To ask what stops you voting for the tories ?

[Icandothattoo]

For me
The unending shite that is brexit
Corruption and dishonesty, especially during the pandemic but not uniquely. And not just Johnson.
Making already deprived areas compete against each other for levelling up money whilst perfectly affluent tory voting areas are handed it on a plate (looking at Richmond N yorks Rishi ! ). Funny that 80% of constituencies getting levelling up funds are tory...
Whole culture war. Singling out certain minorities to attack for purely political gain. In the 80s single mums, 90s benefit claimants, 2000s refugees, immigrants. FWIW I'm fairly gender critical but disliked the way they toadied round Trump and his abhorrent opinions/followers who pretty much wrote the culture war playbook.
So what stops you from voting for them ?

I think not voting at all is a shocking dereliction of our democratic duty as citizens. People have literally given their lives for the right to vote; to squander that right is obscene to me.

Vote whatever you think is best, but please don't not vote.

Not dim at all but if Labour started saying in detail how they would fix the long list of alternatives, the Tories would nick the plans and claim them as their own.

Labour laid out detailed plans on extending Childcare, the Tories took that idea and when challenged on this by SKY's Kay Burley, said with glee "so what?"

Starmer, like Balir before him, cannot lay out plans so far out from a GE, no opposition, Tory or Lab should be expected too.

Personally, having seen how Rayner destroyed Raab at PMQ's i think she'd make a great leader! but despite having made her own way after a very poor start in life, women (on MN) seem to hate her, perhaps she exposes their own short comings?

Many people I know feel that just because the Conservatives have missed the opportunity drive standards up for the people of Britain, it doesn't mean that Brexit itself was the wrong decision.

The conservative government has chosen to lower standards on pretty much everything (farming, wages, employment rights, nhs, policing, education etc), choosing to do whatever they can to further the profits of the super-rich at the expense of the average citizen.

They could have chosen to build the country from the bottom and ensured everyone's standards rose. They've chosen to do the opposite.

@Howpo

I don't understand the dislike on MN for Angela Rayner - she is the absolute embodiment of bettering yourself through hard work.

I too would like her as leader - she's not afraid of the Tories and she knows that they are no better than her - even if they do talk posh.

I will vote but, to be honest, if I didn't it wouldn't seem like much of dereliction of duty when your vote doesn't count at all, as is the case for every citizen of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

It's even more pointless for us north of the border now that the English have shown they'll just over rule us whenever they don't like our devolved decisions.

They run the country into the ground and made themselves richer?

I think @lipstickwoman you probably have to pay attention to somebody from the Labour Party and then you find out all their plans.

I follow Keir Starmer and Ed Miliband on Twitter so I get to hear all about what they intend to do.

I'm really in favour of all the Green energy stuff that Miliband had been banging on about for more than a decade.

Our energy bills wouldn't be sky high if we generated more of our own electricity via the tide, wind and sun we have just sitting there waiting to be converted. Using gas we have to buy to make electricity is mental in comparison.

At some point there'll be a full manifesto for the next election, but you can get the gist by just listening to what they say.

Labour is all about energy self sufficient, education, jobs, fixing the criminal justice system...

All I hear from the Tories is that they want to fine beggars and punish prisoners by not letting them get married in prison?! (Bit niche!) Make it easier for landlords to evict tenants, make people seeking asylum in our country suffer even more. Detain and deport children.

And some old guff about letting victims of crime decide the punishment. You'd have to convict them first and conviction rates are at record lows for most crimes!

These things they talk about are not the big issues for me. I don't care if prisoners get married or not.

Most of them seem like desperate old nonsense and lie in the sky and I wonder who they've been focus grouping to think these are voter winners.

What next?

A "cones hotline"?

Having higher standards is the exact opposite of conservative philosophy for well over 40years, they start from the position of a "small state" high standards require regulation and enforcement i.e Big State.

It also is very expensive, so at best we will have standards very similar to any markets we wish to try and export into, for the home market, it will be a race to the bottom.

Anyone who voted for Brexit for higher than EU standards really was thick.

Our energy bills wouldn't be sky high if we generated more of our own electricity via the tide, wind and sun we have just sitting there waiting to be converted. Using gas we have to buy to make electricity is mental in comparison

Labour have not convinced me how they would lower bills as we already generate around 40 to 50% of energy via renewables and yet Green Energy is priced at exactly the same as "dirty" energy, not seen how they will change that?

The other thing i ve been engaged with Luke Pollard on is where Labour will get 10k new young recruits to train as HCP's for the NHS, where are all these A level qualified students wanting to work in the NHS ? His answers were very weak.

Its all a bit pie in the sky for me.

Gas prices will rise for geopolitical reasons as supplies dwindle

If we don't have to buy gas to generate electric and move away from using gas generally we'l save fortunes and not be at the mercy of the market.

Unless Energy production is nationalised & the state controls the price, inc Nuclear which is currently in private ownership... energy prices wont fall below that of the European energy market price.

We have also entered into very long term contracts on Hinkley energy pricing, so that will have to be honoured too.

They are corrupt and lack any vestige of integrity. Even if you don’t like Starmer, surely any party is better than this disgraceful cabal.

Why do I not vote Tory?

I’d say a vague understanding of politics and not being a sociopathic super rich person stops me.

I sort of get why very well off people who only care about their own situations vote Tory.

It's the not very well off who complain about the dreadful state of everything who then go and vote again for the party who have been in charge of the everything that's in a dreadful state for 13 years that I don't get.

Even my "Boris" and Brexit loving parents won't vote Tory this time. Where's the Brexit prosperity they were promised? Where's that plan for social care? Those 40 new hospitals? A flipping NHS dentist?

Instead their pensions and investments have taken a hit, the Tories took away their free tv licence, their energy bills are sky high and you can't get basic foodstuffs like tomatoes.

The reason the Labour Party is keeping its policies close to its chest at the moment is because the Tories have a nasty habit of stealing them. The time to conclude that they have no plan and no policy is when you’ve read their manifesto after a GE is announced.

I would never vote Tory because of the ideology.

But current issues would be

Brexit issues
Attitude to immigration. Hearing Rishi Sunak talking about immigrants the other day was chilling.
NHS being deliberately run down so that the private health insurance agenda can go through.

There is an almost open disdain for the have- nots in our society under this government, the us and them agenda is open for all to see. They just don't care and its obvious.

Brexit wasn’t a Tory policy, it was the result of a referendum. As I remember Jeremy Corbyn refused to come out for remain.

And if the Tories are going to nick Labour policies doesn’t that mean they are left wing as well?

Corbyn was a massive brexiteer but he didn't call the referendum, run any of the campaigns for or against, negotiate the exit or implement it.

No, it means they’re dishonest opportunists without any ideas of their own.

Yes i predicted this would happen.... as the disaster that is Brexit unfolds, Tories will start to blame Labour for it.

A referendum that only the Tory party had in their manifesto and which Cameron was strongly advised not to do by his friend and chancellor Osbourne.

You remember incorrectly....

A few weeks before the vote Corbyn maintained that despite its deficiencies, there was still an “overwhelming case” for remaining in the trade bloc

The Tories take policies from Labour that are popular, even if they are against them, so with childcare, they say they will provide x hours of free childcare but then don't fund the means to do so, blaming someone else.

Same with NHS, talk a lot but then don't fund or staff it properly.

Don't you remember back in April 2020 when the Tories paid millions of people to stay at home because in December 2019, January 2020, February 2020, and the first three weeks of March 2020 they decided to just let covid spread?

Then they spent a fortune on Eat Out To Spread Covid About and kicked off another wave in which more people died than in the first wave and we had to cancel Christmas?

I mean, I wouldn't call that "socialism" I'd call that "murderous" and "batshit" but right wing people called it socialism. Those people think the government should've just let all the businesses fail and all jobs go, and all the people have no income. That would obviously have been better.

Have a little Google of the 2019 general election. There'll be lots of video of Boris Johnson banging on about Getting Brexit "Done". In the manifesto too.

The fact that they are tories is what stops me voting Tory.

Today?

This.

Paul O Grady just died at 67.

A sane immigration policy would avoid this.