Why do poor/middle-class people vote for the Conservatives?

[moneymoneymoneymakestheworldgoround]

When the Conservatives protect privileged interests, why would anyone not particularly rich vote for them?
The conservatives are now uncapping bankers' bonuses ffs

Labour need to do more to appeal to working-class people. There is no point attacking and belittling people working-class for voting Conservative. Labour need to ask themselves what they are doing wrong, why have they lost their appeal to working people?

"I don't hold Tories to the same moral standards as I do Labour. If a party casts itself as the "good" party, they need to live up to it."

Oh that's handy!

I guessed you weren’t poor. (Sincere Sorry was sarcastic). Because if you were you would know the answer already.

Yes, bonuses can be clawed back for years. They also lose their job.

No, that’s not how it works at all. If you don’t understand, why don’t you find out what traders do?

www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/oct/01/you-can-pay-more-tax-if-you-want-to

This should be a sticky thread for all the I want to pay more tax posts

And yet it was Labour who were found to be antisemitic to the core by the EHRC, and who were led by a man who’d never met an antisemite he didn’t like.

My ex in laws - dirt poor, moved from the east end into Essex. Did quite good. Vote conservative - will never vote Labour.

@jgw1 good work on this thread!

I think all the people spouting about Diane Abbot being the reason they aren't voting labour - really??? But you'd vote Tory after the pandemic? The PPE contracts? The deaths? And now, with the highest levels of child poverty since er 2010? really?

And fwiw, I do not agree with the labour stance on women. But will NEVER vote Tory.

@goldfinchonthelawn juts out of interest which country did you visit?

seriously considering a move out of the UK!

Are you saying that traders don't place bets on what the price of for example a commodity is going to be tomorrow or a year's time?

Or is that kind of betting not gambling?

I just wish some of the posters would hang around a little longer and try and justify the positions that they adopt. As it is it has been too easy to rubbish them.

Yes, I think this sums it up for me. A perfect example is my mother - Labour voter all her life, came from poverty, first to go to university in her family etc. Now votes Tory because she started reading The Mail & Express so dislikes people on benefits and foreigners coming over here and taking our jobs/claiming benefits (apparently they're all doing both).

Today she got us to pick all the apples off the trees in her garden, hundreds and hundreds off them. She wanted us to take them all home to eat - impossible, we'd be eating tens of apples each every day for weeks. I offered to put them on the village Facebook page to give away, but she wouldn't let me because she couldn't be sure that all the people who take some deserve free apples. So those apples will rot in her compost.

The UK wasn’t the only country to bail out its banks. And they weren’t bailed out to protect the banks themselves but the customers/account holders.

They could have bailed out the customers, pay them a percentage of the money they lost. They should not have bailed out the banks. Let them fail as a warning to other banks.

I’m a liberal lefty Blairite type. Come from humble (but aspirational) beginnings.

Writing for my Conservative voting DM - single mother, not English, a lifelong teacher. Reasons she votes Tory (in approx her words), although she’s wobbling towards Lib Dems nowadays. It’s a long- ish view.

• Army veterans. Her dad was tortured as a prisoner of war during WW2. He survived, came home, but died young. The Conservatives champion veterans, then Army. The British Legion fought and got my granny a war widow pension which meant DM and siblings had a better life.
• teachers strikes. DM believed the 1980’s strikes were Labour’s militant tendency inspired. She didn’t support them. Strikes damaged and punished working class kids and they never recovered their education and aspirations and teachers were no better off anyway. Mrs Thatcher tackled strikes and the militant tendency and offered aspiration because she was a grocer’s daughter.
• Hypocracy of militant Labour Types re education. DM’s holier-than-thou union rep was caught with her hand in the till. Rep was urging strikes and preaching working class solidarity while leading the high life and privately educating her child (at non strike school) on embezzled money. See also Diane Abbot’s (and numerous Labour MPs) attempts to justify (their own or kids’) private education or use every wangle or religious grab to get their kids into a super selective or exclusive schools (Tony Blair).
• lack of “aggression” and better accents. Smooth Tory smarm and better vowels seems to win out. Legacy of being a working class woman with a “bad” accent, which she did her best to iron out of herself at Uni and us kids too, so we could “progress” and fit in. Interestingly, DM has a lot of time for Jeremy Corbyn because he is polite, kindly and doesn’t shout or nastily points score and is a good constituency MP.

That’s right, they don’t. They make prices for clients, and are paid to then hedge the exposure as efficiently as possible.

Why would a bank pay traders to gamble? It’s a zero sum game, it’d be idiotic to take in risk for no expected return.

I just don’t understand how you can know literally nothing about a business yet for some reason make assumptions about what is wrong with it.

Customers didn’t lose any money.

Again, you don’t have the first clue about this, yet see, to want to be upset by the bizarre fantasy world that you imagine is real. Why?

Customers didn't lose any money because the government bailed out the banks.

Its all very nice calling it hedging, it makes it sound safe and sensible, but at the end of the day all it is is gambling and when they lose as they did in 2008 someone else has to pick up the bill.

My mum and dad were lifelong Labour, and then along came the fictitious carrot that was Brexit. Ardent DM readers, they were entranced at all that was promised, and being of a generation who still thinks racial slurs are acceptable, were completely suckered in by ‘stopping all them illegal immigrants taking our jobs/living in mansions/marrying our children’ (my DH originates from Eastern Europe, mum and dad didn’t come to our wedding). Along with that dangling carrot, came the calculated buffoonery that is Boris. They fell in love with all things Tory. Now, even if Jesus, Buddha, Allah (knowing them they’d want a nice white Jesus) were running for PM, they’d vote Con. Whilst simultaneously moaning about lack of access to GPs, inflation, their impoverished existence on state pension.

I don’t buy the ‘Tories respect those who work hard to improve themselves’ idea. There’s a lot of people, a majority of people who work fucking hard, but are trapped by being trapped where they are by finances, not being able to mix in the circles that give advantages, and lack of opportunity. To assume people are not ‘successful’ because they weren’t determined enough, or didn’t work hard enough is a way of justifying the selfish mindset of the Tories ‘I worked for it, so the poor can fuck off’.

I don’t follow politics in detail but I have never voted for the Tories, and never will.
I believe that we should support the vulnerable in the country - it is not as simple is saying that people should work; many do not have the capability for a myriad range of reasons.

I have worked in Social work for almost 30 years; In homelessness, MH, addiction, child protection and latterly adult social care. Services to support our clients reduced significantly when the Tories were in power which has huge negative societal implications.

I have no issues in paying more tax to support public services.I earn between 30k and 40k, so squeezed middle but I recognise my privilege. In real terms, my salary has decreased in 20 years however.

The division between rich and poor and lack of social mobility under the Tories is shameful. It is shameful that our teachers, nurses, social workers, care workers and the like are paid so poorly. It is shameful that families are working 2/3 jobs at minimum wage and still required to use food banks whilst MPs claim 100k plus in expenses and the bankers/ company directors etc etc claim huge bonuses and so their wealth increases. This will only increase further with the reduction of the higher tax rate for high earners and the end of the cap in bankers bonuses.

I also have huge concerns about the lack of integrity in today’s politicians.

I don’t know what the answer is, but we cannot continue as we have been.

I have to say also, that I am concerned amount the amount of women who say they will not vote for Labour because of their transpeople stance. I do see the concerns and am a gender critical lesbian; I don’t agree with their stance. But I will not vote against them based on this single issue. Yes it’s important but it is not everything. They are probably trying to inclusive and right on; remember they were the party who brought in so many developments for gay rights. But whatever you believe, don’t judge them, or vote against them for this single issue. Look at the bigger picture, at investment into NHS, education, social care, policing and so on; issues that affect us all.

I am not a huge Starmer fan. But I do believe he has integrity and is hard working and committed.

So I will vote Labour, in the absence of a viable, electable alternative.

oops, that was rather longer than I intended!

Because Labour is full of haters like Emma Dent C, David Lammy or useless agenda pusher Sadiq Khan and that vile Momentum Marxists with the likes of Owen Jones.

@waffless Can you think of anyone in the Tory party who has encouraged hatred of others in the past 5 years?

MPs expenses should be abolished.

The whole parliamentary system needs to be massively reformed. It needs to be moved out of Westminster, out of London altogether. There's simply no need to have MPs sit in a big room arguing with each other, most of what they do could be done online nowadays.