if the 12bn welfare cuts were released pre-election the result would have been different?

[Toffeelatteplease]

I spoiled my ballot. As a lone parent to two "not working" as caring for a son with special needs, I was pretty sure we would be hit hard by a conservative government.

As it happens no change. except it probably will be harder to get DS the therapy and help and support at school because sadly I think all his front line care providers will be amongst the worse hit.

However I can think of a few very vocal conservative voters who I think are probably hit quite hard. I found the why should we support those who can't support themselves rhetoric very difficult and I "lost" a few friends in the year run up to the election.

AIBU to wonder whether the divide and conquer rhetoric led a lot of people to think that the cuts wouldn't hit them when they were going to, and had they known to wonder whether the election result might have been different

My sister has been very quiet on Facebook.

That post-election winning glow must have suddenly worn off...

I think a lot of people voted Tory thinking the benefit cuts would only be to those feckless people with 10 kids and no one working. All that "rewarding hard working families" guff led them to believe they wouldn't be affected. And now they are and they are a bit shocked

Yep.

The Tories have paid a good game of divide and rule

There's an insightful Jonathan Freedland article in the Graun today. Everyone who wants this Tory government out should read it, digest it, and think how to counter what is describes.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jul/08/george-osborne-budget-stole-labours-election-promises-living-wage

It cuts to the bone, and I wish it had been published last week or, alternatively, that my Labour constituency election post portem were tomorrow rather than last Friday.

The key par:

Osborne is not bothered by any that. The losers can go crying to Labour. The way Osborne sees it, Labour can go right ahead and be the party of losers, of benefit claimants and whinging state employees. Knock yourself out, says the chancellor. That would leave the Tories as the workers’ party, Labour as the welfare party. Labour would be noisy and passionate, leading a thousand heartfelt marches against “the cuts” – and nicely on course for yet another election defeat. All the rest of the political terrain would belong to the Conservatives.

He's absolutely right. Osborne has set a briar patch for Brer Labour. The louder Labour shouts about benefits, the more it positions itself as a party of (as Freedland puts it) losers. What's politically toxic about this is not only that many people see themselves as better than benefit claimants, but (without coming over all Leninist and talking about false consciousness) so do many benefit claimants.

Raising IHT thresholds doesn't just appeal to the rich, it appeals to people who dream, no matter how unrealistically, that they might become rich. No one is as harsh on "benefits claimants" as people who are one pound outside the thresholds. The Tory trick is to get votes from people who think that they are potentially rich even if they are currently poor (the Trotters); the Labour problem is that it ends up caricatured as the party of the hopeless (in every sense) poor who will be poor forever.

It's hard to fix. I am convinced that there are people in the Labour Party who think that they will wake up, like Bobby Ewing in the shower, and find that the last thirty years were a dream and that there will be again a large tribal Labour vote working in factories shepherded to the polling station by shop stewards in flat caps. There aren't. But what do we do?

Labour have only been elected to office with a working majority five times: Attlee in 1945 (there had just been a war, times were different), Wilson in 1966 (a dying pre-war Tory Party was exhausted) and Blair in 1997/2001/2005 (the most charismatic politician of recent history and the Tories tearing themselves to pieces in response). None of the current leadership candidates are electable, and only one or two of the "next generation" deputy candidates might be but are untested (my money's on Stella Creasy). Winning in 2020 is going to be extremely hard. Osborne knows he has five years. It's terrible, isn't it?

I will benefit a little, but not much. My brother, single and disabled, and employed in a low wage job will benefit several hundred pounds a year, so I am glad for him.

I do agree with a pp. Labour are floundering in the wildness. They don't know what to do next. Probably they will elect same old same old, in the pockets of the unions leaders and wonder why they lose again.

They need to look very carefully at what went horribly wrong last time. For me it was when Ed was asked by that woman in the leaders question time why he left a joke note about having no money left and when he said that Labour hadn't overspent I knew he had lost it.

I actually thought that Conservatives would need to form with another party. A friend of mine was spot on. He said the left were shouting and dismissing anyone who didn't agree with them to such an extent people just quietly went and voted for exactly who they wanted.

I actually thought that Conservatives would need to form with another party. A friend of mine was spot on. He said the left were shouting and dismissing anyone who didn't agree with them to such an extent people just quietly went and voted for exactly who they wanted.

I agree. I had so many friends on facebook shouting about how they refused to vote but if you do- don't vote tory. It seemed like the left were shouting the loudest so had the most support. In reality, tory voters just kept quiet and voted on the day.

I had so many friends on Facebook shouting

As with the AV referendum, young hipsters won on teh hashtags, actual voters won in actual ballot boxes. At 10 on a Thursday night, the support of Eddie Izzard and three quid buys you a latte at Costa.

I don't think it would have made any difference if they'd specified where the welfare cuts were going to come from. They were very clear that they were going to cut welfare by £12b, and as they also said they were going to protect pensions it was glaringly obvious that tax credits were going to be hit.

Also, I'm not so sure that it was a Tory win instead of a labour loss. A lot of people were put off of labour because they didn't appear to be capable of running a country, not because they disagree with their values.

Labour elect leaders as a reward for past good behaviour, and never get rid of them no matter how useless they are.

The Tories elect leaders who can win elections, and the second it's even suspected that they can't, they defenestrate them without the slightest hesitation.

Compare and contrast Labour's refusal to get rid of multiple loser Kinnock and obvious loser Brown (Gordon, George, take your pick), with the the Tories' brutal drive-by slaying of Thatcher.

Labour are loyal to leaders, even at the cost of losing elections. Tories win elections, even if it means throwing much loved leaders over the side.

I agree Labour are floundering. To get back all their Scottish seats they need to be more left and anti austerity than The SNP but in England need to out Tory the Tories - they are between a rock and a hard place. I think from my conversations with friends and colleagues that Labour didn't get across a significantly different message to the Tories during the election and many people thought it hadn't been as bad under the Tories as they had feared, so stayed with them. I think everyone underestimated how much the Lib Dems had kept Tory excesses under control in cabinet (Lib Dems might have a resurgance when people realise this). It is widely believed that the Tories were caught off guard by their outright win and thought it would be another coalition and they wouldn't need to go through with difficult things such as the European Union reforms/referendum.

I also think Thatcher and Blair's work is done, there is now no social contract in the country. We have become more like America, we are divided and singular and not homogenous but self seeking and will become more so as the gulf vetween rich and poor continues to widen.

I used to not understand why Americans wouldn't vote for better Medicare (back in the Clinton days) but even people 1 pay cheque away from destitution had an aspirational attitude that it couldn't happen to them and why should they pay for the undeserving poor and lazy. The US have always let churches and charities take the strain of feeding and helping those down on their luck and we seem to be moving towards this too, with the rise of foodbanks etc. It is so awful - Gemauve's analysis is spot on.

I used to not understand why Americans wouldn't vote for better Medicare (back in the Clinton days)

Just on a point of pedantry, I suspect you mean Medicaid: the provision of healthcare to the poor. Medicare is the provision of healthcare to the elderly, and is goldplated and electorally untouchable.

I'll get my coat

It is widely believed that the Tories were caught off guard by their outright win

No, that's just one of the stories Labour activists tell themselves to stop them crying at night. See also, "it was better for Labour to lose in 2010 2015, the Tories will have to do unpopular things and we will come back to power in 2015 2020 on the crest of a wave of public disgust".

The Tories are always ready for office. They fought a strong, well resourced campaign very well. The electorate chose them, not Labour. Anything else is Labour trying to pretend they "really" won ("the battle of ideas", "on the issues", etc).

Labour were hammered. Even we had won every single Scottish seat, the Tories would still have won with a working majority. We need to do better. We need to look at our policies and personalities, and stop positioning ourselves as "not the Tories".

Tory voter. As a full time working lone parent with a mortgage it will hit me hard.

Not sure whether I would have voted the same. Spending my thoughts wondering (a) why I bother to work my backside off and (b) how the fuck I will make ends meet.

As a full time working lone parent with a mortgage it will hit me hard.

Who else other than you did you think they were going to hit?

I don't buy this 'If people had known they would have voted differently' idea. Voters took in the message that Labour got us into this mess and austerity has to be gone through but it will affect people who are scroungers most. Many, many warnings were given but people still voted them in.

I'm just explaining my situation. Cut the rude attitude if you will.

There is no rude attitude there. I asked a straightforward question: who, other than you, did you think the Tories were going to find twelve billion of welfare savings from? The Labour Party desperately needs to know why people like you vote Tory.

I doubt it would make much difference. Tax credits was always the obvious candidate, the idea of taxing people and then giving them money back in benefits to make them feel indebted to the (Labour) government and welfare state has always been clearly very stupid and typical of Labour and was never going to survive under the Tories.

Getthewonder, did you not know about the Tories' plans to cut £12bn from welfare before you voted for them? Or did you just think that they couldn't possibly mean you?

erm.... I would like to suggest that the many Tory voters - certainly the ones I know- knew full well that we would most likely be worse off if the Tories got in. far from the selfish bunch it pleases some to portray us as, we voted the way we did because we know that the country has spent too much and is spending too much and CANT AFFORD IT. we don't want to leave an even worse legacy than we already have for our children to deal with. This idea that Tory voter were somehow to thick to understand is spectacularly arrogant. We weren't voting because we wanted someone else to be worse off or any of nonsense peptuated about feckless workshy folk being the main losers or whatever nor better benefits or less tax for ourselves - we were voting for less benefits / small state because to do otherwise would plunge this country in to unrecoverable debt that future generations would have to deal with. Not a popular opinion - nowhere near as much fun as we are all evil child killers but there we go. We are also realistic enough to know that the raise more taxes from the bankers/millionaires/tax avoiding companies is NEVER EVER going to happen. The labour government didn't manage it, the Tories won't and neither will anyone else. Huge conglomerates and the very rich have one thing in common - the wealth and flexibility to move at a moments notice so there is no point banging on about what is never going to happen. That left one option - accept cuts and vote Tory which will lead to a stronger economy and hopefully a manageable amount of debt still not convinced on that but we'll see) or more and more spending in the belief that that somehow gets you out of debt which has never ever ever worked. I knew I'd be worse off, I voted tory.

Yes that's absolutely correct elizabeth. You're spot on. I thought I'd be the only person unaffected.

To be fair, if you listened to Cameron during the election you might have thought tax credits were safe. There's a clip from that TV debate where he says they won't be cut that's doing the rounds today. I didn't believe him because I have a deep distrust of the Conservatives. They will never do anything to help the weakest or most vulnerable despite what words that might come out of their mouths. It's not what they're about.

The campaign did not focus on the 12 billion cuts, it was all about back room deals after the election. Coalitions, Snp etc. I really didn't think that Cameron was forced to explain what was going to be cut.

The campaign did not focus on the 12 billion cuts, it was all about back room deals after the election. Coalitions, Snp etc.

As ever the West Wing nails it. In the Shadow of Two Gunmen Part 1, Season 2, Episode 1.

JOSH
Mark, 400 billion dollars. Social Security represents one-fourth of the federal budget, and it's gonna be bankrupt in exactly 17 years. Right around the time you're going to check your mailbox, half of the elderly population will be living in poverty. This now, qualifies as a priority, and running for President of the United States not putting Social Security front and center is like running for President of the Walt Disney Corporation by saying you're gonna fix the rides at Epcot.

MARK
We're gonna get to Social Security, Josh. It's a long campaign. For now, we focus on the tax cuts.

CANDY
It's what magicians call 'misdirection.'

JOSH
Really? 'Cause it's what the rest of us call bull--