I honestly don't understand why anyone who cares about anyone other than themselves would vote Tory.

[ilovetofu]

https://amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/apr/27/doctor-nhs-vote-labour-austerity-conservatives?CMP=sharebtntw&twitterimpression=true&fbclid=IwAR2JhAMh9bEiRfeALJeTzeP8ogAByuwaitNpshoQ8oEQfYLvlTc7tvJ50

🤷‍♀️

Trump refused to meet Corbyn, according to Trump himself
www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/trump-corbyn-meeting-refused-uk-state-visit-protest-labour-a8943611.html

Corbyn is a leader who understands that issues are resolved through diplomacy and discussion.

And unlike other party leaders, he doesn’t only do so in secret:
www.theguardian.com/uk/1999/oct/16/northernireland.thatcher

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/terrorism-in-the-uk/11062418/Thatcher-granted-secret-pardon-to-IRA-terrorist.html

Nor are Labour the only people who have met with leaders with poor human rights records
www.theguardian.com/world/2017/apr/04/liam-fox-meets-philippine-president-rodrigo-duterte

www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/tories-have-forgotten-that-thatcher-wasnt-just-a-terrorist-sympathiser-but-close-friends-with-one-10507850.html

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/top-tory-slams-david-camerons-decision-to-invite-egyptian-president-al-sisi-to-the-uk-a6722676.html

"Occasionally, someone who’s obviously never been around MN during elections before attempts to explain why they would rather vote tory than Labour at the moment, despite not agreeing wholeheartedly with all their policies. It only takes two or three replies before the insults come out."

Yet another bloody good excuse not to list even a single positive policy the Conservatives are proffering.

Yes, lots of people don't like Jeremy Corbyn but you know what? This isn't a popularity contest. It's about voting for an entire political party not just the leader, it's about considering policies and voting accordingly.

Shall I try to come up with Tory proposed policies?

20,000 new police, but they've already cut 21k. I do agree that the cuts need to stop to the police service, I live rurally and we pretty much don't have access to police. We have 1-2 police covering a huge area during certain times. But the fanfare of 'whoopee we shall replace less than the ones we got rid of' is hardly anything to celebrate.

More medics. My husband is an NHS consultant, loads of doctors are leaving the NHS because conditions are appalling, it's underfunded, Brexit is offputting to overseas medics coming here. Winter crisis is now joined by Summer crisis. They won't be able to create new medics with a puff of smoke, it's an unrealistic policy at a time when the Tories have destroyed so much morale within the NHS. It's never been this bad and under the Tories it won't be fixed until we have a private health care system (where ironically we personally will be so much better off financially but some things are more important).

Brexit. People have argued that Labour will break the banks, wreck the economy, destroy business all while supporting a political party that is committed to the thing that will mess up our economy and business opportunities for years. The Conservative record on the economy is fairly dismal. Austerity has had a huge impact on our economic recovery after the global banking crisis, other countries came out far quicker. And unless you're financially doing very well you're unlikely to benefit from Conservative economic policies, the figure I've read is £85k. All you've got to do to assess economic strength under the Tories is to ask a few questions to random people about how their salary has increased since 2010 and how easy it is to keep the wolf from the door. Salaries have remained the same since 2010 and costs have skyrocketed.

Anyone want to add any other fab policies that I can't immediately say are crap?

I get that you had a deprived childhood and I had a similar one so can empathise. What I don't get is how, given the level of deprivation you describe, you were able to set up a business and afford to pay staff? And make that business successful.
My Mum, as a single mother in the 70's never ever got to a stage where she had any kind of contingency money. Never. We lived hand to mouth and there was never money for extras. Owning her own house was a pipe dream and owning a business would have been impossible

Firstly there wasn’t any staff. There were 8 people all working and taking no money from the profits.

Only thing taken was the money for rent and food.

If your mother lived in your home and there was 7 other adults working multiple hours + per week bringing in 7 pay packets and not having anything else to spend money on then can you not see how you can get yourself out of poverty.

Having said that, the 70s under a Labour government with all their taxes and the inflation and not being able to order things and they arrive in time because some company in the supply chain had gone on strike made even with 8 people’s incomes hard to keep going.
I can sympathise with your dm as my family only kept themselves from losing everything because we went back to living on one meal per day and all moving in together to cut bills when everyone had their own house.

We should have moved countries but we had elderly relatives who couldn’t and wouldn’t move countries again.

I am actually shocked at the comments that it doesn’t matter what you do now that if you are in poverty you stay in poverty until presumably a Labour government gets in and rescues you.

I did see a programme a little while ago about people who worked 100 hours per week and still struggled to make ends meet.

Now I only saw the end of the programme so can’t comment on who was on it before but I did see one guy who went from job to job and couldn’t make ends meet.

I could see immediately the problem wasn’t about how many hours he worked but he had one business that he was keeping open for the good of the community that was slowly bankrupting him.

If he ditched that one business then he would have been much better off.

The bills that business generated far I would guess either far outweighed its income or on a yearly basis or if he added up the hours spent and the profit he made it would be pence per hour he would have earned.

Sometimes it isn’t about working harder but working smarter.

Not sure if this has been asked before , so I do apologies if it has (ahven't read whole thread) but can I ask traditional Conservative voters, who have voted for the party for all sorts of reasons in the last few elections, if they have any qualms about voting for them now they have moved so far right?

Many moderates have now left and the cabinet is the most right wing we have ever had. Effectively 'one nation' conservatism has finished, as has Cameron's reform project.

Are you happy with their direction of travel?

(And I know I'll get a lot of 'whataboutery' comments re Labour's move to the left but I'm particularly interested in views of traditional Conservative voters given that the changes are so recent and sudden).

Corbyn is a leader who understands that issues are resolved through diplomacy and discussion.

Oh, he’s willing to do “diplomacy and discussion” with his friends in Hamas and Hezbollah all day, but refused to share a stage with David Cameron!

@Deathgrip

Oh, new quantifiable poll out today from Survation, the pollster Labour fans always tell us came closest to the 2017 result. You may want to sit down first...

Britain Elects
@britainelects
·
4h
Westminster voting intention:

CON: 42%
LAB: 28%
LDEM: 13%
BREX: 5%
GRN: 3%

Tory Lead of 14 points

via
@Survation
14 - 16 Nov

Verdict: No Country For Old Socialist Men!

You really like polls don’t you, despite them being utterly useless over the last decade?

"I find all the far left political shaming over voting Tory and pressure to vote otherwise actually quite facist.*"
*
I agree** with this statement.

refused to share a stage with David Cameron!

Another misrepresentation from you, Cendrillon. I for one am shocked.

Almost like you only read headlines and not the actual stories.

Care to actually read the story you’re talking about?

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/jeremy-corbyn-rules-out-sharing-stage-with-david-cameron-on-eu-but-admits-it-would-make-good-tv-a7030286.html

You know, it isn't the Labour supporters running newspapers which describe MPs as traitors, saboteurs and 'Enemies Of The People'. If you're going to whine about name-calling. The language used by the rightwing press over the past couple of years has been seriously disturbing.

@Deathgrip

Which bit is factually incorrect, that he refused to share a stage with David Cameron or that he called Hamas and Hezbollah his friends?

Spoiler alert: they’re both 100% true!

I prefer to vote for a party that has some understanding of basic economics and doesn’t bankrupt the country every time they are in government.

I really don't know how the Tories have tricked the masses into believing they are a safe pair of hands. The national debt has doubled since they came to power. Public services have been starved and development of infrastructure stalled. Not to mention the obvious; a Tory PM gambling the country's future on an unnecessary referendum in order to neuter UKIP and benefit his own party. He lost and the country has been paralysed ever since.

The Tory party is prepared to crash the country out of the EU with a no deal Brexit, despite the consequences. Doesn't sound like a rational party that understands economics to me.

The national debt has doubled since they came to power. Public services have been starved and development of infrastructure stalled.

The Tories inherited a huge annual deficit, which they've managed to reduce substantially over the years, so the debt is less than it would have been had public spending continued to rise.

Labour also promised big public spending cuts to help cut the deficit - we'd have seen big cuts under Labour too!

Don't forget the deficit was increasing under Gordon Brown's "boom" years before the crash - not sure how a competent Chancellor could claim we were "booming" when the deficit was rising, but hey-ho, economics wasn't his strong point. Also don't forget the billions we've been paying every year on PFI contracts signed under Brown's years and are stuck with for years to come.

Just for you @Kazzyhoward and anyone else tempted to trust your lies.

www.ukpublicspending.co.uk/uk_national_deficit_analysis

Labour also promised big public spending cuts to help cut the deficit - we'd have seen big cuts under Labour too!

I'm sure there would have been cuts, yes, but not to the same extent. For a start, they wouldn't have introduced a change in the benefit system with the sole purpose of cutting off people who were genuinely in need.

Care to explain how a responsible party of government can be satisfied to crash the country out of the EU with a no deal Brexit? Who exactly stands to benefit from such an outcome?

I've never understood why people vote only for policies that will benefit them and their family as though the rest of society doesn't matter. It just seems so selfish to me. First page proved that thinking with someone actually saying I always vote tory- it's good for me and my family.
I'm alright Jack!

Don't forget the deficit was increasing under Gordon Brown's "boom" years before the crash

More lies?

The deficit was at similar levels to what it is now in the years before the financial crisis. Prior to that they’d run a surplus for two years.

Or perhaps you’d like to look at the amount of debt as a percentage of GDP since that’s more relevant?

Thought not.

Indeed Namechanger001, and the strange thing is, quite often they're not even voting for the party that will benefit them. There is a lot of aspirational voting going on, like they're opposed to increasing taxes on the rich because they think they might be rich one day. In the majority of cases, it's delusional.

so the debt is less than it would have been had public spending continued to rise.

Public spending stimulates the economy, austerity does not. Increased public spending does not therefore automatically mean more debt.

I've never understood why people vote only for policies that will benefit them and their family as though the rest of society doesn't matter. It just seems so selfish to me.

And the people voting Labour so that money they haven’t earned can be taken from those who have and “redistributed” to them? How are they not selfish?

Increased public spending does not therefore automatically mean more debt.

Yes, that worked very well in Greece, where they were reduced to bankruptcy, the financial system closed down, and people in the capital had to eat out of bins. No thanks!

And the people voting Labour so that money they haven’t earned can be taken from those who have and “redistributed” to them? How are they not selfish?

Oh FFS, it's about making sure people in genuine need are supported. Unless you want to go back to the Victorian era.

I don't believe a banker on 200k works ten times harder than a care worker on 20k. I don't believe the banker deserves ten times the salary of the care worker. I don't believe that the care worker should be scraping by, barely able to pay rent, when doing physically and mentally challenging work that benefits society.

Income inequity continues to grow, and more and more people will fall through the cracks. But I suppose in your mind they deserve it.

The reality is that we're being asked to choose between parties playing to extremes, when most people in this country are centre/centre right.

Oh FFS, it's about making sure people in genuine need are supported.

We already have a welfare state costing hundreds of billions of pounds a year paid for by higher taxes on the “rich”. That’s plenty of money as long as it’s spent efficiently.