To feel increasingly alienated by Tory voters?

[BarmyBrunhilde]

I am in despair as to where our country is at. With the cost of living crisis looming (and already beginning), this winter is going to be brutal and likely life ending for so many in the UK, and the current aspiring leadership of the Tory party seem to be more interested in litigating culture wars and appeasing NIMBY pensioners in the Home countries than actually addressing any of the serious problems in the UK.

I've never been a Tory voter, but I've always been able to get along with people who have different views (provided they aren't racist/homophobic etc). But how anyone could see all the misery and deprivation on the horizon, look at the prospective leaders and frontbenchers with their complete lack of sultions, and continue with supporting them is genuinely beyond me. I find myself slowly being consumed by bitterness and rage against people for their views, and it frightens me. Am I alone in this?

Jesus wept.

I take both responsibility for my own life AND as a member of society, it is my duty as a decent human being to also help and support those around me with whatever privilege I may possess.

Your parents must be very proud.

You'd have absolutely no way of knowing what labour would have done .
It's so long since labour have been in power you're looking through those old rose specs . Labour are a joke they should be wiping the floor with the tories right now and they just aren't . Totally inconsequential.

Where are Labour, or the Lib Dems? What do they actually do? Cause all it looks like is a weekly slanging match at PMQ & various token appearances on panel shows, but I haven't got a single bit of clarity about what they are up to or representing. They need a good, strong, charismatic leader & haven't had one for a long time

The shadow foreign secretary has a nice LBC show - because being an MP and a member of the shadow cabinet (in one of the great offices nonetheless) gives you enough time for a third job.

@hattie43 How exactly could Labour being wiping the floor with the Tories? who have a base of around 30% & who will never vote for anyone else, they got 31% against Blair's 43% in 97.

Labour are polling as well or as nr as they could ever do, under FPTP.

anyway, i couldn't care less about Tory voters, they are no where near as right wing as the parties MPs let alone the membership, most whom would have fitted in very well in 1930s Germany.

www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4599124-frustration-and-loneliness-with-feeling-politically-homeless

…Or see any of the other millions of threads where women are bloody sick to the back teeth of ‘chest feeding’ nonsense and JKR death threats for stating biological facts and thinking we are in a parallel universe when we are painted as the ‘hate mongers’. I bet if you brought any of this up sympathetically at your coffee morning you’d see people heave a sigh of relieve and they’d admit they think the same. Unfortunately you’re one of the captured handmaids who think we are just brainless terfs who wake up in the morning to be unkind just for fun. So no, of course no one is going to talk openly about this with you. 🙄

Yes, but like we’ve already said, last time people could vote, basic living standards weren’t the biggest issue.

And for the cost of living crisis to sway the vote enough to a labour government next time we get the chance, people have to believe that there will be no help whatsoever under the tories and that under labour their personal crisis will go away.

We are suffering as much from the lack of a decent opposition as we are the lack of a decent government.

It's astonishing that those who would refuse to vote Labour because of the TWAW issue really think that the Tories are out to protect women and their rights. There's this:

www.pinknews.co.uk/2022/08/09/abortion-rights-uk-tory-government-gender-equality-statement/

There's also the voting records of Tory MPs with regard to abortion rights in NI for instance, which make for pretty upsetting reading.

'Captured handmaid', dear me I didn't realise thinking manufactured culture wars about 'chest feeding' are less important than basic utilities for the UK population would put me in such low esteem! And nice thread there, but yes there's plenty of people posting about their pet causes on the internet, but that still doesn't undermine my main point which is that most women just aren't that bothered about this (certainly in comparison to the big ticket items like food and shelter!)

Also are you really suggesting that everyone secretly agrees with you? I don't talk about trans issues pretty much ever, so how would they know what a terribly 'capture handmaid' I am, in order to censor themselves?

Yabu. I'm just hoping for some tax cuts. Taxing people at 40 or 50% of income is theft, let people take responsibility for their own lives.

Or even 60%

And if people can't heat their homes this winter, they should just crack on and suffer? What if they can't afford food, including for the kids - should they just let them go hungry? What about when they have no disposable income - how do you think that will affect the economy, when large swathes of the population can afford to go to restaurants, or buy clothes, or go to the cinema?

Do you really think that after a pandemic, and during a continuing major war on the border of Europe, that cost of living issues are solely down to one governing party? Have you not noticed what is going on across the world? So easy, and stunningly naive, just to blame the Government, even tho there may have been some mistakes made. I'm not sure that any current political party has an easy solution and it certainly isn't the Government's job to bail out the population by chucking money about.

High taxes aren't theft if they are properly invested and used.
In Scandinavia high taxes are used so that people don't pay again for childcare, health, university education, social care. If we had a government that used taxation like that, i'd be happy to pay more tax and I pay a good share already - about £18000. What I'm not happy to do is pay tax so that it goes to the likes of Dido Harding.

There's one of these every week.

Tory voters are a broad church. You can't think we're all bastards. Well you could, but that sounds exhausting.

Have you actually read my post? You might find the answers you're looking for there.

Of course there aren’t easy solutions hbh, but does this graph really suggest to you that the Tories are doing well?

I don’t think demonising Tory voters constantly helps win them round.

I wish we had PR by now to take the edge of this two-party pendulum.

I myself am sick of lefty fuckwits so the annoyance goes both ways

Off^

The problem I think is that Blair spent the country broke, without actually achieving anything long lasting, whereas if the money had created longstanding responsive systems and processes, people wouldn't mind paying lots of tax. Unlike other countries esp. Sweden and Denmark, people who pay lots of tax don't feel they benefit. In Scandinavia private education is a niche provision, ditto other public services because they are all well run publically. Here, however, you could be paying lots of tax and buying private services, so people feel that they are paying for others and resent it.

I also think that our tax should be itemised and there should be easily accessible reports as to how it is spent.

@BarmyBrunhilde I wasn't aware I asked any questions.

Well, even Tories such as George Osborne admitted that austerity was far too severe. I think it's a little harsh to condemn Blair for not having lasting policies when the Tories came in and massively cut back on things like Surestart and underfunded the NHS, which had been performing much better under Labour. It speaks volumes that we're looking back to the failures of Blair 15 years on though. What about all the tax that's been taken over the last twelve years?

“'Captured handmaid', dear me I didn't realise thinking manufactured culture wars about 'chest feeding' are less important than basic utilities for the UK population would put me in such low esteem!”

The point is when political parties lose grip on the basic existential realities of what it even means to be a woman then how are you going to trust them on basic utilities.

I’m not saying the tories are perfect - the whole country is a shit show - but where is my vote going? To parties who have come out definitively and decidedly to say men are actually women and should have to same treatment? Like labour? Like Lib Dem? Like the Greens? Women locked up in prison with men. Women excluded from rape support centres because the feelings of men are more important. Men in female hospital wards. Young school girls being groomed to not complain about male bodied classmates in their changing rooms and residential trips. Medical interventions on children without informed consent. Etc etc. These things are not insignificant and ‘fringe’.

You tell me who I’m supposed to vote for.

This is the problem and what people also forget to mention is higher tax payers in this country especially in areas such as tech and engineering are vastly underpaid in comparison to other countries. They are paid significantly lower salaries, taxed to the hilt, nothing to show for it and people still demand more, demonising them for being in a high paid profession.

People are sick of it and I say this as a previous labour voter (who knows now). They spent and spent depressing wages and increasing state reliance on top-up benefits and that isn’t sustainable long term. More and more is added to debt, you can only tax people so much before they say “no more.”