To ask why people vote Tory?

[Tierne]

It has to be said that life in the UK on low or middle income is much harder than it seemingly is in other western countries of similar wealth. I dont think the Tory party is making this country a nice place to live in at all. But they keep getting voted in.

So if you vote Tory:
Why do you vote for them?
Would you ever change your vote and for what reason?
Do you feel uncomfortable at how Tory policies batter the most vulnerable in our society? For example making it impossible for people to get on the housing ladder, high rents and low tenant protections, no energy bill caps, etc?

NB: I dont want this to turn into a Tory bashing thread. I'd just like to hear how Tory supporters feel about their party.

I'll bite. Because I am a meritocratic, I believe in making your own success. I live in the Middle East. It helps with my tax. The man in my local Boots has Cerebral Palsy and is a full time pharmacist. He is Indian and if he didn't work, his family would struggle.tp pay for good and nobody pats him on the back, he's just a pharmacist in a Boots branch. Because I work with noble men and women who know the true value of pride and values and get on with it rather than sit around bitching about the government like 6th formers. And mainly because I don't think Blair lobbing cash at people helped, you can't push a 1948 welfare system when the shape of the country has changed beyond all recognition. And also, because, apart from the Ukraine adoption and weaponsing, the government should stop invading and forcing their culture on others when their own streets re filled with failed Mental Health and social care people. The UK has always wanted to look good by helping others, charity and care should start at home.

I'll never forgive Brown for implementing working tax credits that allowed businesses to underpay staff and be subsidised on the public purse.

The way I see it is this. Some people vote for their own interests, others vote for what’s best for the wider society. The problem with this is that what’s best for society is best for everyone. By protecting your “own interests” and allowing poverty to get worse, health to get worse, education to get worse, public services to get worse, etc what exactly do you think will happen? Crime will go up making you less safe. Hospitals will be overrun (and yes this does still affect you if you have private healthcare). Unemployment will go up. That little gastro pub you like to go to on a Sunday will be gone soon. It won’t be safe for you to walk the streets because desperate hungry people will have no choice than to turn to crime. Wages are so low people can’t afford to feed their families and soon your green and pleasant streets will be piled up with rubbish from striking bin men and riddled with unsavoury homeless people.

You might feel justified in protecting your own interests while other peoples children go hungry, and working people are forced to use food banks while their teeth fall out because there’s no affordable dental care anymore, and people literally die due to poverty, lack of health care and no heating etc, but you won’t escape the fall out. The tories are leading us down a nightmare path of no return and if you can’t see that now, you will once it’s all too late.

midgetastic · Today 17:24
'Reposting one ranting as evidence that some people don't focus on policy isn't helpful though is it ?
I mean surely you don't chose who to vote for based on the fact you don't like how the guardian writes about BJ ?'

Of course, not.

The rants about Bozo are irrelevant here.
I had a fair share of those meself every single time
I heard him speak. Screaming at my TV.
Chucking cutlery about and foaming like a rabid dog.
It's pointing the fingers at voters who supported him
that matters.
"Evil or ignorant", remember?
Who TF is Mr Lee to make such profound judgments?
On what basis and on whose behalf?

When and how? Please tell me because I seem to have missed it.

Never mind that, he raided the pension pots.

He should stay in NQ and not bother getting involved in anything else. He is a liability.

Yes it just makes you blank them out.

Maybe if there were good arguments in a positive direction rather than just blustery insults they’d get more support

I do think Blair was better at inspiring the positive, even though I didn’t agree with all the policies, it seems to be lost since then

It was Brown as chancellor that introduced the minimum wage.

I have absolutely no idea....

I really don't understand why anyone would vote conservative at this stage after the Johnson disaster.

The current Tories are not even conservatives. They are lying, incompetent, self-serving ultra right-wing nutters who are closer to the Trump template than anything else.

I have no problem with what I consider to be conservative values such as law and order, healthy people getting off their backside rather than expecting benefits, low taxes and managed immigration.

I have a huge problem with people who partied on during the Covid crisis, used it as an opportunity to grant contracts to their dodgy mates, gave us the Brexit mess based on false promises and data, tried to control the media and freedom of speech, messed up the economy and our standards of living, who are basically lying every time they open their mouth and who are thinking of privatising the NHS. This is a slippery slop towards Fascist state.

I want to see a new, non-Tory government and I would prefer a coalition with Labour/Lib Dem or with the Green Party because we have seen what can happen when one party holds power for too long and becomes utterly corrupt...

Nice idea to try rebranding the Labour Party as Centrist but but but. Angela Rayner and one or two others still babbling lefty slogans. Transport Trade Unions still waging war on Capitalism.
No, Labour is still run by or greatly influenced by the ones who think good slogans on T-shirts equate to a manifesto and that Keir is the enemy to progress.
Honest to God we deserve better.

Stepping back from the nastiness for a moment.. one thing I've noticed on these threads is a lot of people saying they won't vote Labour because they are too far left. It seems that a lot of people are still quite fixated on Corbyn et al and have missed that Starmer's Labour is a totally centrist party.

Now that might be a failing of Starmer's media campaign (though won't be helped by the right wing slant of most of the papers). But it's is a fact that he has moved them to the right and so I wonder if more people would vote for Labour if they actually knew this.

What @Georgeskitchen said!

Angela - no remind me hasn't she experienced abuse from the people she might have called scum ?

It's going both ways - as this thread demonstrates

@Redqueenheart great summary

Trades unions are the reason you have rights at work. I bet you would try to get help from a trades union if you needed it.

I think the "no credible alternative" argument infuriating. The Conservatives haven't been credible for years. The are inept, immoral and incompetent. Literally anyone else could give it a go and odds are they wouldn't be as terrible. That's how low the bar is.

And yet even with a bar that low, Labour still can't get elected 🤔

It astounds me that they haven't seized the opportunity and aren't telling us constantly what they would do differently, and how they would do better. Finally they are starting to do that, but my god it's taken them long enough

This is the kind of pathetic attitude that keeps those on the left away from power. Thankfully.

Some reasons I have heard for voting for the Conservative party:
Labour might bring in Socialism, which is the worst thing that can happen to a country.
There are too many immigrants
Conservatives know what a woman is
There are too many people on benefits
Hunting is an important tradition
Climate change is not as important as the right to drive an SUV

Oddly enough univalve I voted Tory in the last couple of General Elections because I believe that they would be better for the country overall.

In my circumstances in made no difference to me personally.

I voted Labour in the past for the same reason. If I think in the future that they would be better overall then they will get my vote again

I've voted Tory as the only option to try to beat the SNP

Nationalism is far worse.

What makes people say this though? Why do you think Labour haven't been putting forward their policy ideas? They've been doing it all summer and the Tories gave nicked a couple of those ideas to boot!

Starmer asked the right questions today and we actually got to the root of the difference in policy and ideology. He always does well in PMQ's.

Because I am an Adult Human Female and want my sex based rights to remain.

‘Hunting is an important tradition’

what. The. Fuck.

This. The Labour Party just isn't credible. Far too much like silly student politics for my liking.

On a personal note I won't ever vote for them again because of their reality-denying gender nonsense, but different people will have different reasons.

That’s ludicrous but you’re right, it’s the answer a few of my parent’s neighbours would give, along with the ‘too many immigrants’ bullshit.