I don't deny my ideology - I'm a left leaning centrist because I believe in robust public services that benefit everyone, that health care should be free at the point of need, that every child and young adult is entitled to a free, good quality education, that there should be a social safety net for those who need it.
But I also think that hard work and creativity should be rewarded. That everyone regardless of background should have the ability to better themselves and be able to earn money to buy nice things. But that has to be balanced by those who earn more paying more tax. I think billionaires are an abomination.
Those positions come from a combination of personal experience (working class, low income family background, first person in family to go to uni, now in the higher income bracket) and professional public sector experience combined with academic study and an inbuilt need to understand facts.
We've had this discussion before. The data shows that during the last Labour government the economy and public services performed better than the Tory governments either side of them. A lot of people try to deny that but no-one ever provides the data to back it up - because it doesn't exist.
Ideologically - I prefer this government to the thought of Kemi Badenoch and what is left of the Tories and am completely horrified at the thought of a Reform government. I would much more prefer proportional representation and a centre left coalition led by Lib Dems but I'm notvever going to get that, so I'll go with what I can get.
I don't like Rachel Reeves or Starmer that much and I certainly don't agree with everything they are doing - the ISA cuts and freezing of the tax thresholds are short sighted and the pension tax relief cuts are right but far too severe (the limit should have been £20k not £2k).
I agree with her on the dividend tax (which will affect me) scrapping the benefit cap and the minimum wage equalisation (but am dubious of the timing of that one so soon after the NI rise) and am pretty neutral on much of the rest of it.
Whether what she is doing will work or not remains to be seen. Early indications are it might...bond markets have calmed, growth is very very slowly creeping up, debt forecasts look positive, inflation is slowing down, investment is going into public services, health waiting lists are coming down.
None of it is happening quick enough for my liking and we do not have the evidence to say whether these things will stick long term, all we can do is wait. If all of this turns out to have put the country in a worse position, it won't change my ideology but I won't be defending their actions just because they are Labour.
However the one thing I can't stand is people who spread outright lies (left or right), either because they believe everything they hear in their echo chamber of choice or because they can't or won't take the time to understand facts.
Nonsense like the OP here or any number of the benefit / motobility scheme / asylum seeker bashing threads are just damaging, divisive rubbish designed to keep us bickering, because if we were to actually unite, despite our ideologically differences, and figure out compromises that work to improve society, the people who fuel that division would be the ones that lose out - and they know it.