Am I deluded to think the blue wall might crumble if there were a GE ?

[Katharinablum]

Appreciate there's not going to be a GE for at least 3 years. Also appreciate that the british electorate seems to have a short memory regarding tory governments...
I'm on twitter and a regular comment from certain elements is that longstanding Labour leave constituencies turned tory in the last GE. Usually associated with crowing about how labour is finished. Back in dec 2019 I would have struggled to disagree, but with a new leader at the helm things are looking up, that and the absolute ineptitude of the government's management of the pandemic, plus their sheer dishonesty over brexit, I'm daring to wonder whether those resolutely blue constituencies in the home counties and shires might turn a little pinker ? What's the tipping point to make life long tories desert them ?
People up here in the north are more politically fickle, there's alot of w/c dislike and distrust of labour, far more than they deserve, whereas the tories have escaped it relatively speaking, despite years of ideological austerity that hurt the north far more than the EU ever did..Just wondered if people thought there would be a realignment in the way huge areas of the country voted, what with a chaotic brexit pretty inevitable as well as the fall out from covid.. .

If there was a GE tomorrow I don’t know how anyone could vote Tory. Even if for some odd reason you like Boris you can’t believe a word he says. Oven ready deal that he’s now going back on for example. But that being said he was just as dishonest in 2019 and look how that turned out.

Keir is doing a cracking job keeping away from brexit, the argument is lost we are out. It’s now the torys hot potato to hold and labour are distancing themselves so to not be scared by it.

The next election isn’t actually for over 3 years so by then the torys record on brexit and Covid will be there for all to see and I hope to god people see sense and boot them out.

We don't do attack ads like the US does.

Maybe we should. Remarkably easy to attack Johnson now.

@BooFuckingHoo2
The ‘once in a generation’ phrase was that, a phrase, not legally binding.
Times change, does it mean we should never want change? Never have another GE?
Why are England so reluctant to let Scotland go? it’s not out of concern or kindness, just sheer greed.

If you've lost a loved one you might be less forgiving so it really is in Conservative interests to keep the death rate low, double whammy really as lots of elderly Conservative voters dying will be lost votes and then angry families. I'm not sure if 4 years is long enough to forget that, my mother died 19 years ago and the week of her anniversary last month was a bad week for me, 4 years is nothing.

My local (scottish) mp is a tory. He is a useless twat who does not give a tiny shit about his constituents, spends his life telling us how great the union is whilst doing his level best to support a uk government hell bent on fucking Scotland as hard as he can.

We knew all this before the 2019 GE, and still he got returned. If there was a GE today the tories would win because frankly, people are stupid enough to vote for them.

I think while Labour has the left wing odd balls determined to push identity politics, they won’t get their core voters back.
To the traditional labour voter living in a working class area, the student politics rhetoric Labour has indulged in looks navel gazing at best, and then crazy.
Despite Trump being all over the place and frankly dangerous, I think Biden and co will lose on this too.

Woke-ness and cancel culture strengthen Tory support. As do the various protests that use violence, Tory is from conservatory after all ( used here in the rare term, not the glass-roofed building ).

My observation and experience agrees with the Churchill quote that people get more right wing as they get older. It's human nature.

We are a selfish lot generally, the more we acquire, the more we hold on to it. Capitalism succeeds because we are greedy by nature (inherently by evolution). All species are geared towards survival, maternal/paternal instincts kick in. Yes, all schooling should be excellent but how many rich socialists place their children in a failing comprehensive to raise the chances of the other pupils there?

And media exposure is key. We have a celebrity Prime Minister (him off the telly) which leads voters to think that they know him. For every voter who studies policies there are 10 who go with what's familiar.

The thing is - people don't need the wall to crumble.

Just to get a hung Parliament.

Labour won't win a majority. They just need to get enough seats to work with the other parties.

No, the Tories would win, and will again next election. Though they might be able to win some seats back in the north.
The fact is twitter doesn't represent real life opinion, that's been proved multiple times. And I'm reasonably sure mumsnet doesn't reflect real life opinion either.

@chomalungma absolutely spot on. And sadly I feel that way. A town near us now has its first ever tory mp, very deprived area, hit incredibly hard by austerity. The way the tories reinvented themselves to win seats like these despite their abysmal performance is nothing short of amazing and something labour need to emulate. Starmer's first foray into the media after he was elected leader was via the mail or express, caused much frothing amongst momentum members but was a pretty astute idea.

I think identity politics is destroying the Labour Party. Sometimes it feels like they are ashamed of their working class roots.

If a country only has 1 party in power for most of the time, is that real democracy?

@feelingverylazytoday no one is saying twitter is real life. We are actually discussing whether people will ignore the multiple ineptitudes of this government and continue to vote for the tory party....

@Bluntness100

They need to be saying more than they are - how would they get Covid things done differently?

There is no winning answer to this, none whatsoever, that’s why they aren’t going there.

They’re damned if they do and damned if they don’t. If they were more vocal everyone would say how easy it is to carp from the sidelines when you don’t have the responsibility of power.

Tory voters, especially the new ones from depressed areas, seem like abuse victims who are in thrall to their abusers. Thatcher destroyed their communities and obliterated their jobs, Cameron kicked the shit out of their public services with austerity and still they come back for more. It’s like Stockholm Syndrome on a mass scale.

@FreidaMind what do you think about the tory brexiteers obsession with the war ? With the evil EU ? Identity politics of their own which hopefully will come back to bite them .... they've whipped up ordinary people to vote against their own interests, surely that's worse ?

Tory is from conservatory after all

No it isn't. Tory is from tóraidhe and was used for tories because it means criminals. Quite apt really.

Ah..but that's Tory identity politics and that's alright for people

Only 1 group is allowed to have identity politics.

I live in South Yorks and we have a tory MP for the first time in living memory. Unhear of.
Usually you could put a red rosette on a monkey and they would win. It is these seats that Labour will have to win back to have any chance
I think it was a vote against Corbyn rather than a vote for BORIS

sadly people will still vote them back in.
they will forget all the people in care homes that have needlessly died.
they will just think about money.

TBH - I hope that the Conservatives can do something for the communities that voted for them.

I hope that Brexit brings them opportunities. Investment. Jobs.

[quote Katharinablum]@FreidaMind what do you think about the tory brexiteers obsession with the war ? With the evil EU ? Identity politics of their own which hopefully will come back to bite them .... they've whipped up ordinary people to vote against their own interests, surely that's worse ?[/quote]
I genuinely have no idea but at the moment Labour seems like a middle class/student activists group. At the last election Corbyn spoke a lot about benefits but I can’t remember him speaking about jobs. (He maybe did it that’s the overall impression I got)

@chomalungma

TBH - I hope that the Conservatives can do something for the communities that voted for them.

I hope that Brexit brings them opportunities. Investment. Jobs.

So do I. And it would make me have a modicum of respect for a government I detest. But words are cheap. So easy now for them to do nothing and blame Covid and the EU for the lack of action at election time.

@chomalungma absolutely agree. Loads voted in good faith. To let them down would be criminal. If the pandemic hadn't happened, who knows what would have happened, what type of investment would have made its way up here. There is investment, we've had several huge warehouses built locally supplying Amazon and Lidl, which is good but how many of the jobs created are well paid permanent ones I don't know. Trouble is the whole infrastructure up here is crumbling, schools, roads, prisons, barely any libraries, people get more irate about immigrants and the EU, it's like their priorities have shifted.
Who knows with this government...Part of me fears they are just your typical free market obsessives, dying to make a quick buck, maybe not with anarchist cummings at the helm...

I've seen previously tribal anti-tories now transformed into tribal pro-Brexit Johnsonian tories for whom he can do no wrong. It seems Brexit is the prism through which all politics is viewed. There's some powerful magic involved, possibly the same psychological well on which populists draw?

There seems to be a curious lack of memory - The number of times I was told 'you must be a complete idiot if you think the German car manufacturers would let Frau Merkel not give the UK everything it wants' and all the Youtube videos I was shown then becomes 'the easiest deal' now becomes 'that evil EU are stopping us...'

I asked about the apparent conflict between wanting full access to the Single Market and wanting the freedom to strike trade deals with USA with different standards - I understand the EU professionally a little and I wasn't surprised with the difficulties around Northern Ireland because it seems to fall out of the Single Market issue.

Even the tactics of bringing into question breaking the withdrawal agreement when further negotiations with the EU and with other countries seem just to be viewed as 'standing up to Johnny Foreigner' and Johnson's 'No Sovereign country could agree to'. The psychology is genuinely interesting to me.

It touches on this and another thread but I find it interesting the same people who abhorred the voluntary sharing of sovereignty within the EU from which the UK could withdraw hate the idea of Scotland leaving the UK union voluntarily and love the British Empire's involuntary subjugation of millions/billions.

Covid has given the Conservatives a 'get out clause ' when ( or if) it all goes wrong over Brexit. We font know yet how that will pan out.
An historian will have a field day with the last four years of political history which has been so turbulent.