To think that Turkeys Voted for Christmas?

[StormzysHat]

NC. This could appear goady but honestly it's a genuine confusion to me.

According to what we are led to believe by the media / some people on MN, "northerners" (as a generic group) voted for Conservatives because they are disadvantaged and fed up with the north south divide among other reasons.

How come disadvantaged Londoners voted Labour? I work in support sector and many people in my care will be in shelters this Christmas, and others rely on food banks. They were saddened and disheartened by Labour's loss and felt the Conservatives in no way represent them. This is on top of the Tory devised hostile environment and Windrush scandal making peoples' lives hell.

I understand that people are / have been pissed off and wanted to have their voices heard. But WHY would the very communities ravaged by the Tories in the 80's vote for them?

Why is it that Corbyn who lives in a very modest way, in Upper Holloway and who went to grammar school is seen as less acceptable than an old Etonian millionaire proven liar? How can Boris Jonson be seen as someone who can help the north south divide or to champion the working class FFS??

I completely accept Corbyn's leadership has been poor and don't get me wrong, I'm not a fan. BUT, given the alternative, I can't understand HOW working class people could vote for Johnson?

AIBU to think the turkeys just voted for Christmas?

The real “turkeys voting for Christmas” are the Labour supporters who persist in their sanctimonious insults to anyone who disagrees with them, thus ensuring their precious party will remain unelectable for many years to come.

Correct. Some of them clearly think that where they went wrong in their election strategy was in not calling voters thick and evil often enough

Oh and The NHS will be in an amazing state when these muppets privatise it.

And I bet you think it was just the tories using soundbites.

How did that russian leaked document get to you, via twitter of facebook?

I was raised in a working class family in a former mining town somewhere “up North”. I now live in a very ‘naice” area in the south east, work in London and move in liberal elite circles.

From before the referendum and since then, I’ve been trying to explain to friends and colleagues and commenting on here (under different user names) about why I thought that the Midlands/North would vote leave and then why the labour heartlands would vote Tory.

As someone mentioned upthread, (sorry can’t remember who), the elephant in the room is immigration. Whenever anyone mentions this on a thread, it is virtually ignored, other than the usual cries of xenophobia and racism. The unlimited flow of cheap labour has led directly to low wages and zero hours contracts, but many of the liberal elite just don’t want to consider that might be the truth. They are far more concerned about whether their offspring will be able to work in Europe than they are about whether the offspring of the northern working classes can find a job which pays enough for them to live on.

I have found, in real life as well as on here, liberal elites tend to flounce rather than engage in any meaningful conversation about this.

PS I am a long term LibDem who has voted Green in the last two elections.

My only understanding of it would be the mainstream media brainwashing

Also some people are racist and enjoyed Johnson’s Racist comments

Crispy I know we weren't in reality but it irritates the hell out of me that on the one hand people say that people should have voted Labour because it would have improved the lives of a lot of poorer/vulnerable people and then they say oh, but Labour would never have done all those things they said they would do anyway. Bizarrely it seems to me that Tory voters actually believed that Labour weren't lying when they said what they intended to do whilst Labour voters didn't appear to believe what Labour said they were going to do! It screws with my head really.

@thisTurkey I'm not sure if you were being sarcastic on your post? But thanks for your interesting comment.

You're right that poorer people voted against their best interests, but that just goes to show how incredibly disliked Corbyn and Momentum are, not that people are stupid.

@StormzysHat You also clearly know nothing about northerners.

There is no one more passionate than a Tory voting northerner!

As I said, I was brought up in what would be now considered as poverty. An outside loo and no running hot water till I was three.
My dad's life was even worse- his Mum was widowed in her 30s and had to have 3 jobs including doing laundry in her house for other people , to put food on the table for her 3 kids.

You would think they would be the perfect socialists.

Well, just shows how your perceptions are so wrong.

I am old enough to remember the days when the unions held the country to ransom and refuse was piled high in the streets for weeks.

The Labour party is finished. It had a place in the 1900s when workers in manual jobs were treated badly a lot of the time by their overlords, but those days are gone.

The Labour party was started in 1900 by trade unions. It doesn't have a place now.

The Conservative party has always supported the less fortunate in society but unlike Labour they won't borrow to put the country into massive debt and they know that a strong economy is the only way to support those who need help.

Maybe you need to reconsider what you think you know.

@StormzysHat I'm being deadly serious.

And as if by magic Actionhasmagic proves my point.

On the other hand, Tory aims are to support businesses and help people become millionaires because it is only these people's taxes that can pay for the genuinely needy and support them through taxation.

Except that the Tories don’t like supporting the genuinely needy through taxation - that is a socialist idea. (wealth redistribution)

The Tories like to tax businesses and millionaires as little as possible so that there’s not much in the kitty to fund the NHS or Social Care or education or disability benefits which have been hacked to death.

Hard Brexit will force many businesses to leave the country due to loss of the single market, taking with them all their taxes.

What you’ve actually voted for is a hard right agenda of low tax, low regulation, low social protection.

The wealthy will be fine. The poor will be in for the worst 10 years of their lives.

The number of ge I’ve voted in & the party I voted for didn’t get in but I didn’t whinge about it like a spoiled child.

Because I’m an adult.

The whiny tone of these threads posted by people who are old enough to know better.

It’s life, you just get on with it the best you can no matter whose in government.

I said this on another thread yesterday but for anyone who doesn’t know; on election night, several of the multi-millionaires/billionaires in the UK (the ones who don’t have money offshore etc) held a party and waited with jets on the tarmac at the nearest airport; ready to fuck off if corbyn won.

Their level of tax really, really, REALLY matters. We would be fucked without it. Corbyn was threatening them with the 90% top rate tax and demanding company % too.

It doesn’t help anyone to aggressively pursue the rich, who can actually afford to just leave. It’s the middle class who can’t afford to who get penalised, and even then the loss of the taxes from the mega rich can’t be recouped and the poor can’t be helped either.

Many of those who voted Labour still can't understand how thy lost.

Well, when you are so far up on the Moral High Ground the real earth below can often be obscured by fog.

People voted for the Tories because they want Brexit and Labour's policy was a shambles.

People saw through the magic grandpa persona of Corbyn and saw instead someone who positively dislikes many of this country's institutions - the armed forces, the monarchy etc.

People were not taken in by the "free unicorns for all" policies

Those who remember the 70s know what happens when you implement similar policies.

The Tory party is not how it is portrayed on Twitter. They have 8 new MPs under 30 more than one of whom is gay, all state educated and at least one a former NHS worker.

All this bollocks about racism and sexism.... The Tories are the party with a muslim chancellor, a home secretary of asian descent and a PM who I think had a Turkish grandfather.

They don't believe the myth that the NHS will be privatised. No party could do that and expect to be elected ever again. Indeed, reports today suggest the additional spending for the NHS will be enshrined in law.

Also some people are racist and enjoyed Johnson’s Racist comments

People like the racists of Wakefield who kicked out their white Labour MP and replaced her with a Tory Muslim? How does that work?

I can only think that labour supporters who think this must be happy for their party to keeping losing elections because calling everyone else either selfish, evil or thick isn't going to win people over.

But voting based on what someone called you, rather than on the manifesto and what's in yours and your communities best interest is a pretty thick thing to do 🤷‍♀️

I genuinely don't understand some people, a fb friend who relies on respite care for help with her disabled son was moaning not long ago about how the resources available have been slashed, and now she's on fb declaring that she's voted conservatives because brexit means Brexit, I'm not sure how she thinks her life is going to improve after Brexit but we'll see 🤷‍♀️

Well I'm a life long Labour voter (since 1970s) remain voting Northerner who lives in a constituency that has just turned Blue for the first time ever. I voted Conservative, as did my remain voting, left leaning DC.
I think all the family would now vote leave if there were a second referendum, which I suppose this election kinda is?

Reasons have little to do with Boris and more to do with dislike of Corbyn and disbelief at the reckless spending plans. We all believe the leave vote should have been respected and implemented long before now.
But mostly it was Corbyn.

People saw through the magic grandpa persona of Corbyn and saw instead someone who positively dislikes many of this country's institutions - the armed forces, the monarchy etc

God, this is so fucking true. I always forget the utter contempt Corbyn has shown for the monarchy, yet wanted to be PM in a country with a monarchy! It just wouldn’t bloody work.

@StormzysHat then you carry on and try to understand. I'll just think they lack critical thinking skills and hide this thread.

*Also some people are racist and enjoyed Johnson’s Racist comments

People like the racists of Wakefield who kicked out their white Labour MP and replaced her with a Tory Muslim? How does that work?*
That's a Tory Muslim, not one of those foreign ones.

Almost identical background to Brainache above - I grew up in a very deprived NE town but now live in a very swishy part of London and struggle to reconcile my past and present almost daily.

The welfare state is a way of life where I’m from, and it’s easier for poorly educated people to blame outsiders - whether Southerners, foreigners, the Liberal elite - than it is to accept that their life choices are not sustainable. There are no jobs in my hometown, which was heavily reliant on coal, light manufacturing and farming throughout the 1970s and 1980s. You’d think 40,000 people would produce some children who could make use of free (good) schools, free healthcare and free housing to acquire a trade, a second language, tertiary education, and some gumption.

Nah, they’d rather get their council house, have their mum look after their multiple kids conceived in their twenties, claim benefits, smoke cigarettes and eat rubbish whilst voting for anyone who tells them change is icummen in.

It’s never coming for them, no matter which party is in power. There is a massive underclass in this country, but for MPs and the economically productive to admit to this would be to admit to 50 years of terrible systemic failures including a welfare state that’s grown too fatty and a public housing policy that rewards failure instead of aspiration.

If you’ve not paid much attention at school, you’re not going to read a manifesto. You’re picking up your political soundbites via osmosis when reading the Daily Mail’s sidebar of shame.

The Labour party was started in 1900 by trade unions. It doesn't have a place now

This x 100.

I'm always gobsmacked when someone says they voted Labour because their grandad always voted Labour. Being the granddaughter of a Welsh Coalminer I see that politics is very different now than it was when the Labour Party was needed.

It's because of people voting Labour, because their family always vote Labour, Wales finds itself with another useless Labour Assembly 🤬

Here are some of the comments I've had from work colleagues (basic education working-class people who told me they voted Conservative :
"Who's our president now?"
"Because my son disagrees with the child benefit cap" (introduced by the Tory Lib Dem coalition!)
"Because I don't believe Corbyn will give the NHS the £3 million we pay to the EU" (er, that was Boris!)
"It doesn't really affect me whichever way I vote."

A snapshot, of course. I don't like to insult people but, yes, turkeys voting for Christmas. I have been really engaged in this campaign and I have learnt that the vast majority are not interested in policy, they can only abdorb a few facts which they do not investigate the truth of, they discuss with peoplle with the same opinions so the myths and media become self-fulfilling.
Boris had the right idea with his snappy catchphrases and simplistic adverts.

@crispysausagerolls So because someone is for a republic, means they shouldn't be PM? That sounds petty and irrational. It is not a prerequisite to be a monarchist worshipper to be PM. There have been pro-Republican PMs before. Are you honestly saying that if someone isn't a Monarchist then they don't deserve to be PM?

But voting based on what someone called you, rather than on the manifesto and what's in yours and your communities best interest is a pretty thick thing to do

I voted on the polices but the name calling makes me confirm my vote was the right one.

I used to vote Labour but not anymore. I didn't think labour would do anything to help the poor because it would be wasting lots of money nationalising companies, giving away free broadband, targeting private education so that state education was under more stress, crippling business with 4 day weeks, going round in circles again with uncertainty with votes on brexit agreements etc. Where would the money be for the poorest with all that waste?