Are the conservatives really this popular?

[LabourHere]

Listening to statistician on BBC who reckons the conservatives are head in all polls and will win a majority on election day.

I know only two people voting conservative (mil and dm). Who are all the other conservative voters??

Are the conservatives really going to win the election so easily?

If so...I'm very very sad

Labour have really blown it for themselves this time. They could have had a chance but they are now so left wing and quite frankly bonkers with their free everything (who wants free broadband, and putting a link into a house in the middle of nowhere to old man Jim who will take it because its free and will cost ££ for that ONE line). This time they have a old man as their leader who lives in the past pretending he is the only person who understands the poor and vunerable and his dangerous communist Chancellor McDonnell who is out on the picket line with the McDonalds workers. Does anyone agree that these workers should be paid £13.50 ph? What about nurses, what about carers? All that will happen is endless strikes as everyone will jump on the bandwagon al la 1970's with their hands out wanting their 'share'. I remember the miners holding a conference asking for a 35% pay increase.

When you have no broadband (even though its free!), no lighting, bin men on strike because they are earning less than a Subway worker will you still be saying 'thats Ok with you, the billionaires can pay for it'.

THEY WONT BE HERE.......

There's a weird shifting narrative here

Lower income people who vote Tory = Turkeys voting for Christmas i.e. not in their own interest

Lower income people who vote Labour = Critical thinkers, and also altruistic

Was brought up in a council house,my Dad was a steel worker and my Mum a waitress, i will be voting Conservative, i am not ashamed of it and i dont lie if people ask who i am voting for. You have your vote and i have mine and i really dont care who anyone else is voting for and wouldnt bother to ask

Nice stream of hyperbole @sunglasses123. Do you honestly think anyone will have read that with anything but rolled eyes?

I didn't roll my eyes - I remember the 70s.

I think sunglasses understates the case, if anything. Labour’s own calculations call for 83 billion pounds of new direct taxes, coming to you soon in John McDonnell’s first Budget!

I remember the 70s too. And my eyes nearly fell out of their sockets.

Well said sunglasses, from me (from the NE, oringially traditional mining family, vote Tory).

I remember hte 1970s too - far too many strikes. I still have the oil lamps we used at home when the power was off.

And another

And the Tory manifesto has also been declared 'Not Credible' by the IFS. The Tories will do their usual trick of promising no taxes then get in and put up VAT and other sneaking taxes that hit the poorest hardest

Then you'll also remember the 80's which were riddled with strikes and rioting against the punitive Thatcher government. Her government will be a walk in the park compared to Johnson's

Demezl don't be silly. You can't have a benefit model that relies on people 'paying back' what they've claimed, or wtaf would we do about pension payments?

Entrophy I don't think it's at all unlikely that peoples' financial situation will fluctuate through their life. Agreed, with 10 year of a Tory government and increasing wealth inequalities, it's becoming harder, but it obviously does happen.

I was a 'net taker' as a child as in the care system. Lucky old me, eh?

However, you'll be pleased to hear that through the opportunity of free HE, low rents, a saner housing market and being as hard working and very intelligent as any other hardworking and very intelligent person, I am now am now a 'net giver'.

I remember the '70s too. Yes, strikes and powercuts, but I'd take them over the vast wealth inequalities that there are now.

We could have a contributions based one though.

It’s unlikely that someone would be a net contributor and a single mother of two earning 16K (I think that’s the example that was offered). That there are exceptions to this relationship does not disprove it.

^at different points in ones life.

And much of the continent has a contributions based benefit system which distorts comparisons between uk and European expenditures.

I think it is wrong that someone working in the public sector is in the top 5% of earners .....

Why?

Unfortunately, Labour had lost many of their core voters well before their manifesto was published. In fact, Labour is a divided party and has been since Blaire’s time. Party members are largely Blairites and people who voted remain. These are often the type of person who is a good earner, but who wants a more equal society. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. It is something I support.

However, traditional Labour voters are working class and a world apart from the other group. In the Midlands and the North, they were largely ignored by Blair’s government. They have felt left behind for a long time and they have not been helped by free movement, which has undercut wages and has left them scrambling for housing. Not a popular view on here, I know. Wealthy Labour voters do not understand why they voted to leave. They need to try harder to understand if a way forward is to be found.

The traditional Labour voters are not so stupid to fail to see that Labour’s approach to whether we should leave or not is a fudge. I believe Corbyn is (or was) in favour of leaving. But he is outnumbered in his party. In the unlikely event that Labour won, the likelihood is that there would be absolutely no desire to secure a leaving agreement, or at least one that has any chance of being successful in a referendum.

I don’t believe that these voters particularly want to vote Conservative, but they think they know what they will get if they do.

PS I don’t vote Conservative and I am in absolute despair at the current state of politics. What on earth did we do to deserve this 😩😩😩

I agree with all you say Brainache although I don't understand why people who aren't natural Tory voters would trust Johnson to deliver Brexit for them. A Johnson Brexit is going to be just as much a 'fudge' with the miserable addition of yet more deprivation and exclusion

Who else are they going to vote for? All the other parties support remain, with the exception of the Brexit Party.

Entrophy it doesn't matter how unlikely you think it is though.

The point is that the very, very great majority of us benefit from a more just and equal society. I find it extremely upsetting to be literally tripping over people sleeping on the streets (those that haven't died, of course), to be living in a country where we have more food banks than we do McDonald's outlets and where over 4 million children live in poverty.

Some people have greater opportunities than others, in terms of parents, money, health, education and goodness knows how many other variables.

It's luck, not an inherent superiority.

If children don't have a father to support them (aka known as those being brought up by single mothers), do you really think society should abandon them?

Actually, don't answer that.

Who else are they going to vote for? All the other parties support remain, with the exception of the Brexit Party.

If Brexit is all they want then yes, they will vote Tory. If they want anything else, any hope of improvement in the country and their situation, they can't vote Tory and they know that - like you said, they're not stupid.

Agree that Labour have in many ways been their own worst enemies. All the party infighting has been really damaging. The party membership elected JC; the duty of individual representatives should have been to support and honour this decision, not undermine and try to topple him, whatever you think of him.

But let us not forget that it was Cameron who called the referendum for his own political agenda.

I don't blame ex-Labour voters who voted to leave and now intend to vote Tory. They have been badly let down.

But voting for Johnson does remain a mystery to me.

If he secures a majority, he'll pursue his hard Brexit, destroying of the NHS and welfare state etc until he gets bored of it then resign.

And he will never suffer, never be homeless, never wonder where his next meal is coming from.

And of course neither will many of the heads of the media outlets who have paved his way, not the bunch of ex-Etonians who will remain in charge.

I'm also in despair.

Entrophy it doesn't matter how unlikely you think it is though.

It’s not that I think it’s unlikely, it is statistically unlikely.

Corbyn’s beef with the EU is essentially sovereignty. He thinks it’s an agent of transnationals/globalisation and bad for the rank and file. Which makes us bedfellows, weirdly enough.