To feel angry at Tory voters?

[Dottodo]

DF has always voted Tory. He’s very anti immigration and we will never see each other’s POV.
DHs friends are all Tory voters and hate being with them as they are all racist, xenophobic & misogynistic.
Other Tory voters I know through work or extended family members are also xenophobic and casually racist.
I’ve spoken to friends about this and they agree that the Tory voters they personally know are also racist and xenophobic.
Why is this?
Me and DH lived abroad and as we've lived as ‘foreigners’, we don’t share their views.

The 5p per litre reduction implemented by the UK in March is dwarfed by fuel tax cuts enjoyed by drivers in countries such as Germany (25.1p per litre), Italy (21.2p per litre), Portugal (16.2p per litre), the Netherlands (14.7p per litre) and Ireland (14.5p per litre). Governments in France and Spain have introduced discounts at forecourt tills worth around 15p per litre and 17p per litre respectively.

www.thenational.scot/news/20591488.fuel-tax-cut-uk-drivers-among-lowest-europe---rac/

I would have been very happy with the EFTA deal (and the costs associated with it) as proposed by Daniel Hannan, the ex MEP.

It was just that the EU negotiators took the view, not unreasonably, that you don't give up your country club membership and get to keep using the pool and gym. And then the ideologues got stuck in.

@Blossomtoes the costs of road fuel must in that case have been much higher than they were in the UK before the rebates. Because the prices were actually almost the same!

If we’re going for anecdote, we were in Malta in May. Fuel there was €1.34 a litre in every filling station on the island, it was around £1.80 here. It appears that the government there sets the price and every retailer has to sell for that price. Which seems like an excellent idea to me when prices here can vary by 10/15p a litre depending on where you fill up.

Which has to be paid for somehow. How sustainable is it?

Many economists would suggest that it is imperative to roll with the high prices so that they naturally reduce and the supply/demand situation becomes more aligned. Appreciate this is easier said than done but it is a line of thought. Same as the intervention in the 2008 recession artificially halted a recession which, from a markets perspective, needed to happen.

The EU negotiators don't decide who can join EFTA.

How sustainable is it?

Dunno, you’d have to ask those governments. Maybe their economies are based on progressive rather then regressive taxation.

When they can't afford to heat their home or feed their kids they won't vote Tory.

@DdraigGoch I think we had our share of ideologues determined to find the hardest leave they could.

More the most glaringly obvious examples of left politics killing people, which I would have thought should be impossible to miss for anyone with an even passing familiarity with history

I hope the global lefty Green Agenda doesn't kill us all this winter

That’s a bit silly

I don’t really get how people can be so blinkered and yet marry someone from ‘the other side’ if they feel as strongly as you do. Was it you that said they wouldn’t have friends who voted Tory? (Maybe not as you married one). Some people are very closed when it comes to politics.

There are of course people that would never switch but millions that do - it’s generally those voters that help win elections. Most parties aim for the middle to win. Eg Blair landslide - then many lost again at last GE.

It’s likely the next GE will be fought around the centre ground under Starmer - hence his stance on unions and nationalisation because he wants those voters back

A fair proportion of people I speak to, so anecdata, are clustered around in the centre. Some more socially liberal than others; others fear high spending, and there are people who feel the tax burden is about right, while small businesses fear the costs and paper burden of complying with every whim dreamed up in Whitehall.

Most parties aim for the middle to win.

Most people are centrists by nature, yes. But it is not simply down to appealing to centrists. Successful parties are those who manage to court the media. Labour won't win again until they can stop the Express/ Mail publishing unflattering photos of their leaders eating bacon sandwiches. Stupid isn't it? People care more about what a leader looks like and how charismatic they are than what they say and how they behave.

I disagree. The intolerance does seem to be one way. On dating sites I see remainers saying' if you voted Brexit we won't get along'. I have never seen ' If you voted remain we won't get along.'

Blair managed to get the press so not impossible, and Johnson had his own media storm to deal with and now gone

Labour made the wrong decision imo, they’d have had a better chance with David M

Might have won even

On dating sites I see remainers saying' if you voted Brexit we won't get along'.

What’s the problem with that? Who wants a relationship with someone whose views they find offensive? I can’t imagine that anyone who voted for Brexit would want anything to do with me, we’d have nothing in common.

I’ e seen loads of Twitter users say on their page that Remainers/ Snowflakes and FBPEs will be blocked.
It’s absolutely not all one way.

I would have thought so too

Maybe pp can shed light on previous claim

But a good number of Labour party members look upon the Blair years as some kind of dismal failure rather that the time that Labour appealed to enough of the electorate to put them in power for over a decade.

David Milliband didn't let the party members scratch that purity itch like Edward did. Corban was fucking catnip. Again and again, being pure is rated over the potential for success at the ballot box.

So now we are stuck with the Tories and have been for fucking ages and will continue to be and lumbered with an opposition that is rendered inert by the party faithful.

@MarshaBradyo - of course it wasn't me. I've been married to one for 31 years. Floating voters or people not interested in politics switch. Real supporters don't. It's like a football team in some ways but the belief system is much deeper. DH feels the same.

Yes floating voters switch but it doesn’t mean they are not interested in politics. Often the opposite, it’s policies that interest not adhering loyalty.

If you look at the numbers behind landslides you can see you don’t understand what millions of voters do.

Fine stick to your side, your dh also, and be real supporters. It’s not something I want or need as a moniker, parties need to earn my vote not rely on it no matter what.

Millions are in the centre and Labour does sometimes realise that and wins but often is more aligned to your thinking and doesn’t.

Who cares what he may or may have not said. It's what they are actively doing now to reverse the damage that counts

any right minded person cares!
The Tories chose Johnson as 'their best' and look where that took the country! The current candidates have backed his criminality, lies, racism, misogyny and damage to the poorest in society by giving him their support in the confidence vote! They supported him partying through the pandemic + even attended the parties. Now Truss is even looking to give him a spot in government. Utterly unbelievable if anybody does not care about this as the direction of travel is the same.
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Truss is already backtracking on her public pay statement while actually suggesting the Tory Government will ignore the democratically elected First Minister of Scotland! Absolute shambles of a party - and all some posters on here can say is 'they know what a woman is'. The Tory Party don't appear to know what common decency is, or what obeying the law means and certainly don't know what 'the common good' looks like.

@StoneofDestiny I do enjoy your posts. 👏🏻

I'm sorry to say it, but I do hate Tory voters, yes. I try not to hate people, and I can see why some Tory voters are genuinely not aware, and those I might like as people.

But to put it really simplistically -

As someone with a lifelong disabilities, my waiting lists and treatments have gotten progressively worse and worse since a couple years after the Tories got in. I can't afford private healthcare and I am quite literally terrified what is happening to the NHS.
Also, a decade of austerity aimed at people like me, saw my income be frozen for nearly a decade so in real terms go down and down, along with my standard of living.

I also know some people who have committed suicide directly due to dwp, and there are hundreds more and also some who have starved to death. It's all there in black and white if you look it up, inquests where dwp are named, "lessons will be learnt" etc..

I tried for so long not to hate them. But yes, sorry, I do hate those who vote Tory despite knowing what they do, or going but what about this, what about that, being deliberately blind to it.

I'm not a Labour member / particular fan either, I just know from lived experience that under Labour I waited much shorter times for medical care, received better medical treatment, and actually had enough money to live.

I would agree with that, it was, although that is really free market liberalism rather than conservatism. It's been the dominant form of economic thought globally for 40 years, with no serious alternatives found in mainstream politics until quite recently. And where we have seen push-back recently it's been spread across the parties in various forms.

I would not say that conservatism has that same blind spot about ideology to the same extent. The reason for that being that when you dig down into conservative philosophy, it is very much grounded in the concrete - these people, in this place, who have particular concrete relationships.

While the left in the UK has also had some of that tradition, more so than in some other places, socialism more often deals with abstractions - class analysis is an example of that. That can be very powerful analytically and it can also create a vision that people find deeply compelling, but it also can easily fall prey to the problem that those who take up that vision lose touch with or dismiss the evidence of the concrete when it contradicts the ideology.