To wonder about the values of Tory/UKIP voters

[Campaspe]

Why would anyone vote for a party that promotes austerity rather than a progressive, liberal party (Labour, SNP, Greens, Plaid Cymru)? I'm not saying for a minute that Tory voters don't care about poor or vulnerable people, so how do they square their political support with their conscience? Is it that these voters genuinely believe Labour caused the recession (most analysts now discredit this theory and point to Tory failure to manage the deficit, but maybe these voters aren't aware).

So, given the economic mismanagement stuff doesn't stick, why??? Dislike of Ed Miliband - in which case, why not another progressive party? How do such voters justify the bedroom tax, benefit sanctions, supporting tax evasion, failure to protect libraries, the growing divide between rich and poor etc etc. What are their reasons???

I wonder about the values of people who make snap judgements on other people's morals based on their exercising their democratic right to vote.

I think people who try to influence politics by demonising perfectly normal working and non-working people and taxpayers are pretty near the spawn of the devil actually.

We live in a country which has the most generous benefits system in Europe, and that's unlikely to change (I was astonished to hear from a Danish friend recently that unemployment benefits there are flagged to your last job and there is no such thing as housing benefit or motability benefit).

Quote from the Guardian article someone linked to above, for those who haven't read it.

Haidt looked at the usual ways psychologists explained away conservatism, such as strict parents or an overbearing fear of change. And he came to a radical conclusion: conservatives, rather than being victims of bad childhoods or possessing ugly personality traits, were just as sincere as liberals in wanting the best for society.

This may not sound such a startling statement. But many on the left are endlessly baffled as to why working-class voters seem to go against their own interests by supporting conservative politicians, those hated promoters of big business and tax cuts for the rich. They presume such voters are either stupid or are being tricked.

But the left's real problem, according to Haidt, is that it does not understand the motivations of the right. Drawing on everything from advertising to anthropology, he argues that liberals are driven by a morality based on compassion, the desire to fight oppression and, to some degree, fairness. Conservatives have a broader set of six "moral tastes", sharing such concerns but balanced by the binding foundations of loyalty, authority and sanctity.

It is, he says, as if the left has three taste buds but the right has six. While the right can "taste" issues such as compassion and fairness, the left struggles to embrace patriotism or religion, seeing traditional institutions and hierarchies as obstacles to their fight for liberty and equality. Haidt calls this "the conservative advantage".

how odd that you mention motability as a benefit....
its not a benefit its a charity,

It's Labour who have hemmoraged voters, I reckon, to both UKIP & Greens, bizarrely enough.

IIRC, Greens would dramatically cut high-tech parts of our defence budget (stuff like Trident) while increasing top tax rates. That would free up masses of money if not too many run off to island tax havens.

As a Tory voter, I find you lumping UKIP and Conservatives in the same bucket offensive. Can you link to any articles by reputable analysts who blame the last financial crash on Tory mismanagement of the deficit?

My view is quite simple - we should not be leaving our children a bit pile of debt and unfunded promises to deal with. That means balancing the books. The Tories are the closest party to sharing this view. Oddly I am pro-immigration...

The traditional Labour vote had nothing to do with state help and was the party of the working man. New Labour was a centre right party, which got rid of Clause Four. If benefit cheats and scroungers vote for liberal parties which promise to give them money, then it will be a new phenomenon. It hasn't happened before.

The Tory benefit bashing ideology is a completely new invention. As for not supporting tax evasion, we'd need to ask HMRC and Paul Bloomfield about that. The Tories can claim to be about tax all they like, just not collect any!

how odd that you mention motability as a benefit....
its not a benefit its a charity,

My sincere apologies for coming across to you as "odd".

Danes don't get cars from a centralised system if they are disabled, I believe.

I generally vote Tory because they seem the safest pair of hands with the economy. I wouldn't trust Labour not to drag us back down into recession with their economic policies.

Someone up thread suggested they don't see any signs of economic recovery but I definitely do. My DH runs his own small business 3-5 yrs ago things were awful. Hardly any work, we nearly threw in the towel. Now the phones ringing off the hook and he can barely keep up with the work. People are spending again. All his friends in the trade report the same thing so things are definitely on the up.

It's sort of funny that left-wingers regard the right as nasty, because in expressing that sentiment they end up being nastier than the people they are criticising. The reason for their nastiness is that left-wingers believe that people who disagree with them do so because they are evil, so their nastiness appears justified to them.

The corollary of this on the right is that the right believes left-wing people vote differently because they are stupid. As a right-winger I do believe this. There's hardly a thread on politics/economics/benefits/housing on here where I don't see multiple posts that I would categorise as left-wing/stupid in their thinking. For the sake of argument I'd be prepared to agree to the broader goal the poster in question aspires to, if only I could convince them not to have such a stupid and pointlessly destructive method for getting to it.

Examples of what I mean are people who call for "affordable" housing costs, or for legislating higher wages.

In fact a topical example of left-wing stupidity is the current attack on zero-hours contracts. Never mind that overall people on such contracts are happier with their work than people with fixed hours, let's apply a sledgehammer to the issue and in the process damage the economy in all sorts of subtle ways that we don't care about, because there's no easy way to measure them. (Never mind also that Universal credit is already on target to solve the biggest problem with zero-hours contracts, that they can leave you worse off than if you hadn't tried to work.)

Motability is a lease car scheme. Operated by a charity. To make car ownership easier for those with disabilities. Not "getting cars from the state'. It actually works out quite expensive.

Far, i agree. I have a disabled friend who was hit hard by the bedroom tax. I can never vote Tory, but my dh and his family do. I dislike them all however, have no idea who to vote for this time around. I was shocked by how good Nicola S was, but as im not in Scotland i can't vote for her. Its easy for these rich politicians to say austerity works, as you say, they wont have to live it every day. Nothing will change, the poor and disabled will be screwed who ever gets in.

OK Pokerface, to use the same analogy, if you were in a household of a single parent (you) with two children, one of them disabled, and an elderly mother to look after too, would you choose to get a second job, or would you kick out one of the people you care for?

That's the alternative here, it's not minor cuts to luxury services you're being offered by the tories; in fact, they are leaving luxuries alone, and cutting essential benefits to carers, unemployed people, disabled people. The disabled child would be the one to go, because the elderly mother is protected, and the other child has fewer additional costs.

I know what my choice would be, and I can't think of anyone I know who would make the other choice, although obviously a lot of people do. And yes, I have lived that similar situation, so don't you dare come all 'oh I'm so much more oppressed than these lefties' nonsense because it's pure lies.

Danes don't get cars from a centralised system if they are disabled, I believe."

Neither do British people..............

Woodlice what benfits to the disabled have they cut? Carers allowance hasn't been from what I can see, neither has job seekers allowance for the unemployed. DLA is now PIP but that's the only change I can see.

no matter what party gets in somebody somewhere is getting shafted and they always make mistakes and always protect themselves before anyone else

seriously littlemonsters? google it

Meanwhile, newspapers around the world are depressed at the British election being all about internal money affairs.

Britsin seems to be withdrawing from the international scene.

The world needs to levelheaded Brits, be they Tory or Lab, as a counter voice to all those mad scary governments like Russia and Islamic State.

What anout the EU?

Why is everything anout this election only about money and how to spend it?

I wonder about their values too. Why is the fact that our economy has recovered better than France's anything to be proud of when they believe that the reason for the recovery us austerity, ie it has come at the price of people not being able to afford to fucking eat. Austerity is bullshit, tories WANT austerity, but they have an excuse just now.

Why is everything anout this election only about money and how to spend it?

Because, if you all drive your parties into the centre, and, let's face it, Britain is a Centre Right country, by and large. So is Germany. That's what you've got left to argue about, because pretty much everything else is defined by being CR. Cameron has a little genius, even if it is an evil sort of genius, in creating this anti benefit hyperbole. But, it's only a caricature of the spending argument. It's Punch and Judy politics writ large.

It's all crap. The argument (above) about left wing voters being stupid is crock. They're no more stupid than right wing voters.

Can you link to any articles by reputable analysts who blame the last financial crash on Tory mismanagement of the deficit?

Can you link to any articles by reputable analysts who blame the last financial crash on Labour mismanagement of the deficit?

Personally, I wouldn't trust a party that lost us our AAA credit rating, and has borrowed more in 3 years than the preceding Labour governments did in 14, on the economy either.As far as I can see, the only evidence that the Tories have done anything at all for the economy is that they're telling us so. And if you look beyond the headlines, it all starts to fall apart, rather.

I think most Tory voters just read the headlines or listen to the soundbites on the radio. And who writes the headlines?

Tony Blair also had genius is stealing the Labour Party and driving it into the centre. It's just weird that so many traditionalists, like Prescott, went with him. (Given Labour's form to that point, it did beg the question where was Prescott supposed to go?) But, still, Neil Kinnock had some choice words for Blair's alliance with George Bush! There's Left/Right, Right/Right and then there's UKIP. You can't say British politics isn't interesting. But, it is awful.

Things may be on the up for you JohnCusacksWife but it's not the case for all. I'm a teacher, my salary is decided by the Govt and I haven't had a pay rise for 5 years. I have to pay more into my pension, work longer before I can claim it and receive considerably less than before the ConDems took over. They have screwed me and all public sector workers over, and I detest them.

Interesting posts about people voting in their own self-interest. The only time I've ever received any benefits was for a few months about 18 years ago, I'm a homeowner and our household income is well above average. I am essentially left wing though and would vote Tory only under exceptional circumstances. I do agree with some Tory policies though because I am not a tribal party supporter.

I'd be interested to know if anyone feels they as an individual/family has been made better off under this govt. we haven't. If I am going to pay tax I would prefer it to be used for the benefit of others worse off than me rather than to benefit Atos's bottom line, for example.

I think the rhetoric around disabled people in particular is dreadful at the moment. I feel the trend is one of a race to the bottom and a culture of envy and scapegoating. Meanwhile those at the very top get richer and laugh at our expense.

I'm better off now than I was 5 years ago. I also pay more tax than I did 5 years ago.