Long-standing Conservative voters thread

[Katypp]

Any one else who has - up to this point at least - been a Tory voter?
I have voted Conservative at every national election (I am late 50s). This one is probably the most likely to change. Purely because I think new blood would be a good idea. I live in a very Labour area and have never shared my colours with anyone from being in my early 20s.
Given the fact that the Tories usually win, I suspect there are a lot like me.
I know it's a big ask, but I hope thar this might be a sensible thread for other natural Tory voters to discuss the election and not be called names and shouted down like we are on every other thread.
If you are a Labour voter, please don't hijack the thread and tell us how wrong we are. There is free speech in the UK and we are just as entitled to hold our opinion as you are to hold yours.

i actually would say that the singapore model is the exact opposite of the uk welfare model. Most of it is reliant on private savings (and low taxes that go with it) but also huge government intervention to make sure its all just about affordable (which is easier cos the government owns most of the land and has many state owned companies- aka not libertarian).

in the uk, our benefits are pretty universal- basic state pension, nhs (more of an emergency healthcare service) regardless of what you put in. Then the rest of the benefits are for people in emergency housing or bad situations (poverty).Most things are private- railway, water, energy, housing for the vast majority and you have to pay the market rate.

In singapore, a lot of what you get is dependent on how much you put in aka how much you earn. On the other hand, most housing and land is owned by the state, energy companies and public transport companies owned by government, even the hawker stores where we eat are in buildings owned by the government, the main supermarket is controlled by the trade union (aka government).

85% of people live in social housing but it ranges from very basic 1 bed rentals for the very poorest, 2 bed 80 sq m flats in the outerlying suburbs for £200k for the young first time buyers of modest means ( you have to save for renovations and use your savings fund for the 15% deposit- most people dont need to top up with cash) to 5 room 100 sq metres flat in central singapore and there is even a public private hybrid condo development that only singapore citizens who earn a household income of below £120k can purchase (it has swimming pools, tennis courts, karaoke rooms and function rooms).

Similar with the savings fund for retirement, if you earn less, you get less. If you have more money and want to pay more, you get to be in a private room in hospital. If you have less money (or want to spend less), you get the cheapest government run ward where you potentially get up to 60 to 90% subsidy and your insurance is probably the cheap subsidized government insurance. Not as comfortable but better for the wallet.

UK is a better deal for poorer people (who own property or have secure council housing) but our taxes are much higher. and i guess not as good a deal if you can't get any healthcare as poor people in singapore tend to get healthcare fairly quickly. Also if you rent privately and only have state pension, you are screwed compared to a singaporean who is mortgage free as i am really not sure how you can pay rent in retirement.

I mention singapore cos conservatives really wanted uk to be like singapore but most of them don't understand it and how different it is.

If they wanted to cut taxes and dismantle our welfare system, we would not be like singapore, we would be more like America and without the much higher salaries

Thank you @Opalfleur2025 this is extremely helpful. I had friends who came from Singapore and brought their children to our primary school, while they worked as consultants in the hospital. They were really shocked by life in the UK and quickly went home again. It's very good to understand what the difference was.

I had no idea that the government could control things so completely like that.

I have a lot of friends who come to the UK from abroad and they are often partly motivated by "free NHS healthcare". They are often shocked and angry when they find out that is not like a free version of American private healthcare. I think the reality of life in a country can be very different when people come and experience it.

The difference is singaporeans were so poor when we gained independence from the British in the 1960s is that there was hardly a middle class, most people lived in wooden huts or slum cubicles so the government was able to move them into the newly built social housing blocks. There was some resistance, some people even attempted to bring their pigs and chickens into their new flats and some even cried daily cos they were too scared of the elevator, but in the end, it was do you want to live in a flat or do you want to live in a wooden hut with no indoor toilet and which was flammable (burnt down every few years).

In contrast the UK was so much richer and even in the 60s, 50% owned their own home. They could afford a free at the point of access healthcare system (we never could) and a state pension scheme, both very expensive things. These are all hallmarks of a rich country. So if the country grows poorer or rather more unequal with fewer taxpayers, it would obviously become harder to keep up.

Ditto for the private housing, of course private housing is preferred, even in singapore, most people would prefer to live in private condos with swimming pools over government housing (status symbol) but the reality is 85% of people live in government flats because the private condos are on average £1- £2 million each. Likewise, 90% of people in the UK would prefer to own their home but it is also not easily accessible on the private market because the private market is not fair and favour those with higher incomes or inheritance or prefarably both. Fine if the economy is growing and many well paid jobs, but if the economy is not growing and many people have stagnant wages? Then it is less easy to save up a deposit to buy your own home if you are average and competing with couples with rich parents on both sides. I am in London and I know basically no one without family help who managed to buy (with the exception of me and DH though we did manage to live rent free for three years which is similar to singaporeans); for the sake of comparison, none of my friends back in singapore needed to ask for money from their parents to buy a flat.

I think British people want it all and it is hard to square in our challenging economy, thats just my observation. They want low taxes, free healthcare, nuclear family living, to own 3 bed semi detached as a first home when on a very average income (in a country which isn't very rich when you take out london/the SE), good pension (without paying more NI and in ageing population), low immigration (when they have ageing population and many sick people and an economy where higher education is a big source of employment/gdp growth), great services (with low economic growth and american levels of taxes), minimal welfare (in an individualistic first world country where there is often little family collaboration). Something must give....

I cannot disagree with a word you said.

I find it very disturbing that anyone with even centre right opinions are often criticised as though those views are somehow "bad".

Local elections I have always voted Tory as we have had candidates which fully understand the issues facing rural areas, saying that in a neighbouring constituency there is a good Lib Dem but only for local issues, for everything else they are not so good!

I am not trying to say what you said was wrong per se but my earlier posts were trying to explain why the tories are still continuing with higher taxes, higher immigration etc.

It's because unless we dismantle our system and roll back time we cannot cut taxes. Immigration could be cut but it comes at a cost to our nhs and care system as well as the economies of our university cities (engine of growth outside London and se).

.Politicians who tell you otherwise that you can have low taxes and good services are lying charlatans.. there are probably smart things we can do to reduce the tax burden but they need to be careful, considered and well designed not just blanket slogans.

@Opalfleur2025 - def not saying you were saying I am wrong - we all have different opinions and healthy discussion is good!

@Opalfleur2025 all you have said is true, particularly about people wanting it all, I feel like we are very much living on past hard work of our ancsestors in the UK(and luck of being first to industrialise) and it is coming to an end. You are correct that the culture is very different in Singapore (thanks for the education) and they were coming from a different historical situation. My preference would be to move to a more contributory welfare system, there is also alot of waste in govt. I also think the days of state pension for all are over, likely will move to just those with no other income.

Well that was fun!
I ended up with yearly debt decreasing and a +41bn.

Not sure why as I gave more money to educ, nhs and defence but I did lower the starting tax to £0, kept the 2child policy and revised the UC threshold and inc corporation tax and other things.

Should I be chancellor?
Maybe, but I don’t think I’d be popular 🤣🤣

I think we have a brighter future than our European neighbours, we have a more healthy birth rate and people all over the world want to come here (we do complain a lot but we do vote with our feet so...)

The biggest crisis actually is mental health- it is the cause of many people not working which is a drag on the economy.. if they work, we probably dont need so many immigrants. The second biggest crisis is housing, we need to build more social housing and encourage renters to form coops and encourage intergenerational homes.. many on the left say the biggest crisis is inequality which I agree, it is a contributing cause of the above two problems but if people have decent affordable housing (which is the biggest cost) which the rich cannot buy and jobs, they are more protected from the knock on effects of inequality. The main issue with inequality is the rich buy up the housing and are good at structuring their taxes (so only paye higher income earners in london/se pay the bulk of the taxes and there aren't enough of them).. Affordable housing only for ordinary people solves problem 1. As for problem 2, we need tax reform but that is a global effort not just down to us
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The elephant in the room is the nhs and how to save it or salvage it into something worth keeping but that is a thesis in itself! I have no idea lol. What I do know is getting rid of it is a non starter cos we are too dependent.

That calculator really shows how much money goes into health and social care every year - its HUGE!!!! And it will only get worse as more and more of the huge boomer generation get into old age. But how anyone can say that the Conservatives have starved the NHS of money is beyond me. The NHS/social care is like a bloated whale, absorbing more and more money.

Govts have known about the boomer generation and low birth rate for years. As usual it is the lack of long term planning that's the issue - another thing Singapore is better at.

Exactly. Successive governments had access to all the data but just kicked the can down the road. It was all fine when there was a large generation working and paying tax and NI, it never seemed to occur to any of them that we’d get old.

I agree with this and I think demands to pour ever more money into the NHS are simplistic. I think the NHS is at the point where it literally does not matter how much money is spent, it will never be enough. One of my parents is at end-of-life care and has so far been transferred to three different hospitals (at a cost), all of which had empty beds (yes, really, we do not live in a city) seemingly because he was on the wrong 'pathway' at various points and had to be moved on. He is moving again to a nursing home this week, which is being paid for by the Goverment as he needs 24-hour care. As a layman, none of this makes sense to me and is racking up unnecessary costs.
The last few weeks have really opened up my eyes to the waste in the NHS and that needs to be properly tackled before any more money is allocated to be wasted.
I think 'more money for the NHS, pay nurses and teachers more and spend more on education' are easy tropes, but the details of how (and why/when) that should happen are not so easy to drill down

Yes, that's true. But they didn't know we were going to have a pandemic and a war in Ukraine and a cost of living crisis, etc. Brexit is entirely their fault and that has hammered our economy - but whatever had been planned in the past is largely irrelevant in the current economic situation - at least some of which could not have been foreseen.

The boomer generation getting old could have been foreseen for 70 years. The time to start addressing it was 50 years ago, not in the last five.

So, I was flirting with voting Lib Dem, the only alternative here in Surrey, but my God, what the hell is Ed Davey up to? He is making me cringe.

On another thread re Junior Doctors strike, NHS reform etc. I did find it rather ironic that those promoting JD's moving to Australia, and some of them were doctors themselves, in the same sentence, would not then countenance reform of the NHS. The hypocrisy of moving to an insurance/co pay system, because it works and pays better, and yet not wanting reform here, is astonishing.

I must politely disagree, @BIossomtoes. The Boomer generation getting old has been obvious (in a "water is wet" way) since they were born, what hasn't been obvious has been the plunge in birth rates. No developed county has worked out what to do about that or successfully identified what can be done, so population/economic growth assumptions that have underpinned postwar prosperity are looking distinctly shaky.

It’s too late now. Of course the governments of the 70s and 80s should have started planning for it and planned for the worst. The real problem with politics is that no party seems capable of thinking beyond the next election.

There is a great twitter page on what you can do with x minutes/days/ weeks of nhs spending

https://x.com/DaysofNHS?t=7u0euaJ9NO8br6OuqUEUew&s=09

E.g. The revenue of every university in the UK could fund the NHS for just 12 weeks

Every 9 weeks, the NHS spends the equivalent of the cost to build Hinkley Point C.

This new security package for Ukraine, priced at 3 billion a year, would fund the NHS for 6 days and 38 minutes per year - or 18 and a half days overall.

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What do we think of the show so far then peeps?
I think the Diane Abbott situation has the potential to define Labour's campaign if they are not careful and the whole thing is making me wonder how good Starmer would be in a real crisis if he is dithering about something like this.
Labour supporters are always criticising the way the pandemic was handled (with hindsight of course) and while it wasn't perfect by any means, it was unchartered waters. I have no confidence it would be any different whoever was in power, and Starmer's handling of the Diane Abbott 'crisis' makes me think he might have made a worse job of it!

Because our voting system doesn't give everyone an equal vote.

Labour and Conservatives should both be two separate parties.

The left and right of the Labour Party despise each other, how can they go co-exist? They can't, the right of the party just want the votes of the left and hope they have no sway beyond that. The left will never compromise on policy or principle and will sacrifice power for it.

In the Conservatives you've got the hard right of the party and you've got the centre-right/soft Tories. They're finding it increasingly difficult to coexist - Brexit being the breaking point. It was the same in the Major years and then under the next few years, until Cameron came in and was seen as electable.

If anything the Cameron wing of the Tories and the Blair/Starmer wing of Labour should be one party because they're more on the same page (the whole Change UK thing an example of that).

Cameron is much more right wing than Blair or Starmer.

What do we think of the show so far then peeps?

Well, to quote the late-great Eric Morecombe - “Rubbish!”

No one is exactly covering themselves in glory so far are they - the Conservative communications team have scored so many own goals (Rishi pictured by an Exit sign, Rishi in the Titanic museum); Starmer ‘s team completely fumbling to Diane Abbot saga; Ed Davey and his paddle boarding 🤦🏻‍♀️ Oh and if I hear Rachel Reeves story about watching her mum go through the bank statement line by line one more time I might scream!

5 weeks out and no sniff of a manifesto from anyone.

Ed Davey's mad photo ops just make them look like a joke party - the new monster raving looony or binface. Is Count Binface standing this time?

Labour seem increasingly shambolic. Saying whatever they think makes them look good, then changing their minds if it looks unpopular. Conservatives seem to be going all in for the elderly with nothing really for people of working age, families and the young. I understand that older people are a big demographic for the Tories, but worry that when this demographic inevitably die off, there will be no one to take their place. Lack of long-term thinking imo. Key conservative values are lost in the noise. The tactic seems to be to try to reclaim the wandering reform voters and to ridicule Starmer. But without a clear and appealing message to the rest of the country.