a degree rather than applying themselves to more rewarding and appropriate courses.

It's the idea of 'constantly' that I disagree with, based on my own reading of MN threads. I don't 'always' or only see on here the idea that if you've done well for yourself it's because you were privileged; and I don't 'always' or only see on here the idea that poverty is always structural and never the result of poor choices.
That's what I meant by the lack of nuance in your post; you present these ideas as an 'always'; I don't deny they exist, but more nuanced posts and threads also exist.

Yep I will say it as it’s what I and others see - if you read other posts not just mine you’ll see that

You do keep quoting me over this for some reason but you won’t change that perception

The way to address that perception is for the posters that do it to stop the insults

I agree with this. The definition of 'education' has been and still is way too narrow and all about traditionally academic success.
Tony Blair's Labour government didn't deliver a wide variety of opportunity for people with different strengths and vocations. Unfortunately neither has any subsequent government.

You persist in saying this @MarshaBradyo despite having it endlessly pointed out to you that the insults travel in both directions.

In all honesty, I'm not sure that's true for the majority of posts on recent MN threads on this topic.

Any Conservative voters sticking their head about the parapet have been subject to a fairly abusive pile-on. Including comments about how can you sleep at night voting for such an evil party that's systematically destroying the lives of British people, you must be morally bankrupt etc etc.

This thread has been refreshingly respectful and, as a result, people have been willing to share their views and engage in the debate.

@Blossomtoes I'd love to see all the threads with the insults towards Labour voters. Genuinely. I'm interested to know whether it's my own perception that is skewed because to me I see 'Tory' as a standard insult on here and a predominance of left-leaning views (despite everyone earning 6 figures, of course).

This thread has been refreshingly respectful and, as a result, people have been willing to share their views and engage in the debate.

yes to the rest of your post but I’m glad a fair few others can see it, and have posted that on this thread, it’s obvious in many ways but we all use mn differently

I was in secondary school when labour got into power in 1997 and was the generation where suddenly every Tom dick and Harry was going to Uni. It was never a good thing and brought in the notion that you need a degree to open an envelope and eroded away the "leave school, work from the bottom up," which was always good for many.

Suddenly you had young people going to Uni who didn't need to/should never have gone/went for the sake of it/did mickey mouse courses and the whole thing was never sustainable in the long term to have so many going. Hence the introduction of the high tuition fees!

I don't agree with the fees, but I don't agree with masses going for the reasons above either. So Labour got something that wasn't broken, broke it in a very expensive way then blamed the next government for trying to fix it again and having to now charge.

I agree largely with this. The thought of a knighted champagne socialist millionaire, Lammy, Raynor not to mention Diane Abbott, imposing their dogmatic class war prejudice is uppermost in my mind when I bimble along to the voting booth.

If they're uppermost in your mind, why not Nadine Dorries or Jacob Rees Mogg?

Or, the tractor porn in parliament MP, the MP who sexually assaulted a child, the MP who defended the MP who sexually assaulted a child, the MP who was promoted to the whips office despite allegations of sexual assault?

Or Boris Johnson, when Foreign Sec, saying to Iran (!) that Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe was there to 'train journalists'?
Or whichever Tory it was who said people only use food banks because they exist?
I could go on.

I wonder how many people vote altruistically, rather than in self-interest. Whether consciously or otherwise.

I'm sure many Conservative voters don't want to pay a higher rate of tax, me included. Presumably some Labour voters would support a more generous benefits system, which might equally help their personal finances.

Not to say that we don't take into account the wider benefit to society, but I don't know at what point self-interest starts to override that.

Several people on this thread have commented that the quality of politicians in general is terrible and nobody has defended some of the recent conduct within the Tory party. Most people have explained their reasoning for voting conservative from a political/philosophical stance. There are very few credible politicians on either side now. Its not a race to the bottom. You have to chose a party to vote for based on some criteria.

Yes but those two recent posters specifically cited individual Labour MPs as a reason to not vote Labour. This is seemingly ignoring the extremes of the Tory party.

Yes, fair enough to both.

I am interested in asking those who have jumped on this thread - which asked why people who vote Tory to do - to challenge the Tory veiwpoint, what they think about the fact that a credible opposition is absolutely vital in our democracy and how Labour have clearly utterly failed for over a decade to provide that?

what they think about the fact that a credible opposition is absolutely vital in our democracy and how Labour have clearly utterly failed for over a decade to provide that?

I think that we need proportional representation. I think we need cross-party co-operation to tame the extremes of all parties. I think that this adversarial model of politics where the winner takes it all and can steam-roller through whatever it likes regardless of the preferences of the majority of voters is utter balls. I think the 'coalition of chaos would be worse' argument has been thoroughly disproved by the chaos of the however many prime ministers, general elections, coalitions and deals with other parties we've had in the last 12 years under FPTP.

A credible opposition is absolutely vital in a democracy, and the one we have isn't much cop. MN does valiantly.