My dh and I were discussing the tory party. He really dislikes what they stand for.aibu to.ask .. .

[Chewchewaboogiw]

Ask if you.vote tory and would be planning to continue to do so.. why and what do you like about the party?in the circles we mix in no one votes tory that we know of so cant ask in real life.. but there must be many who vote this way.

The Tories like small government.
My Dp comes from a country where family is very intertwined, you have generation after generation supporting financially and with medical needs.
I do agree that British families have slowly been destroyed, the mechanism for this is hotly debated.
The problem with any public benefit in kind is that this benefit in kind will then be used and eventually replace supporting oneself. I know the Tories feel the government should be hands-off, preferring a carrot and stick to encourage people to make better choices.
Universal Credit is a prime example, I just think the administration, in the beginning, could've been handled better, the transition from Tax-Working credits was appalling.
I don't think it works perfectly in practice but I do broadly agree with the idea. It's a long complex argument with public vs private ownership of assets and behavior.
If you own something who should benefit?
If you do something foolish who bares the cost?
Blah, blah.

I have a degree in politics-economics it's covered heavily in the modules.

Traditionally, Conservative governments believe in cutting back the power of the state which is obviously a good thing because anything the state provides/interferes in is generally woeful (eg NHS, railways back in the day).
Unfortunately, the current Govt somewhat ruined this in the pandemic by restricting people's civil liberties too much & for too long. At least they are now starting to redeem themselves by dropping all Covid rules, so there may be some hope.....

@ILoveAllRainbowsx in terms of per capita income, we are number 20. There are parts of the UK poorer than Bulgaria. A bit embarrassing for a former empire.

I am lucky enough to live in one of the richer parts but the UK does not consist solely of London and the SE..If we made London and the SE and perhaps Bristol into 1 country and left the rest to fend for themselves (Scotland would be delighted), maybe we would be a rich country but I don't agree with that!

@lonelyapple

All the parties are the same. There is very little difference between them these days. They are just there to put on a veneer that we have democracy to keep the plebs quiet. In reality they all now answer to rich donors and multinationals who dictate policy and the wellbeing and concerns of the electorate is irrelevant.

⬆️⬆️That is it precisely. Democracy is an illusion and ideology is redundant

It's very depressing the number of replies on this thread that are actually labour voters saying "people vote tory because they are rich and want to hang onto their wealth" or even "because they are racist". No willingness to engage in discussion or consider other view points at all. Pretty much no one that is saying they do vote Tory has said either of those things.

On a practical level Labour has offered no policies or solutions over the last few years. It doesn't even know it's own position so how can anyone else? All we do know is that after the Conservatives have taken an action Labour will tell them it is wrong.

The long held belief that "eventually you run out of other people's money". For example opposing limiting what non families can get in benefits to what the average family earns. Is it really acceptable to create a situation where you can live a more affluent life on benefits than in work? It also sets people up to be unable to work as they need to earn 40k to make it add up to go to work. I want a benefit system that looks after people that can't work or passing through hard times properly but we can't afford that if we have generations of lifestyle benefit claimants.

How many lefties really are lefties? Do they really believe in the redustribution of wealth - enough so that they won't be leaving their home to their kids? Most people have worked for their home and are desperate for it to help their kids. A 100% inheritance tax as per leftie ideologu would see the labour party an empty room. Only people who would support this are people with nothing to leave and quite a lot of people have quite a lot to leave.

The care/NHS crisis and housing crisis are making or breaking our society but they don't fall on party political lines.

We all want a first class health and care service - and no longer want to care for relatives- but don't want to pay the massive contributions needed.

We need to ban second and holiday homes and have massive social housebuilding but no party has the will or the mandate to do it. High house prices /high rents underpin so many of our daily problems in cost of living and quality of life.

Traditional party politics is to some extent a distraction from the pressing issues of today.

Nothing about the Tories appeal to me - and I am wealthy. They are not my party. What this morally bankrupt PM and his sycophantic party members are doing to the detriment of the majority of the people of the UK is unconscionable.
This party is led by a PM who is happy to lie to Parliament, has a track record of lying in previous jobs and personal relationships and who has resisted many attempts to be scrutinised about his leadership, decisions and policies on TV while other parties leaders were.
Unable to find his notes or see the autocue, Johnson treated the Captains of British Industry to a speech about Peppa Pig! A more embarrassing PM it's hard to imagine.

@Winter2020 actually there are people in this world who don't want to rely on their inheritance. My parents own many properties (their primary home is worth £5 million) but I don't care if I don't inherit anything. It is up to each generation to pay its way.

But at the same time, what is inflating the housing crisis is millenials who get left hundreds of thousands so your quality of life has less to do with your income. I don't know anyone but me and DH who managed to buy a property in London without family help. Is that a fair society? Plus when I said we didn't have help, that exclude free rent for 3 years. In short I don't know anyone who rented privately and had no money from parents to buy property..

It would be fairer if work was taxed less, but inheritances and assets taxed more. If you want to buy a home, you shoulf work for it. At the same time, the government should build subsidized homes for the middle income so they too can have a shot at home ownership and not have to compete with BTL landlords or rich investors.

"Generations of workless/ benefits as a lifestyle choice" is just a myth that won't die

As a lifelong Labour voter, the child of lifelong Labour voters, they have alienated me too far. I always said hell would freeze over before I voted Tory, but it's getting chilly down there right now.

Labour don't give a shiny shit about me, they are a party of identity obsessed, policy infatuated monkeys. I'm a middle aged mum of 3, we have a good household income, a nice home and are pretty stable. I was a w/c single mum, with piss all, mostly under the Cs. It wasn't easy, but do I believe the current LP would have made it easier? Nope. I'm a dull as dishwater 40 something straight white woman. I don't exist except as someone to sneer at and blame for all the ills they see as posh lefty white boys who pretend to be socially conscious but are actually just gleefully in love with identity politics as it legitimises their misogynistic, ageist bullshit. They don't care about my elderly parents in their dotage, my elderly mil struggling with her health in a council house. Their sneery disdain for brexiteers (I'm a remainer) and inability to empathise with anyone not fitting into their hierarchy of oppression sickens me.

All the posters scoffing at the fact that Boris et al will gain votes for knowing what a woman is, well. Up to you. You have your choice. I'll make mine for my rights, my mums, my DDs, thanks. We might be disproportionately affected by austerity and many other TP policies, but once we no longer exist under Labour that is the end. #SexMatters

Apart from specific policies it seems like your question is what are the larger framework that they have and maybe also how is it different from Labour.

It can be useful I think to take something of a historical approach to that question - it's changed over the years, as have the other parties, but there is an understandable progression.

Historically you can to some extent think of conservatives as representing landowners and people tied to the land. They tended to see society as a nested set of relations of different classes that interacted and worked in related but different roles. They tended to be localist, interested in protection of local production, agriculture, and a certain kind of national self-sufficiency. They think that socially communities should be deep rooted, sustainable, and interconnected.

The rise of liberalism tended on the other hand to anti-regulation, pro-business, pro-movement. And while in some ways it was quite happy with social mobility and busting up the class system, it also was quite happy with the people who rose to the top exploiting those who didn't. Do or die.

The labour movement to some extent opposed conservatism, but mainly it opposed liberalism. In the UK there were over the years more localist approaches but also more marxist ones. It tended to see the conservative social hierarchies as ignoring or exploiting workers and wanted to make sure that workers, who were not landowners, had a real voice. Tt was more urban in some ways than conservatism due to social changes. But it really saw liberalism as purposefully exploitative. It felt that social hierarchies or classes needed protection against business owners and that while class mobility was great it did not help those who remained workers. It also tended to be more rooted in community than liberals, and valued the same kinds of strong community structures as conservatives.

Fast forward to modern times, and you still have some of that background at work in the parties. However both ethe Tories and Labour have been very influenced, since the late70s/early 80s, by liberalism. The Tories especially economic liberalism, while they've tended to remain more socially conservative. Labour has also become largely economically liberal but overlaid with a kind of social transfer approach to mitigate some of the effects of that (which is a little different than the older conservative and labour approaches,) and they have become extremely socially liberal. There have, in very recent years, been some noises among conservative thinkers, and in conservative parties worldwide, been some indication of a return to some of their earlier, more protectionist, economic approaches.

One of the big differences in the population is what has sometimes been called the "somewheres" and the "anywheres". They anywhere people are the ones who tend to see themselves more as citizens of the world, they are less likely to have strong roots in one place, they are likely to move around for work a lot in good jobs, including internationally. The somewheres have deep roots, they stay closer to home or if they follow work they maintain a base at home, they see those solid community relationships as important to their function as families, they value family and community self-sufficience.

Working class somewheres used to be Blue Labour. but now they tend to vote conservative.

@desiringonlychild2022
Sorry if I am sceptical that you will renounce your multi million pound inheritance on ideological grounds.

House prices are supply and demand. If there were excess properties compared to the amount needed and none allowed to be left long term empty then house prices would be lower whatever wealth was sloshing around. The most desirable homes might still cost ££££ but with an excess amount of standard homes they would be affordable.

Affordable social housing should be available to all - and not for sale.

Current policies encourage private landlords to sell up without providing social landlord alternatived meaning the rental market is causing a crisis as people can't find anywhere to rent in their communities.

I don’t think anyone can deny that the Tories have behaved like they are at war with disabled people for the last 12 years. They get away with it because it’s a minority group.

Love the 'somewheres and anywheres', reference ala David Goodhart.

Tbh it'll go over most people's heads.
Just to note that families are great wealth generators, I know people pour scorn on the idea of wealth and families in the traditional hierarchical structure. However, it is unbelievably successful in concentrating and preserving wealth. Most of the top companies are family-owned.

I certainly agree that age can change your perspective on the efficacy of certain approaches.

I know that when I was younger I did not think that socialising certain community functions could possibly be harmful. I now realize that it's less clear cut, if the state takes over certain functions it can actually make it very difficult for people to opt out of that even if they want to, and it can mean communities can actually lose the capacity to do certain things.

A simple example being state childcare - it has some real advantages, but it also means that it can become financially too much of a loss for families to have a parent home instead (especially if things like home prices adjust in response.) But also, the state cannot fill all the roles that non-working community members taking care of children used to, as we found out with covid. So gaps develop.

This can be replicated in a lot of different settings and it particularly has negative effects those who work but are on lower incomes.

@Winter2020 owner occupied government housing works quite well in Singapore, 89% home ownership..people don't feel like they are living in a sink estate filled with unemployed and poor people, so take pride in their area and in keeping it clean. Also a lot of pressure on government to upgrade it as the middle classes live there too or have kids that live there. You generally aren't allowed to rent it out unless you lived there for 5 years.and it's only for sale to citizens (in family units or singles35 and above).

It wouldn't be affordable even if there was excess homes. Cos it would be too easy for individuals to buy homes in their indivifual names and their kids' names. I know someone who bought a BTL property using their adult child's name so that qualified for first time buyer discount (adult child lived in it for a while I think). You can't really ban second homes, thats why you either build affordable homes for people below a certain income threshold (and accept that all other homes are going to be crazy prices and meant for the rich) or you have high wealth taxes to prevent property hoarding. I mean there are more bedrooms than people in London. Yet there is a housing crisis. Cos there are lots of singles living alone in large homes (and who can blame them, there aren't very attractive alternatives for them to downsize to).

*FTB stamp duty discount!

@MangyInseam honestly with a divorce rate of 50%, I would not encourage any woman to be a stay at home mum. I would prefer a system where grandparents looked after kids and that was how I was raised but many people don't have that option due to living far away from family.

People in the past used to survive on 1 income, but their lives were a lot simpler. They wouldn't have a foreign holiday every year or the pile of Christmas presents that kids nowadays have. I don't think it's a bad thing, I think times and societies change. The UK is a developed economy generally in developed countries, you expect to pay more tax to cover more services i.e. state childcare and healthcare. In developing countries, you expect to save more of your income so that you can cover all emergencies and education and healthcare needs. In China , for example, the savings rate is 50%. But then the services have to be cheap enough to merit saving. In UK, you can save all you like and you would still not be able to save for a grandma's heart transplant even if you never paid a penny of tax.

I do think immigration is an issue for Labour. One where they aren't helping themselves. They are too ready to say too little so people who basically think any border control is racist xenophobia will be placated.

I don't think the party really believes that at all, but they won't acknowledge the elephant clearly, which is that as things are in the world right now, if there were open borders there could be an endless stream of people who would want to settle in the UK. And there is not the infratructure to house them or care for them, there isn't the social infrastructure either, and it's very arguable that environmentally speaking there isn't the space.

So the question clearly becomes, how do you manage that, what do they see immigration looking like over the years, what do they see the country looking like. How do they see people becoming integrated? How many people should there be? How many people can fit?

People don't feel like Labour will answer those questions clearly, and so they suspect the LP wants to keep their views quiet because they will be unpalatable. And they don't like it when asking the question gets them accused of bigotry.

Piles of presents and overseas holidays, to my mind, are not an environmentally sustainable approach.

But one thing that is interesting is that attitudes to marriage correspond to voting more than a lot of people think. It's really common among conservative voters to point out that one of the biggest predictors of success, including financially, is having a two parent family. So they want taxation, benefits, etc that tend to support families staying together as much as possible (and no that does not mean they think people should stay with abusers) and often also favour divorce laws that protect women who stayed home. They see the kinds of benefits systems that became popular in the 60s and 70s as actually creating a lot of poverty by disincentivising marriage and incentivising out of wedlock pregnancies - and there are economists who will make that argument, it's not just judgy asshats.

The assumption that it is great to have a mobile workforce is one that is certainly part of the problem, with the break up of extended families, but Labour is at least as wedded to that as the Tories. Movement of Labour was one of the major issues with Brexit, one which Labour repudiated very strongly despite despite the fact that it's traditionally a leftist concern.

Personally, my biggest political influence was Shumacker, who wrote Small Is Beautiful, which I would say was a profoundly leftist approach to economics and politics. It also is a perspective that is at least as well reflected in the modern Tory party as it is in Labour, even Momentum Labour.

@MangyInseam mainly cos anyone who has immigrated in the last 10 years or know someone who has know it's no walk in the park....my colleague paid £10k in fees for herself and her kids to get ILR/citizenship. How many native Britons are able to do that? I am married to a Brit but I wouldn't say it was easy and straightforward either..

For asylum seekers, it's 1000000X harder. My British friends all know it is not easy!

I genuinely have no idea who I would vote for, over the years I’ve voted for all parties in one election or another but as another poster said I’m politically homeless!

The only thing I think is good about the conservatives is the comment Boris made on female gender and through that comment he seems to understand womens rights and that we actually have a say but I can’t vote for conservatives on that one comment he made, I just don’t think I’ll bother this time 🤷‍♀️

Good points. This could shift in the near future and become a key part of policies, defence too could be seen to be more important.

Labour could find that hard to be clear on.

As an aside I’m appreciating the considered posts rather than usual berating and insults we get on these threads

@MangyInseam I am very traditional in my personal life myself which is not unusual in middle class lefties. I married my university boyfriend and would not live with a man out of wedlock. Interestingly, richer and middle class couples do not divorce 50% of the time. It is much lower. But still not uncommon.

Society has changed and I don't think you can change it back..what is done is done. I actually think the current UC system actually supports single mothers staying single which can't be intended!

And the mobile workforce is because of regional inequality. Northern graduates would not leave home if they could get good jobs in the north. A lot can't. We live 3 miles away from my MIL because she lives in London, we do not choose to move to the home counties where we can get a bigger home as we want to be close to her. Good thing we can afford it. A lot of people can't. My husband's sisters left London for a reason!

I read an interesting book about this a while ago, and it went into detail about how one side of the divide can't fathom why someone would vote the other way, and assumed that they were inherently evil etc. The book theorised that basically it comes down to your personality type and how you determine what fair means to you. To some people, fairness means that everyone should have the chance to eat the same food, get the same education and have the same opportunities. The fact that wealthier people have more of these things is abhorrent to them and inherently unfair. Others would argue that someone with greater wealth has worked hard to earn the privilege of better food etc. and feel that there endevours are well rewarded by providing their children with better education, life chances etc. and why on earth should they have to give that up, or give up a large proportion of this to supplement less industrious, less hard working and less innovative people and families.

My personal view is that this is a spectrum, and that people completely on one pole of what i've described are both extremists and that most people fit somewhere between those extremes.

Personally, I strongly believe every child should have a right to live in a heated house, have food on the table and receive an education. I also believe that people that suffer from illness should be supported until such time that they can once again support themselves. However I also strongly believe that hard work and innovation must be rewarded and taxation should not be burdensome to the point where high achievers leave the country or do not see the point in entrepreneurial risk. People that have been successful have every right to ensure their children receive a first class education if they decide to spend their money on that. So I would say that I come out as centre right, which in general terms reflects what I thought I was voting for in 2019 when I voted for the Conservatives. But that was before the most disgusting act of oppression that was the covid overreaction where my party of choice took the lead from a communist dictatorship. But thats a different story.

So in direct answer to your question OP, my suspicion is that Conservative voters probably have a slightly different idea to you of where that fairness point lies, and are unlikely in general to be evil.

I'm not sure what you are getting at with this, it doesn't seem to really relate toanything I said?