This is a goady thread

[cannotbelievethistoday]

I have private school for my children. I own my house outright. I have private medical insurance. I have savings in the bank. I own a second property outright which is let out. I go on many many holidays a year (approximately 6-8). The absolute devastation that the tories are reaping on public services will largely pass me by.

I vote labour.

WTF do people without money (and all the things outlined above) vote Tory? THEY ARE NOT ON YOUR SIDE. THEY DON'T CARE. I see people without any of the aforementioned luxuries cheering about voting someone in who will have a guaranteed negative impact on their lives.

Off to find a wall to bang my head on.

AIBU to say I don't care that this is a goady thread.

(You can say I am troll but mumsnet will confirm I have been a member for years.)

I think a large factor in the way people are voting now, especially those who are in a lower socioeconomic group is that the immigration does affect their ability to get jobs. The majority of immigrants are not high earners like bankers or doctors. Where I live for example there is a lot of consternation over the number of polish builders, jobs being advertised as wanting polish speaking people for roles.

Also the vast majority of people whether wealthy or not don't know all of a political party's policies, and it is the sound bite ones like immigration that stand out and do have an effect over voting. It is also something which is more visible in day to day life than how much they spend on repairing roads or reducing corporation tax etc.

A lot of people in this country don't have much, the use of food banks has skyrocketed and I don't blame them for being wary of having even less if there was uncontrolled immigration. And while a diverse culture is good, in areas of deprivation there tends to be more ghettoisation and people stick to their own culture more strongly.

Immigration doesn't affect the wealthy in the same way, if at all, and to sneer at people for being 'unenlightened' is pretty rich when you have never had to stand in their shoes.

I don't support any party as they are all as bad as each other, I think they should be abolished and individuals should be elected based on their own views and ideas for change. Sticking to a two party system is stupid as if there are only two polarities in the way things can be done.

Thank you, OP for the voice of reason and for thinking about the social good.

I read somewhere that the reason poor people in the US vote Republican, is because their mindset is not that of "the poor", but rather that of millionaires who are temporarily embarrassed.

I think that explains a lot about many Conservative voters, too.

'I simply can't imagine why any sane person would vote to have corbyn as the prime minister, and his shadow cabinet is laughable'

This. He struggles to run his own party, and rarely takes responsibility for the actions and impact of his party, so how the heck is he going to be responsible services like the Police and NHS.

mother It would nice if those hospices could be actually funded properly rather than relying on volunteers!

I have never voted Tory. Never will. I will be voting lib dem to hopefully get them back in in our constituency as they were ousted by the Tories in the last election. The previous MP was wonderful, local and fought for local things. The Tory MP hasn't been seen since he won. Our new Lib Dem candidate if fab and I am right behind her.

France, Italy and Germany etc managed to prop up their failing car industries and their economies weren't in great shape. Now look at all the cars from these countries. That help would have been appreciated but myopia prevented it. Or how about selling off the old council houses - possibly a good idea as they were costing too much to repair - and actually using that money to buy more modern, easier to maintain council houses? Why the fuck Maggie ring fenced this money only to be swallowed up later I have no idea. She wasn't the greatest leader of all times as some would lead us to believe. And now we have Maggie2 sitting on the throne at the helm. And in reality she's pooing her pants.

Thatcher pushed the whole political landscape massively to the right and Cameron and now May are following in her footsteps. Someone on one of the Brexit threads posted a link pointing out that the majority of this government's policies are identical to the BNP. I have some understanding of why people might have voted Tory in the past when they were more moderate but I genuinely can't get my head around why anyone could bring themselves to vote for them now. I don't believe this government give a shit about anyone but very rich people and genuinely believe that, if people are poor, it's their own fault.
That quote from Neil Kinnock is particularly poignant. He said that after Labour lost the 1992 election which they had been predicted to win, giving the Tories their fourth term. I remember the utter despair the morning after the GE. Five years later, Labour won a landslide victory which gives me some hope. However, by 1992, they had done a lot of the legwork to make themselves electable again so it was a case of 'one last push' also helped by a young charismatic leader. This time, Labour are starting from a point of being an utter shambles, much like in 1983, so I think it will be 10 years, if not more, until we have any chance of a Labour government and God knows what kind of state the country will be in by then.

Boris Johnson is a joke and there are a lot of Tory MPs who dislike May intensely but toe the party line anyway, which is hypocritical in my view.

I vote for the party, not the leader, which is why I'm voting Labour. I'm not a fan of Corbyn and his ilk but there are a multitude of wonderful positives about the Labour Party that the Conservatives can only aspire to.

YANBU. I think part of the issue is what "the man in the street" perceives to be the biggest problem in life - which at the moment appears to be immigration/Islamaphobia. Its a bit like all the red necks voting for Trump - they've no medical insurance, can barely feed themselves, living in shacks and their nearest neighbour is 20 miles away - but they are more worried about "Mooslims" coming to their neighbourhood or being stabbed by an illegal immigrant than how they will pay for health care if their child gets ill. Sadly I see it getting worse.

I can't bring myself to vote Tory but I also can't bring myself to vote for the poor excuse of other candidates. I also cant bring myself not to vote at all so is my only option to spoil my paper?

My DParents always vote conservative, apart from when Blair and the Tory lites were in power. My DM is convinced by what she reads in the Daily Hail that it's all the immigrants faults. DF feels Corbyn is too far left for his tastes and calls him a 'bloody Commie' with such venom I've never heard before.

I'm a disabled single parent to an autistic child. I need the NHS. I work for the NHS too and I need my job. I need the immigrant doctors who have treated me and kept me alive over the past 3+ decades.

But I don't know if I can vote labour this time. For the first time in my voting life I don't know who to vote for.

*Daily Heil stupid autocorrect!

Motherhood

My understanding is that immigration will not change when we leave and it will be made up more of non Europeans. The people, who voted leave on the basis of immigration don't appreciate this.

I was mildly surprised at the news this morning.

I had no idea the vast majority of Britain are so wealthy they can afford to be indifferent to the NHS, schools, the police service.

Or perhaps the vast majority are not so rich as they are ignorant and gullible.

YANBU

It makes me laugh when people say of Labour: "The party is at each other's throats and none of them are behind their leader." The reason we had the effing Brexit referendum is because the Tory party was totally divided about Europe (still is!) and had a gun to Cameron's head over the issue which forced him into a vote he didn't want. Hypocrisy at its finest

By voting for the other candidates you are effectively robbing the Tory candidate of a vote, and could possibly contribute to their ousting . Spoiled votes do not count and as a protest is really quite useless.

Rightwine, Rhoda

How about voting for the candidate most likely to oust the tories out of your constituency? There are apps to tell you which way to vote.

"Hypocrisy at its finest"

Not really, the Tory Party are not having daily spats between themselves. I can't remember the last time I picked up the newspaper and didn't see another Labour fall out in there.

I think Labour will lose votes in North London as they didn't deal with the antisemitism allegations well at all.

Mummy Great minds

I am fed up of the taxes we pay here oh and the NI and the council tax

Oh and then the VAT I pay on everything else I buy!

I want the govt to build an infrastructure that can cope with the current population.

Because that's not happening right now yet We are paying more and more for less and less!

I'd vote for any govt who promised what I wanted

My parents loved Thatcher because she let them buy their council house - I was an idealistic militant at the time and I couldn't believe it as my DF was a miner!! I was on all the "Coal not dole" marches and their he was sitting happy in his "own house". What they didn't appreciate was that she was giving them an asset so that they had something to sell when they ended up needing care as older adults as the Tories effectively privatised the nursing home sector.

A famous philosopher once said "there is no truth, only perception" - it doesn't matter what the facts about immigration are, the numbers, what will happen post Brexit etc - if people perceive it to be a problem for them, then that is what they will hold to be true. Then because it was their truth, they will still believe it even in the face of evidence to the contrary, because they have internally committed to it and it would cause too much inner turmoil to admit it to themselves. This is the basis of congnitive dissonance.

"there he was" not their