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?

I am asking what it was about the Etonian millionaire liar which made him seem more representative of working class that a life long campaigner for equality from a much more modest background.

Because when when necessary he manages to look like a statesman.

Really? I think I must have missed that!

He was the least successful foreign secretary we've ever had btw and universally panned and ridiculed. He is a total embarrassment.

We’ll said Expo. I’m from a traditionally labour voting north constituency and also an NHS nurse. I (& every colleague I know) voted Tory. Those who vote labour think of us as skivvy scum who should (and are) paid peanuts as we pander to their every need. We are all sick of the feckless work-shy raking in the benefits (yes we all have relatives who do this and know exactly how much they receive).
So the northern Tory votes were a rebellion by the ordinary workers who are sick to death of scrounges and regarded as the idiots who go out to work and pay the taxes for the benefits of the work shy.

@WiseUpJanetWeiss really interesting post. I agree with everything you said and could have written most of it myself, except for the bit about having a child (having one next year).

@StormzysHat

@DowntownAbby as you clearly haven't RTFT I'm not going to engage with you

Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant, OP.

You've summed up exactly what I was saying, perfectly.

I think it says more about the labour voters that they won't stop banging on about this, calling everyone thick 🙄

You don't have to agree with it, but the majority have voted so what is the point in going on and on and on about it. Nothing is going to change.

Have some respect for other people's views, and move on. Name calling (as PP have been doing) just says far more about you than it does anyone else.

I said the same thing. How anyone Northern could ever vote Tory is beyond me. They completely obliterated our industry in the 80s and some families never recovered. It’s disgusting. People let Brexit cloud their judgement.

@Speckledhen10 well let me say one thing. A massive thank you. It was you and your colleagues that made me inwardly cheer for this country.

I for one hope that Johnson now follows through and ensures we help the people working hard in the north. Yes of course some people need benefits and they should have them. But we cannot forget those who are working hard in this country.

So proud to be fellow country(wo)men.

Because the tories got rid of the mines, the working man's club does not exist as we knew it.

@whattodoabout. You are not listening.

@C8H10N4O2 a very accurate analysis I think. I saw that clip on election night. I've always been a huge Alan Johnson supporter and remember hoping he would run for leader during the Millibands' campaign, but he thought his time had passed. How different things could have been if he'd gone for it.

@StormzysHat agree with you there. We need a viable strong Labour Party. I am scared that the new leader will be a Momentum puppet again

I was part of a revolt against a Labour Party that holds the people it used to represent, and their concerns, in utter scornful sneering contempt and takes people for granted, and needs to change from the ground up and the top down.

I am not alone in this, that's a fact, but the truculence and resistance to the idea is just as strong now as it was before the election.

You get exactly the same canned responses now as before the election if you raise issues with Labour about the manifesto, Corbyn, Brexit etc.

Raising a crucial issue and being reprimanded by a "grass roots activist" who is clearly very posh, does not know anything about the Labour party or indeed your community/life, this is not persuasive. Yet here in this thread we have someone who is arguing for socialist ideas who seems to have NO IDEA that the country is essentially deindustrialized for most of the population, which is odd because the hollowing out of the Labour heartlands, the events along the way, and their subsequent life for several generations now as an underclass are things you wouldn't expect anyone to be ignorant of, let alone someone who chooses to educate others about socialism in Britain, I mean WTAF. Darling I'm with Jeremy - what's a minor strike is that some sort of hammer-on guitar chord?

Even the premise of the choices they put forward was weird:
"Yes I know x is dealbreakingly unacceptable but take it and give us power or the disabled get it, let's see who blinks first"

This is not a flourishing political ideology, it's a threat and it implies the person speaking to you cares lot more about x than people.

The thing is, none of this means people are thrilled about BJ. Everyone being thrilled about BJ and turning into a nasty Tory turn coat is just another excuse to be cross at people instead of thinking.

Everyone is racist
Everyone is thick
Everyone is selfish
Everyone embraced tory ideology overnight

These are all more comfortable ideas, I guess, than "we decided to offer something worse than the tories on purpose"

@Deathgrip I agree with the lions share of your post and symptomise with your views about the characters of Johnson vs Corbyn and the double standards of what people are willing to tolerate when it comes to Johnson's amoral behaviour. HOWEVER having read many of the more thoughtful responses on here, I think it's clear that Corbyn was indeed a major factor. In 2017 he wasn't fully known and also he was competing against the Maybot which may have accounted for slightly higher ratings. What I've come to understand is that many people genuinely despised him. I'm sure there are some fools who believe every word Johnson utters, but on this thread it seems to me that most of the aforementioned Tory voters in the 'red wall' areas voted whilst holding their nose as Corbyn's negatives outweighed Johnson's. A lot of people on here have essentially said that in their view, on balance Tories were a safer bet, not that they think Johnson is actually a decent person or anything. I'm trying to interpret what I've read here.

I grew up in Stockton-on-Tees. I remember the banner over the town hall with the number of unemployed people displayed. It was a town wrecked by de-industrialisation. Back over there visiting friends for Christmas I was shocked at the amount of contempt for Jeremy Corbyn's leadership. He is seen as a marxist throwback. Teesside rejected Labour because they felt the party is a metropolitan elite, soft on crime and immigration and weak on Brexit.

The North East wants Brexit- they believe rightly or wrongly that being in Europe has lead to unchecked immigration and they are angry that criticism of this is condemned as bigotry and racism. They see Teesside taking what they feel is too many asylum seekers as housing is cheap, they feel that this impacts on crime and schools and health.

They don't want a mish mash spewing of policies that have no relevance to them or feel like throwbacks to another era- 4 day weeks, employee shares, free broadband, free bus passes for young people, nationalisation of the rail- when the railways in much of the north are crap.

Gender politics, antisemitism, Windrush- these aren't issues that are discussed among most working class voters.

I'm a long term labour voter- and I don't agree with lots of the views I encountered among friends and family in Stockton. But anyone who thinks that Brexit sentient isn't linked to immigration control (and probably old fashioned prejudice) won't understand why the Labour heartland rebelled.

@Waspnest you do me a disservice. I am in full agreement with you on what you said. I've always been centre left and am furious with John Lannsman and Momentum. My rationale for voting Labour on the day was 'best of a bad bunch' and have a people's vote. For me Johnson's duplicity and untrustworthiness trumped Corbyn's ineptitude of leadership, and I hoped for a hung parliament where Corbyn would be ousted straight after the referendum and replaced with a centre left type to lead a liberal centre left coalition.

@ReadtheSmallPrint that's all really interesting. So why to do think this slow shift towards the right happened in those areas throughout the 00's? Would you attribute it to an ideological shift? Eg less importance on the worker / unions than in the past and Labour's ethos becoming more liberal, and people in those towns are essentially more conservative (small c) in their attitudes?

It's cos we is thick init. That thick that we can't remember what the last 2 labour governments did to the country, We is that thick that we think that the economy is probably in safer hands with those cruel tories. That selfish that we are not worried at all about what it would do to disadvantaged people if Labour completely bankrupted the country
Actually, you have hit the nail on the head. If you don't know that it was the Tories who have been in power for the best part of a decade, that it is the Tories who have ground down our NHS and education system, that has decimated the lives of disabled people. That have created huge divisions in society.
Then frankly yes you are thick.

@flyingfish some people on this thread have indeed done that but a lot of us have been asking genuine questions because it's important to understand the actual reasons for Labour's loss.

Imagine fervently believing in Jeremy Corbyn and thinking you are cleverer than everyone else.

Imagine still believing any politician is authentic and truthful and thinking you are the height of good judgment.

Not read the thread, but I'm pretty sure the vote was for the government and not Christmas. Also, I don't see how turkeys would be able to vote as their little beaks couldn't hold a pencil.

@Hobbesmanc

Good post. I'm from near you. Left for uni and a southerner, middle class life style.

Anyway, immigration and opposition to it is the elephant in the room. Nobody will discuss it.

Can't even discuss the fact that a lot of working class voters genuinely blame immigrants for their problems. That was what Brexit is about.

Boris's letterbox comments probably actually won him votes. Nobody will dare tackle that idea.

@Expo this is my point (which appears to have been lost in the vitriol on this thread). Those of us who are centre leftish need to understand the real reasons for Labour's loss properly to inform the election of the next leader. I mentioned in my original post the possibility of Lisa Nandy who at this early stage seems to 'get' this and would seem to want to right those wrongs. My concern is if the analysis isn't done properly, and people like me don't actually ask, (and of course the people in the PLP) then sweeping assumptions will be made eg it's all about Brexit, and the real issues will not be addressed.

Rebecca Long-Bailey has long been primed as Corbyn's successor and McDonnell was endorsing her yesterday in the same breath as his apology. My concern is with him and JC staying on to oversee the leadership election these debates will not happen honestly. The only chance of overthrowing Momentum is for Labour members to face up to the realities of the many nuanced reasons the so called 'red wall' voters chose Tory, many of which have been mentioned here.

'Shit, we missed the opportunity to put 4 trillion pounds worth of Turkey pencils in the manifesto, John. Perhaps I will put them in the next one"

"Next one, Jeremy? NEXT ONE?! Shut up you stupid old man!"

Cut to steptoe and son credits

Deathgrip
...the majority of English constituencies voted to Leave, so in the GE they’ve voted for the only party guaranteeing Leave.

Many good points in your post on the previous page. I would add to this Labour's unique problem of having a majority of constituencies that voted Leave, combined with a majority of supporters who voted Remain.

@Hobbesmanc very interesting post. I think you should send that to the Labour Party