Conservatives and Labour - is there really any difference for middle class working families

[Sweetcup]

Please convince me otherwise as I'm feeling utterly depressed.

I really can't see what is on offer to middle class families from either party - it appears to be exactly the same. High taxes, no guarantee of decent state education or access to medical care, horrible driving on roads, criminals out of prison early picked up in luxury cars. Our salaries are worth less than they were 7 years ago.

In principle I don't mind paying high taxes but it really doesn't seem to be a guarantee of anything. Our local state secondary is dreadful as a few (non-working) families seem able to disrupt the education of the rest. As a tax payer I don't feel either the Conservatives or Labour have ever spoken to me directly about what my money is doing and what they are guaranteeing for it.

We cut right back (no Netflix, eating our, no takeout) to put money into our pensions and now I just feel like that means we will have done it to pay for other people's state funded retirements.

They need to be central leaning to get voted in. Corbyn lost.

Labour are always held to far higher standards than the Tories. The Tories are like an institution that the English are in awe of. They have to mess up catastrophically to be voted out

Interestingly Labour got a similar % of the popular vote in 2019 and 2024 (32.1% and 33.7%). But in 2019 got the worst Labour election results in a century and in 2024 got them a majority of something like 162 seats.

It’s fairly clear that Labour didn’t win the election as much as the Conservatives lost it spectacularly.

I think this is why lots of people are unsure of them - they were elected because there was no viable alternative rather than they were what the electorate really wanted.

Or pay out less in benefits.

I agree that there was no enthusiasm for Labour. I suppose it was similar in 2010 when the Tories got in. Labour's time was just up but Cameron still didn't win the majority.

In 1997 there was a real enthusiasm for Labour when they won.

Which benefits would you cut? You obviously think that more of tax payers' money should be going to higher earners and less to lower earners and people on benefits.

4.4 million children are growing up in povery in the UK. Do you think that the benefits that these families receive should be even lower?

You mean pay out less in benefits that aren’t in your favour. Your fully tax funded residential care wish would definitely come under the heading of benefits.

Or pay out less in benefits.

what on earth does this mean? Cut disability payments so care homes are free? This would then be a benefit..,

You just mean for your personal finances? We'll have to wait and seen but for me, the improvement of having people who appear sensible and actually want to solve the problems in health and social care, education, prisons, environment, infrastructure etc rather than score personal points all the time is huge.

I don't know if they can succeed, and no doubt there will be mistakes along the way, but so far it is such a breath of fresh air.

Pay only people who are truly deserving.

I do not believe that everybody who gets a disability payment is deserving of that payment.

Back to the 'deserving and undeserving poor...

Got any suggestions as to who you would give too and take from?

and what qualifies you to make such an assessment?

I'm very intelligent.

I do believe there are undeserving poor.

Give generously to the deserving.
Not give to the undeserving.

ahhh ragebait troll it seems.

crawl away and go and be boring elsewhere if you can't at least be creative.

I do not believe that everybody who gets a disability payment is deserving of that payment.

You can say that about every benefit though, it doesn’t mean we scrap the benefit for everyone else.

Public services, economic growth and social mobility were all way better under the last Labour government.
They are the opposite of the Tories. Trouble is it will take years to repair the damage the Tories have done and people will start blaming Labour for thing outside their control. It's already happening.

Didn't say we should.

You know you can already make voluntary contributions to HMRC and could do that monthly, plus state where you want your money to go?

I'm very intelligent.

And self aware?

Like elderly people with money in the bank and houses they don’t need any more? I don’t think so. We got rid of the deserving and undeserving poor with the Victorians.

People are desperate to go back to the Victorian times, well for others not them of course.

On the deserving/undeserving question, I have an idea.

HMRC should ask people to tick boxes saying where they want their tax revenues to go: eg Defence, Education, Health Care for Deserving People, Health care for those with drug and drink addictions, Environment, Roads, Elderly care, State Pensions, Child Benefit, Infrastructure, Deserving Poor, Undeserving Poor, MP Salaries, Prisons etc.

Obviously the money would still be divided up as it is today but it might make a lot of people feel a lot better about the deductions made from their incomes!

I will bite. What happens to the undeserving?