To wonder if Labour actually will be any better?

[Baabaagreysheep]

I think like most people I am keen to see the back of the current bunch, but I am not confident that anything will massively change for the better. Maybe that’s a bit pessimistic, but I feel that while some things will improve some will get worse - and some sort of at the same time, so I’m expecting my salary to go up but also my workload to go up!

Thinking back to when Labour were last in power it was another world, really. Interested in views.

They wouldn’t have crashed the economy borrowing money to give tax cuts to the wealthy either. Starmer may be “just like a Tory” but he and Labour wouldn’t have done it, nor would they have been supported and encouraged to do it by the rabid right-wing media.

Thought experiment number 2: What if Corbyn had done any of the things the Tories have? Put his KGB mate’s son in the House of Lords? Left his security detail to party with said KGB son immediately after an international emergency meeting about the Russian Skripol poisoning?

”But the wreath! But the mural!”

Was grim seeing the list of attendees at Murdoch's summer party this week, lost a bit of respect for the shadow MPs etc. that attended 

This! Labour have been in power in Wales since 1999 and everything has declined including education and health services.

For the last time IT IS VERY HARD TO TAX THE SUPER WEALTHY.

Most are not even tax resident in the U.K.!

It will just be the middle class on PAYE paying more tax

The UK is incapable of improving while the Tories are in power. Just vote for anyone else. Doesn't have to be Labour.

Yup, all of this.

@Fightyouforthatpie all very well saying
"Good riddance to any scum dodging taxes offshore"

But the wealthier people are the ones that keep the country afloat with the taxes they do pay. who will fund the system is high earner leave due to being squeezed when they're already paying so much in tax?!

So who is funding the poor atm? Do you think if labour are elected they will fund the poor better, taking from people who already work and get no help at all with any of their costs, effectively making them poorer and needing help, thus making more people poorer. Labour will be worse imo

We are not 35 years ago though we are today. Harping onto the what one leader did in the past doesn’t mean the current parties leader will be any good.

I’ll have to say pretty much all my adult years have been equally shit. State of the hospital I had my eldest in under labour leadership was much worse than my following two under tories to so yeah. In fact my whole maternity care and post care was shockingly shit, my infant had issues missed and the hospital was falling apart and filthy all under labour. I don’t think labour where the great saint for the nhs.

Tories are equally bastards tho my nhs care was and currently is actually 100% better but yeah cat shit or dog shit.

Winston Churchill once said
The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings
The inherent virtue of Socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.

Be careful of what you wish for.

@Fightyouforthatpie people say tories are a party for the rich, but the tax burden for high earners is the highest it has been in over 50 years currently!

What we have is a nation with low productivity, but high entitlement where people feel entitled to a high quality of life despite our low productivity. The idea from colonial times that the U.K. is a v rich nation, but once it stopped stealing from colonies gradually the chicken is coming home to roost!

Multi-millionaires left a long time ago (why aren't Lewis Hamilton and the like U.K. resident...?)

Only more recently are high earners leaving (many on £200k+ salaries.

This flight will only increase under Labour once they charge VAT on school fees and increase already high income tax. And the U.K. will be even more f**d cs once people leave it takes a lot more to make them come back!

There seems to be a cost to Brexit so I’d say some gains could be made there economically. Labour could have run on that imo

Otherwise they will face similar issues with funding and all round.

I think people’s expectations are high, hence they are starting to try and down play them in advance.

Also Labour in Wales and the direction they have gone isn’t reassuring

I do strongly believe this will be the case. MN predominantly middle class? Unlikely for much longer under Labour.

Really OP, i don't understand how you think any party could do much more damage than the Conservatives:

• Brexit referendum noone wanted with a campaign where leading Conservatives outright lied
• Triggered article 50 with no plan then went for the hardest possible brexit damaging peace in Northern Ireland in the process
• Elected a liar as a leader who has been giving money and power to all his friends including Russians
• said leader regularly broke the law and democratic processes
• prioritised the money in the Cheltenham gold cup, delayed lockdown, let covid spread unnecessarily
• threw care home residents and the carers under the bus in the first wave by not providing testing/ppe
• buggered up children's educations entirely by just not bothering to handle how covid spread in schools resulting in multiple lockdowns, leaving our children with mental health issues
• underfunded public services for years so now there are not enough staff to treat these mental health issues
• let MPs and government aides act like private schoolboys at a party, drinking, smoking, taking drugs and groping colleagues, even during lockdown
• when said liar PM was forced to resign in disgrace, elected a useless leader who managed to crash the economy in just a few days, leading to ongoing problems with inflation/interest rates
• then elected an extremely rich leader who appears to favour government spending to go to his wife and friends companies. Pretend said leader is "competent" when the economy is tanking and everything is on fire. He just looks competent because he isn't an overt lying mendacious piece of work.
• encouraged asset stripping in the UK hence the Thames Water debacle
• set up "free ports" to get round environmental and worker regulations, causing extensive damage to local environments (Teeside)
• not invested in the justice system and changed the way rapes are prosecuted so rape is now effectively decriminalised
• degraded living standards so that we have some of the worst poverty in Europe - despite being a so called "rich" country. The lowest income families in Poland are better off than the lowest income families here.
• brought in Universal Credit in a completely chaotic way that caused the deaths of a number of very vulnerable people who should have been protected.

About the only thing they do well is manage to somehow pull the wool over the eyes of people like you so that you think "Labour might be worse". Personally I can't see how it could be much worse than now.

Labour turns a blind a to grooming gangs and supports gender neutral toilets.

If you care about children you won't for Labour.

The current Conservative Party are not much better and I would not bite for them either.

No, they don't turn a blind eye to grooming gangs. Starner did more to protect victims of abuse when he was DPP than this government has done. You are falling for right wing propaganda. A hugely underfunded police abd criminal justice system can't protect anyone, even if Braverman does like to make it appear as if particular ethnicities are the problem.

Yes, I hate the fact Labour believes it has to get the handful of - literally a handful - influential off-shore billionaire right-wing media barons on board. Corbyn - and I am not a Corbynista, honest - didn’t debase himself for them, and look where that got him. I understand why, but would love to see more courage from Labour on that, not to mention an inspiring narrative about all the popular things they could do to turn this sorry state around.

The conference announcements of taking rail companies back into public ownerships as their contracts run out, and the state-owned green energy company, were well-received - relatively achievable, popular solutions to just two of our current problems.

I suppose they fear the Tories will steal and rebrand the best of Labour’s ideas, but why anyone would believe a word the Tories have to say after 13 years of lies is simply beyond me.

13 years the tories have been in power, how can current grooming gangs possibly be Labour's fault?

If you want to talk about politicians ignoring grooming, how about Savile and Thatcher?

The people who will "leave if they pay more tax" aren't the same people as the higher rate taxpayers in PAYE. Lots of then already exploit tax loopholes and non-dom status. I don't think them leaving will have a huge effect

The brain drain of staff from the NHS for better working conditions on the other hand will screw us over. As will teachers leaving the profession because they can't cope with the stress/workload.

I do not believe labour are the magic bullet people think they are. Kier Starmer is so wishy washy. Captain Hindsight on many things. No credible policies, and no - they will not fix things. I have voted labour in the past, I will not vote for them in the next GE.

Actual experience of hard left Labour in government tells me no, they won't, they never have been.

I think the only short-term hope is to fix the worst of what's broken, and that's going to need more than a change of ruling party. It needs the system of government to change to stop the lurching from one ideology to another, and the whole country being held to ransom by a small number of influential extremists of any persuasion.

That's going to take a Lab-Lib-Green coalition with the junior partners insisting on electoral reform and a clean-up of some of the arcane rules and practices in the Commons and the Lords. We can't continue to regard a FPTP system that consistently produces minority-majorities as fit for democratic purpose.

Firstly there was a global crash. Secondly NHS waiting lists were the lowest they had ever been when Labour last left government. Thirdly the Iraq war was awful, but all the House voted for it & any British PM would have done the same.

That’s a sobering and well-evidenced catalogue of Tory failures, @AdamRyan . “But Labour would be worse!”

My “Boris”-loving Brexit-voting friend tried to tell me that I “have to admit what a great job Boris is doing on the pandemic!” and that I also “have to admit it’s lucky that Corbyn didn’t win!”

Labour have said firmly that Britain will not even be joining the Single Market or a customs union, never mind rejoining the EU.

Its slogan is "Make Brexit Work'. The aim is to negotiate with the EU to "remove red tape" on imports, exports and rules of origin. I don't know what we can offer to persuade the EU to abandon its rules on trade with non-members, TBH.