To despair that people still vote Tory given their track record and outright dishonesty?

[flashbac]

I don't get it. Its depressing. We deserve better than this surely? Why give them the green light? What kind of society do we want? One where liars get our approval?

I was going to say that about the media too. The daily mail, telegraph etc all have these amazing pro Boris stories. It’s just a PR exercise getting him elected. That’s why Boris had so many media people in his closet team.

If you had the daily mail saying ‘what a decent man starmmer is’ the sheep would vote for him too

Hedge - you are doing it again. Making the fatal error of assuming that people who vote Tory don’t know what they are doing and are being ‘controlled’.

You think Starmer is bad? If Boris was put on here in AIBU with his relationship record of cheating in all his relationships and even a lack of acknowledgement for one of his many children he would be vilified, he’s a total liar as you have to be when your a serial adulterer.
But yes Keir is the bad one! You’ve given me a good laugh if nothing else

It is not so much that Stamer and Corbyn live in London and own a house in a rich area and that Corbyn went to a private prep school and that Stamer is a lawyer who wet to a state grammar in Surrey now private and Oxford. It is that they are that from that London bubble of privileged people. It is a mind set more than the schooling issue (and I would imagine there was fierce competition for Stamer's state school grammar place in the 11 plus and Eton is very very hard to pass to get into - most people who try fail (other than Prince Harry who is a special case) and go to a less academic boarding school.

It is a mind set issue. Stamer does not appear to understand nor agree with ordinary working class people of the North. Stamer will be surrounded by people saying 1. environment first and foremost as our children need a planet on which to live 2. BLM - nothing as important as the 3% of the UK who are not white, never mind the millions and millions of deprived white who would adore to be black in London with all those opportunities at London state schools (plus trans and other weird issues Labour has convinced itself are really important to most people 3. That working class people are stupid because they believe XYZ eg that their local school is very full because of the 16m extra people we have in the UK some of whom are immigrants, since I was born or because they voted brexit (I voted remain but I can certainly understand the opposite view and we remainers lost so that's it move on...)

Stamer waving a few flags whilst gritting his teeth is not going to cut it.
And much else.

Xenia - so you’ll be an idiot and vote for the very people who put those inequalities there in the first place!

Don’t you understand? Boris LAUGHING at you. How has his policies actually improved your life?

Honestly? People. Don’t. Care.

Despite the reports of social inequality and all the handwringing, a lot of supposedly natural Labour voters are doing just fine under the Tories. They live in parts of the country where property prices are low, so if they have a job they can usually buy a house, but a decent car or two, go on holiday a couple of times a year. They don’t feel poor.

Ever read Things Can Only Get Better? Very funny account of John O’Farrells years as a Labour activist through the Thatcher years, leading up to the election of Tony Blair. Read the chapter where where he gets a summer job on a building site and the Thatcher-loving bricked that he worked with: that will tell you everything you need to know about why Labour is stuffed with the manual working classes now.

@Moonstone1234

Hedge - you are doing it again. Making the fatal error of assuming that people who vote Tory don’t know what they are doing and are being ‘controlled’.

Yes because I'm sure the massively deprived areas around me are going to massively benefit from the Tory council they just voted in. Replacing the bankrupt and morally corrupt Tory council we had before

I was watching the news and a report from Yorkshire about how a conservative mayor has bought in investment to the area. He has done what is needed for the people of the area so of course that shows that conservative policies are working for them

All this the Tories don’t care for anyone but their own is such nonsense

Labour are too hung up on party politics this is what is needed working for the people getting investment into an area abs if it’s not government investment it’s private work for the people not foe what you personally stand for

Xenia - so you’ll be an idiot and vote for the very people who put those inequalities there in the first place!

That's a very naive and over-simplistic way of looking at things. France is generally a very socialist country with a generous welfare system. Their food bank use is roughly the same as ours.

Dg390

So if I have this right as a parenting site the message you and others believe we should tell children is that these two things are identically posh

I think most people have other things to think about than how ‘posh’ someone is.
Not everyone sees everything through a prism of class and varying degrees of poshness.
Maybe you need to get out more or find a hobby?

@flashbac I still don’t understand people like you who get so bitter that other people have different views that they have to make threads like this. I vote Tory because I think they do a great job. Not perfect but I don’t see how any other party could have managed the pandemic much better when it was landed on them with barely a moment’s notice. They also followed through on Brexit the best way possible.

Lastly, as proven by the elections yesterday many long held Labour seats have been lost and it seems to be because they’ve lost their way and don’t represent the people. I personally cringe at the wokeness and the champagne socialites who love to shout loudly about how great they are but don’t really do anything.

Me too OP, but what is the alternative? Starmer? More of the same, hardly an opposition party. Two horse race always. Total waste of time voting to be honest.

I despair more that so few of the electorate actually use their vote and their voice.

A tiny minority of people are engaging with politics at all. That's the real tragedy.

We've been conditioned into thinking no one is deserving of our vote.

Hartlepool epitomises what is wrong with people in the UK. Apathetic, unhappy and vote for anything that might bring change from their miserable existence. England is almost broken.

I have lifted this comment from BLT of a Guardian article.

To me this demonstrates why Labour are doing so badly in the north. They don't seem to get that the people of usually safe Labour areas have found that the party did not seem to do anything for them. They want jobs, housing and security, not so called woke policies. Why shouldn't people use their vote if they think it might bring change? It may or may not, we will have to wait and see, but the people have felt that voting Labour has not brought them what they hope for.

Or should anyone north of the Watford Gap just go along with - Well, I always vote Labour, as did me father and me grandfather afore him.

Me? I have voted Labour, Conservative, Liberal, LibDem and Green in the past so have no party axe to grind. In fact I didn't vote at all last time because I didn't feel that any party was worthy of my vote.

@Marcydarcy7867

Don’t you understand? Boris LAUGHING at you. How has his policies actually improved your life?

Assuming that people need their lives improved and saying childish things such as "Boris is laughing at you* isn't a way of getting anyone with half a brain cell to vote Labour. Do you not even have any awareness of how patronising and insulting you sound?

Neither is demonising hard working taxpayers for not paying enough tax the way to go. It simply tells people that all you will do is crate a bottomless pit of need that will never be filled.

Assuming that people need their lives improved and saying childish things such as "Boris is laughing at you isn't a way of getting anyone with half a brain cell to vote Labour. Do you not even have any awareness of how patronising and insulting you sound?*

Unfortunately many on the left feel it’s their place to educate those they deem as not as intelligent as or morally superior as themselves. This is part of the reason why the left is losing their traditional voters they are so out of touch

@Xenia

It is not so much that Stamer and Corbyn live in London and own a house in a rich area and that Corbyn went to a private prep school and that Stamer is a lawyer who wet to a state grammar in Surrey now private and Oxford. It is that they are that from that London bubble of privileged people. It is a mind set more than the schooling issue (and I would imagine there was fierce competition for Stamer's state school grammar place in the 11 plus and Eton is very very hard to pass to get into - most people who try fail (other than Prince Harry who is a special case) and go to a less academic boarding school.

It is a mind set issue. Stamer does not appear to understand nor agree with ordinary working class people of the North. Stamer will be surrounded by people saying 1. environment first and foremost as our children need a planet on which to live 2. BLM - nothing as important as the 3% of the UK who are not white, never mind the millions and millions of deprived white who would adore to be black in London with all those opportunities at London state schools (plus trans and other weird issues Labour has convinced itself are really important to most people 3. That working class people are stupid because they believe XYZ eg that their local school is very full because of the 16m extra people we have in the UK some of whom are immigrants, since I was born or because they voted brexit (I voted remain but I can certainly understand the opposite view and we remainers lost so that's it move on...)

Stamer waving a few flags whilst gritting his teeth is not going to cut it.
And much else.

Good point about the privileged London bubble Xenia. There's me in Scotland, did in fact live in a council house with a disabled father for a few years before getting shipped off to relatives abroad, and I know quite a few people who were at Eton. My ex boyfriend's father went to Eton. I know lots of people who have been to Oxford and Cambridge. They're all pretty friendly. Equally, I will shut down anyone trying to be snooty with me, whatever background they come from.

But someone like Jeremy corbyn who basically failed his degree and has hardly held down a proper job, or Gordon brown, with his 14 years of being a student before he went into politics and his complete disinterest in the partial closure of a brand new hospital in his constituency because it was built by a Conservative government, or Surrey landowner Keir Starmer with his overly careful and dispassionate politics (who is apparently going to move up north to address this) - not so much. And certainly not woke lovies preaching to me on politics.

I think one of the most overused phrases in politics in the last 10 years has been “hard working taxpayer”. It has insidiously divided us into bands of deserving and undeserving. The public sector don’t usually earn as much for equivalent jobs in the private sector, but the insinuation is that is because they are not “hard working”. Those who claim benefits do so because “they’re not hard working”, etc.

You only have to look at footballers and nurses (and even our lazy arse PM) to see that there is absolutely zero correlation for the most part between how hard someone works and how much they earn. But the Tories have cleverly made woven it into our vocabulary to once again demonise those who rely on others for an adequate standard of living.

If Boris Johnson is laughing at the people in Hartlepool and the other ' red wall ' seats they took in 2019 , then they clearly don't care that much as they were happy to vote for the conservative candidate Jill Mortimer on Thursday and believed in her values and whatever she stood for. If I were a Labour activist I would go and visit a few of the voters and ask they why they preferred her to the Labour candidate rather than sit back and make insults.

@dannydyerismydad

I despair more that so few of the electorate actually use their vote and their voice.

A tiny minority of people are engaging with politics at all. That's the real tragedy.

We've been conditioned into thinking no one is deserving of our vote.

This is really patronising as well, maybe it's true that not many people are engaged in politics but it's understandable, given how childish, petty and corrupt so many politicians are. Watching PMQs on a Wednesday is a depressing experience and enough to put anyone off.

As for being conditioned to believing no one is deserving of our votes? I haven't been conditioned into believing this at all- I have come to my own conclusion that none of that parties deserve my vote- I would never vote Tory and I won't vote for Labour whilst they are such an appalling opposition- time and time again they won't listen to their traditional voters, and they do nothing to try to change and appeal to a broader range of the electorate. Until they abandon trying to be so woke and stand up for women's sex based rights I won't consider voting for then. We have such a corrupt, incompetent government- it would be easy for any half decent opposition to get elected ahead of them but that isn't what we have. Please don't tell me I'm disinterested in politics or that I have been 'conditioned' in any way.

Seems to me that people don't vote Labour because they don't like being told: "Vote for us, you bigoted racist idiot!"

@coronabeer

Seems to me that people don't vote Labour because they don't like being told: "Vote for us, you bigoted racist idiot!"

Which seems like a lot of English voters are, this current incarnation of the Tory party is nothing more than BluKip, Corbyn was accused of being a populist yet we have a populist PM willing to peddle any old bullshit as long as they dont have to encact any of it

I keep seeing woke used as an insult on this board and Ive started to realise I dont know what posters mean by it, I know the original use of woke but is use on MN confuses me, would some one please explain it to me because its starting to sound like being anti woke means you want to engage in some type of bigoted rant if it wasnt for the 'woke' brigade stopping you

@OldScrappyAndHungry

I think one of the most overused phrases in politics in the last 10 years has been “hard working taxpayer”. It has insidiously divided us into bands of deserving and undeserving. The public sector don’t usually earn as much for equivalent jobs in the private sector, but the insinuation is that is because they are not “hard working”. Those who claim benefits do so because “they’re not hard working”, etc.

You only have to look at footballers and nurses (and even our lazy arse PM) to see that there is absolutely zero correlation for the most part between how hard someone works and how much they earn. But the Tories have cleverly made woven it into our vocabulary to once again demonise those who rely on others for an adequate standard of living.

Again, I don't think criticising people for describing themselves as a hard working taxpayer is never going to be a vote winner for anyone other than the most gullible and easily led.