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.

@MangyInseam the immigration process is difficult/expensive for most and on that basis, the whole world would not immigrate here... We take in far fewer asylum seekers than our European neighbours and I have just outlined the fees required for workers to get long term residency here. Fees of £10k means that generally the people who tend to immigrate here from outside the EU (other than asylum seekers/family members) either earn a lot or really want to be here.

There seems to be this idea that anyone who doesn't vote Tory is some kind of massive lefty who thinks we should have unfettered immigration and thinks everyone has a right to do sweet fa and get tons of benefits. I think none of those things- and nor do many centre left voters. I believe in a strong private sector, a strong public sector and good social support for those that genuinely need it and a tough stance on those who are taking the piss year in and year out. However you can't sit there and say it's all the fault of labour- the Tory's have been in power 12 years!! Where's the strong programmes of free modern skills training for able bodied long term , unemployed - where was leadership pre covid for making many jobs far more flexible, where's the childcare support for helping families with 1-3 year olds with childcare-- some of these things make a huge difference but the Tory's were too frightened of stating they needed tax rises to cover it off or actually bring in laws about non Dom or corporation tax amongst big multi nationals doing vast amounts of business , but paying tax elsewhere. Worst of the lot though is Brexit. Basically killing off business in farming, fishing and anyone with decent international mail order and vastly reducing GDP. When someone on twitter states they are pro Brexit if I click on them , they are usually have a very UK centric job that's not really affected in an obvious way or are rich elite. I cannot vote for a party that actually originated this and lied to people about its benefits purely in self interest , regardless of whether the population that actually voted for it voted slightly that way.

Differences in the economic profile of different areas has always spurred economic migration, be it across small areas or across oceans.

However, traditionally, going back even to the middle ages in places like the UK, people overall moved a lot less, and actually quite a lot of the labour force wasn't even allowed to move, which of course we would not accept today on the basis of individual movement rights within nations.

It was the rise of industrialization and changes in the early 20th century that created a much more mobile population, more like what we know today. But it's really important to understand that the mobile workforce has been something that, more than anyone, is beneficial for capitalists, the people who own big businesses. For much the same reason the elite tend to favour free worldwide movement of capital in the banking system, they also tend to push for laws and social structures that make for a mobile workforce - one that can be redeployed and retrained at will.

This strongly advantages the elite, but it is much less of a clear benefit for the workers. It tends to leave their communities more hollowed out, and also it means that workers from less economically successful regions will migrate into their communities. It can as a result of both these things leave workers and their communities more dependent on help from the state because their communities are less self-sustaining - and that is both in the communities with work and those without.

This is why, traditionally, the labour movement and the Labour Party was always very concerned with the movement of Labour. It was a major reason for EU skepticism in the LP historically. The move to being not only pro-EU, but actually denigrating those who aren't, and saying they aren't fit to vote Labour, is a major change, almost an about face. And it should not surprise anyone that for wc people it looks like they are being spit upon for maintaining the exact same concerns that relate to their own economic and community success that they always have.

People can't always articulate it but it has left a bitterness that it will be difficult for many people to forgive, and it affects how they see the LP on almost any issue.

This is not really relevant when people have the impression that what is being advocated is, at least theoretically, open borders. The LP needs to be able to articulate what their vision is to people clearly. What is the end point, or how do they see the situation in 50 years? How many people can they see living in the UK?

@MangyInseam it isn't just a one way route into the UK. Britons do frequently emigrate and I once read a stat that more Britons leave than the number of immigrants coming in. Also we have an ageing population. Btw the main reason why our birthrate is higher than our European counterparts is because immigrants tend to have more children than natives. In view of the ageing population, I don't view higher immigration as a significant problem. It is probably more ecological than trying to have more babies. If you look at places like Scotland it is pretty sparsely populated.

What is tricky in the UK is our planning permission laws (which stifle house building) and our expectation of US style taxes for Scandinavian services.

Re: discouraging second homes
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-politics-60575264
Wales has introduced laws to allow Councils to charge 300% premium on Council tax (so up to 4x standard Council tax I believe). They should keep raising it and other areas (Devon/Cornwall/London/national parks) should join them.

The number of second homes (empty homes - not rentals) would plummet if they came with a grand or two of Council tax bill every month and the extra money could be put into providing homes for people to live in (whether rented or for sale).

The second home owners in the article saying they can’t afford the additional Council tax - that’s exactly the point - sell up!

Empty second homes are immoral when there aren’t enough homes for people to actually live in. People buying several homes in order for some to be empty do so at a huge societal cost and they should pay the price of their selfishness.

We rent out our house (permanently to a family) and I would also never turn it into air b&b whatever money was on the table. Air b&b is also destroying communities. It needs to be regulated by requiring planning consent which should be withheld in residential areas.

If I ever had the money for a second home or to leave our home empty I would not because it is immoral. (I am not talking about buy to lets which provide a home for a family but empty homes). If you want to have regular holidays in an area buy a designated lodge/caravan on a holiday site not a building meant to provide a permanent home at the expense of local people. But some people won’t make this ethical choice for themselves and it needs to be regulared through taxation or law or both.

Sorry if off topic but if someone could actually offer to sort out housing I would be listening whether red or blue.

Lack of housing is destroying lives/communities and aspirations.

IMmigration issues are oly going to get worse in the next 50 years. There is likely to be mass environmental movement.

In any case it really doesn't matter what you and I think. People don't trust the LP to give straight answers. Not because they are trying to pull one over, as they might expect from the Tories, but because they think the LP is trying to push an ideological agenda. They don't like that and that affects the LP at the ballot box. If they want to get votes they need to figure it out.

I watched the programme Blair and Brown: The New Labour Revolution. In it Blair said that he didn't agree with the Tory party but he recognised the fact that many of the electorate thought of them as the party of aspiration. And that's they have continual appeal. He said he tried to replicate that in the Labour Party but felt it never really stuck.

@Winter2020 I agree with you about second homes. The majority of people who leave homes empty in London don't live in the UK, they treat it as a bank account in the sky. Increasing council tax would not deter them, they consider it a pittance. Result of low interest rates I suppose. You could ban non residents from buying homes here like new Zealand but it doesn't seem to have helped much, their house prices have grown more than the UK over the past few years.

Housing is a global problem..the best solution I have seen is in my home country Singapore (the state building subsidized housing to sell to citizens hence 89% home ownership rate) but that took years to implement and the state owns 90% of land. No easy solutions I am afraid and definitely can't leave it to the private sector.

But definitely more social housing would probably help

Trying to see the bigger picture, I suspect that in relatively recent times, the party with the most sophisticated 'spin doctors' get voted into power.

Lots of people praising the Tories for 'knowing what a woman is'. Giving the tories their vote on the basis of this single issue.

And yet, and yet, the legislation which has allowed the accused in criminal cases to self id their gender, so that we have a verdict recorded as 'she was accused and convicted of rape' followed by a sentenced of incarceration in a women's prison

all happened under Tory rule. And continues under Boris, even if he says he knows what a woman is.

He said 'guidance and the rules were followed at all times* and look how that turned out.

I don't see how that means we can trust the Tories as a whole to support women's rights. I don't have a solution, as I don't trust Labour, or the LibDems either.

I would like to see proportional representation so that everyone's vote mattered. I still don't know for whom I would vote. In my current constituency, the sitting Tory's majority is ten times the total of other votes, so it's a bit of an uphill battle.

1. You have no idea whether the campaigns for Brexit influenced voters' choices, nor do you have the metrics to use as evidence. I would hazard an educated guess the reasons for Brexit carry inter-generational deep-seated motivations. The reasons are varied, a tad more nuanced than self-interest.
2. Nor are you, because of a global pandemic able to separate the economic effects of Brexit from the existential pandemic.

It's just another uneducated thinly veiled attack, which is another reason for the political status quo.

And as for Twitter, with its, rainbow, and Ukraine flags, please give me strength. The postulated virtue signaling makes one want to vomit.

@Crikeyalmighty
“There seems to be this idea that anyone who doesn't vote Tory is some kind of massive lefty who thinks we should have unfettered immigration and thinks everyone has a right to do sweet fa and get tons of benefits”

How about we agree that neither Conservative nor Labour voters fall into simplistic stereotypes? That in itself seems quite an achievement for this thread.

It seems to me that the Tory/Labour divide of 70+ years ago is completely irrelevant to todays politics where the vast majority of voters are pretty centre e.g. almost all voters want public services and welfare provision and actually the differences are much more in the detail.

The voting Conservative/Labour question and closed minds take up valuable debating that could be put into discussion of actual policy on the issues that matter today.

I think both Conservative and Labour voters actually have a lot in common e.g. on this thread alone both Conservative and Labour voters saying they want good support for people on benefits but not a blank cheque that removes incentives to work. Both sides have said that here.

@caringcarer

Conservative party have more traditional values…. believe in Brexit, so the UK can trade independently of rest of EU block. This means many decisions like purchasing Covid vaccines can be done more quickly as don't have to wait for 27 other countries to agree before anything can be done.

This illustrates exactly what I mean about Tory 'spin' currently outsmarting TVs other parties.

No country in the EU had to wait for the others to make a decision before anything could be done.

The UK went ahead, they could easily have done with within the EU

Many EU countries did move together. Their vaccine programme started after the UK's but in percentage of the public fully vaccinated they caught up the UK

In absolute numbers of deaths, the UK did not do such a great job, either.

The government chooses the stats they refer to very carefully and then repeat them over and over again. Unless you really have good research skills and an understanding of the area, it's easy to be misled.

The Tories are also very good at covering bad news. Time and again the PM does the dead cat manoeuvre and everyone gets distracted by 'whatever dead cat they flung on the table '

Most people don't spend that much time on politics. They start from a position so eloquently set out by @BuanoKubiamVej
and have very limited bandwidth to follow individual issues.

The Tories do currently seem to have the edge on keeping many people inside just enough.

Who would have thoughts that an accomplished lier would have been so successful ?

@Winter2020 I honestly dont understand the obsession with benefit claimants. Aren't the vast majority of people claiming UC in work or single mums who can't afford childcare? Other than people like my SIL but you could argue that she has mental health problems/undiagnosed disability. I do not know how people survive on benefits, the idea that people choose it is ridiculous to me.

You have no idea whether the campaigns for Brexit influenced voters' choices, nor do you have the metrics to use as evidence. I would hazard an educated guess the reasons for Brexit carry inter-generational deep-seated motivations. The reasons are varied, a tad more nuanced than self-interest

But we do. That £350 million for the NHS on the bus was taken at face value by thousands of people. They voted for Brexit up in Sunderland despite having very few immigrants and their major employer warning them it was like turkeys voting for Christmas.

My brother in law is a diehard Tory.
According to him the other parties would bankrupt the country and stifle entrepreneurship.

Ah, so what about the other 17 million.

@desiringonlychild2022
Quote: "@Winter2020 I honestly dont understand the obsession with benefit claimants. Aren't the vast majority of people claiming UC in work or single mums who can't afford childcare? Other than people like my SIL but you could argue that she has mental health problems/undiagnosed disability. I do not know how people survive on benefits, the idea that people choose it is ridiculous to me."

I expect you earn a lot more than benefit claimants then - you have said you don't know how people survive on benefits. So I expect you feel you have little in common with benefits claimants.

I (and many many others I am sure) have had my partner in the past working 6/7 days running himself into a breakdown while I was a stay at home mum to a young child (with no entitlement to claim anything which is fine) but seeing on online benefit calculators that if we earned any less it would be given to us because no family would be expected to live on less. Why should one family work themselves to the point of illness and another be given or made up to the same. Work should pay. That's why the "obsession" with benefits. Working yourself silly shouldn't pay the same as doing fuck all for a family without disabilities.

This was around 2014 so I can only hope that the system has improved and work does pay.

Yes lots of people survive on what people get on benefits - when they are working!

@Winter2020 was he on minimum wage? How can he be working all those hours and for it to be less? I am not sure what it is for a family of 3 but my SIL gets a few hundred pounds. Absolute pittance. If it wasn't the fact she is living rent free and her mum pays for all food, bills, clothes etc etc, she would not be able to survive..hence it is a concern what happens once my MIL needs to go to a care home and the house needs to be sold.

desiringonlychild2022
@Winter2020 was he on minimum wage? How can he be working all those hours and for it to be less?

Full time and reasonably newly qualified primary school teacher with stay at home partner with small child.

At a guess from memory I'd say his full time wage was about 22k at the time. I'm not even saying his wage was low but if it had been lower e.g. work 9-5 in an office for 18k at the time - we would have been given the difference in top ups.

When you are talking about non working families the "pittance" of benefits involves most rent being paid, most Council tax paid - that's most of what people spend their wages on paid before disposable income. Then free prescriptions, free school meals - no commuting costs/might not need a car. More leisure time.

I'm not particularly saying and don't think that people on benefits get a lot but things are also tough for a lot of working people and many work bloody hard to be very little better off.

I think the people that have it really tough (benefits wise) are single adults. A lot extea for those that have kids but for single adults it's very tight. Hard for single income (low income) working households too.

Following on from this I would love to hear that people are always now better off in work.

Does anyone work in benefits and can say?

Suspect it's like you keep the first £20 and then deducted from benefits so if you have to pay for the bus you are worse off but I would live to hear people are significantly better off in work?

I think the system is kept complicated enough that it's hard to tell. All smoke and mirrors.

@CounsellorTroi so you are the bot here, with the mechanistic responses.

Like a few PPs, I vote Tory without enthusiasm. I think they have moved round on sexual politics to be first to give the go ahead to same sex marriages. The front bench of politics looks more diverse because the Tories have had more women and more minorities than any Labour opposition. Dianne Abbott is too stupid to flutter any radar.

And, because I have worked for 48 years, and saved, I have a home and a pension, and I think I deserve what I have worked for. To elaborate a bit, DH started a company, has kept it going for 35 years and some of those years we have taken 0 from the work, while paying the staff, because we know what's important. Fewer than 10% of entrepreneur's businesses continue after the founder's retirement or death... not talking about big companies, just John's Plumbing or Jaswinder's cashflow software programme.

The big-swinging. heavy- hitting anti-capitalists here, who treat every local one-man plumbing business the same as Goldman Sachs because they seek a profit at the end of a year's work to bung something away for the pension. It's the same reason that 35,000 people a year are ready to pay a dodgy geezer a huge sum to get them into a safe country. Whatever its short-comings, and it's a long way from Paradise I agree, a relatively free wheeling capitalist economy tends to make more money for more people, So on balance, I am just a Tory.

@Winter2020

It is very simple really. If you receive UC, you have a work allowance ie a amount you can earn without your benefits being reduced. Once you hit the work allowance, you lose 55p for every pound (very recently was 63p)

The first £344 is untouched if you are getting housing costs as part of your Universal Credit award, or housing costs from the Local Authority because you are in temporary accommodation
The first £573 is untouched if you do not receive housing support

I will definitely vote for them again.
Boris has done a LOT of good which people are happily forgetting atm.
He needs to concentrate on what's happening in Europe and avoiding WW3 instead of all this crap.

Yes, he has made mistakes but he is the best man and leader for the job.

God only help us all if Keir Starman and Angela Rayner get in. Their only level of expertise is in consistent mud-slinging, not politics.

You have no idea whether the campaigns for Brexit influenced voters' choices, nor do you have the metrics to use as evidence.

Actually I think Dominic Cummings actually did really extensive research on this. He found Turkey joining the EU lie and £350 million NHS lie worked best at persuading people to vote leave. He didn't mention the single market or customs union because his research showed that the public (and most MPs) didn't have a clue what they are.