I'm sick of people from Northern England who voted tory complaining on the news

[ssd]

Suck it up. You voted for them. No one made you.

Everyone is entitled to have a moan, but seriously, WHY WHY WHY did you ever vote tory thinking they'd got your back?!?!

Um- you haven't RTT, have you?

We've sort of moved on from 'the North isn't one homogenous group' dozens of replies ago.

That's irrelevant. It's the fact these threads get started regularly in the first place. It's pathetic.

Although, I see we haven't moved in from all leave voters are working class and racist though.....

@Andante57

There needs to be a national drive to end the elitism in politics and recruit people who can apply strategies and theories that work for the good of the country, not just their own interests and those of their mates.

Freekstar what form will this national drive take?

Bit like jury service! Make it an advisory job for people that have aren’t interested in doing it as a career. We can have elected politicians but replace the House of Lords with a randomly selected “house of the general public”.Pay and expenses as an MP.

What a generalisation. I don't think you can simple say all those who voted leave are racist. That's too simple. Some of them probably are but not all.

Not only is there nothing in my post saying that everyone who voted Leave is racist, there is in fact a specific refutation to that view.

Many people on the left voted leave because that was the true Socialist position. The EU is a neo liberal economic project , hence why JC has always been anti EU. Many socialists saw that they were voting against an institution that forbid state support of industry etc. (unless they were banks...). There was also a strong remain camp on the right, led by Ken Clarke, that believed we were too entwined with the EU to leave. A Burkean perspective. There was also some genuine racists, on the right and left, who misunderstood what a vote for leave meant. Assuming it would lead to less immigration. These are complex issues and it is frustrating to see the broad brush strokes that get bandied about.

I'm sick of people chucking insults at "others".

"You're not 'being bashed', you're being asked to account as to why a north of England person in an erstwhile downtrodden, in a previously Labour strong-hold; but in a neglected, Thatcher-decimated, unemployment-ravaged', austerity-riven, 'needs-improvement' education, FSM denied area would vote Tory as a path to salvation."

No, the initial question was about "people from Northern England" who voted Tory. Not about people from deprived areas of Northern England. As if no one in the North could possibly be other than in grinding poverty.

I and many others have explained repeatedly why hard working working class people have turned away from Labour. Labour now appeals socially to a middle class metropolitan elite. Identity politics and social activism isn't generally a WC thing. Champagne socialists championing 'be kind' would be much less kind if the house next door was let to a housing association and filled with a single parent of 5 tearaway teens. Or if kids from the council estate take up more than 10 percent of their school places. Labour doesn't feel relevant to many WC people any more.

Can you not also see that your whole starting position is flawed? People in the North don't all live in crack dens of third generation unemployed people - and those who do, don't tend to vote. The North has builders, and taxi drivers, plumbers, teachers, IT people, nurses etc. It's not all that grim up North.

They didn't turn to the Tories as salvation, in my experience. They turned away from a Labour party that didn't champion WC people, skilled trades and small businesses but banged on about identity politics, wanted MC teens to go to uni for free, but didn't think to provide trade training free, wanted people to give 10 percent of their profits to the workers or stay tiny and not expand their businesses, want to sack and disbar people who suggest that loos stay single sex etc. Labour openly said gender critical people are not welcome (as did Lib Dems).

This is not the Tories' success. People think Boris is a fool. He seems to appeal more to true Tories judging by who voted him as leader. It's Labour's failure.

@MasterGland

Many people on the left voted leave because that was the true Socialist position. The EU is a neo liberal economic project , hence why JC has always been anti EU. Many socialists saw that they were voting against an institution that forbid state support of industry etc. (unless they were banks...). There was also a strong remain camp on the right, led by Ken Clarke, that believed we were too entwined with the EU to leave. A Burkean perspective. There was also some genuine racists, on the right and left, who misunderstood what a vote for leave meant. Assuming it would lead to less immigration. These are complex issues and it is frustrating to see the broad brush strokes that get bandied about.

This is a good analysis - except the bit about immigration. Of course Leaving the EU won't automatically reduce immigration, but it has already reduced the incidence of people moving to the UK from the EU. We won't know the true effects for some time - like almost everything else related to Brexit. The assumption there will be less immigration isn't necessarily incorrect - it's unproven.

Is that you Jeremy?

Where have you been to in the north OP? Curious to understand your perspective.

‘The North’ that gets lazily trotted out by the media and regurgitated on here is not the north I know.

Can’t help feel that this outrage caused by northerners voting Tory is fuelled by incredulity that the little people aren’t staying in their place. Don’t they know voting Tory is the preserve of southerners? You know...the ones with all the money and power?!

The Hovis advert view of the north is a fantasy. People do not spill out of mills when the bell goes. Yes, there’s poverty in the mix, as there is in most places. But there’s also a huge amount of entrepreneurship, even in the deprived areas. It might be jarring to your world view but ‘The North’ has many business leaders and small, medium and large business owners who are aspirational and pro-business. They are not represented by a Labour Party that likes to see ‘Northerners’ as pitiful and helpless creatures.

Whilst tying yourself in knots about how a certain group of people have acted in a certain way, you’ve still not stopped to think perhaps it’s ‘the people’ and not the behaviour that you don’t understand.

I should have expanded my point about immigration. In the North West, in particular, there has been great concern amongst the working classes about the placing of large amounts on non-EU asylum seekers in small concentrated areas that have no infrastructure to support them. Many thought a vote to leave would stop this. I don't think it will. It will probably reduce EU migration, yes. Which is a concern primarily in the East of England, Lincolnshire etc.
Being concerned about immigration and its impact is not racist. Which is what the Labour Party effectively started to tell people. The stuff bandied about on social media of immigrant consultants, nurses etc. is just one aspect of immigration and doesn't look at the full picture, such as the uneven spread of immigration across the country, lack of infrastructure in areas with high immigration, and the balance between skilled and unskilled labour.

Also the assumption that Thatcherism was universally terrible for the north. It wasn’t. For some, it was a very very good thing. Grammar school kids who grew up in council houses being able to buy their own properties, work hard, create better lives for themselves. Some working class kids of my parents’ generation did very well out of Thatcher’s government, and for many that ideology has not gone away. They were perhaps lured by New Labour but not a cat’s chance in hell they’d have voted for Corbyn and his communist cronies.

And yes @MasterGland.... frustration at the north being seen as a dumping ground for anything too in desirable for the delightful south. Toxic waste incinerators etc etc.

@Coffeeoverload

And yes *@MasterGland*.... frustration at the north being seen as a dumping ground for anything too in desirable for the delightful south. Toxic waste incinerators etc etc.

There's not an obvious nexus between that concern and voting Tory though. It's not like eg being concerned about immigration and so choosing to vote for a party who tell you lots of lies about how they're going to sort it, which is a logical enough choice if that's your biggest priority and you find what you're being told plausible.

Just dropping off the completely unnecessary information that the Hovis ad was filmed in Shaftesbury, Dorset. No dark satanic mills round there.

@Elsiebear90

I agree with you OP, I don’t understand why working class people though this government would ever look out for them.

Because the Labour Party was overtaken by middle class university students who only care about identity politics, and completely abandoned working class people who had voted Labour their entire lives.

I doubt they would vote Conservative again, but the Labour Party became a party so against the working class in the last election.

Jeremy Corbyn was a huge mistake for the Labour Party.

@Coffeeoverload

Also the assumption that Thatcherism was universally terrible for the north. It wasn’t. For some, it was a very very good thing. Grammar school kids who grew up in council houses being able to buy their own properties, work hard, create better lives for themselves. Some working class kids of my parents’ generation did very well out of Thatcher’s government, and for many that ideology has not gone away. They were perhaps lured by New Labour but not a cat’s chance in hell they’d have voted for Corbyn and his communist cronies.

Grammar schools were disappearing by the time Thatcher came to power and she saw off those that remained in all but a few counties, mainly in the south east.

Of course Thatcherism was terrible for the north. Whole mining communities decimated, generations of families unemployed. Right to buy deprived thousands of people of a decent home. Take your rose tinted glasses off, your fairy tale view of Thatcherism cuts no ice with those of us who witnessed the carnage as adults.

It beats me why people from those communities would willingly vote for more of the same.

There are too many people obsessed with ‘that London’ to the point of hysteria. They think everyone in London is rich and everything bad happening to them is the result of ‘that London’. The Tories encouraged this with talk of liberal elites i.e nasty sneery Londoners and got people to vote against their interests in order to get back at Londoners who apparently are all obsessed with identity politics are unpatriotic and look down on them. None of this is true. Boris and Rees-Mogg are far more likely to be looking down on all of us in all parts of the country than ordinary Londoners would to non Londoners.

But we are where we are now.

@NiceTwin

As a business owner in the North, it would have been financial suicide to vote Labour.

So hows that going for you now ?

I can't be the only person to have been trapped in a conversation with a neighbour standing outside his proudly owned ex council house, yes massive discount, ta, whilst complaining that his daughter and her newly acquired baby hadn't been immediately accommodated in a council house of her own . Irony bypass seems to go with the territory.

@longwayoff

I can't be the only person to have been trapped in a conversation with a neighbour standing outside his proudly owned ex council house, yes massive discount, ta, whilst complaining that his daughter and her newly acquired baby hadn't been immediately accommodated in a council house of her own . Irony bypass seems to go with the territory.

If only those sold off houses had been replaced...

I know, Vinyl, utterly shameful to have allowed housing to have be om the cash cow that it now is. For the few, not the many.

That was thatchers doing. Selling off old stock was perhaps a good idea to make way for newer, lower maintenance housing. But she ringfenced the money, which made no sense, now it’s long gone.

I’m simply giving you the viewpoint of the people I know in the north. Your response is to tell me their viewpoint is wrong. AKA still not listening.
Not all northern communities are mining communities FYI... don’t know if you’ve ever been north?

The selling off of council houses was a disgrace. A f sibling wanted to buy mums house as there was huge profit in it, I didn't let them and when mum moved it got passed onto another family. As it should be. I'm hoping it hasn't been bought as Scotland stopped the sale of council houses a while ago.

@MasterGland

As I said upthread, my family did not think “Boris was their man“. In fact, it was more of a difficult decision for them because Boris was obviously not a traditional Conservative, and what they wanted was Conservatism. They are hoping that the more Burkean wing of the party are planning on getting rid of Boris before the next election. Despite patient explanations earlier in the thread, people are still squealing that reasons for the tory swing have not been explained. They have. Some of the working class areas of the North had been/were being destroyed by progressive social policies. In general, it has been observed that the working classes regard their community as integral to their sense of self. Conversely, the middle classes usually attach their sense of self to their profession. So the middle classes are highly mobile, will move without hesitation if they think an area is “going down hill", or to get into the catchment areas of "outstanding" schools etc. The working classes were trying to protect their communities. This was the most important thing to them at the election. They are fully aware that Conservative economic policies do not benefit them, but thought Labour social policies would hurt them more. The feeling I am getting at the moment from back home is that they haven't handled the pandemic well (obviously) and that they would like to see Boris and Cummings get the old heave ho. But they can see Labour doubling down on the policies that lost them the election and they fully intend to remain Tory at the next election.

Yes, this is a really good post.

I think a lot of people miss this very basic cultural difference. There was a book, and I can't remember the title or author, about this, and he calls them the "somewheres" and the "anywheres" and lays out that this difference leads to all kinds of very different values and political choices.

So many of the things the now middle-class LP see as being helpful are really only appealing from the POV of someone who things like an "anywhere". And they don't even see the things the "somewheres" complain about. But because those attitudes are so deep and not really conscious, it's difficult for people to realise where the disconnect is.