Voting if you’re classed as high earning

[time2changeCharlieBrown]

just wondering if you earn high or wealthy who will you vote for?
I’m not wealthy but we both do have a higher than average income, however 7 dependents and a large mortgage takes everything!! So on paper we may look it
but realistically we budget for everything

anyway we live in a wealthy area with a lot of rich people (a lot lot better off than us, as far as I can tell anyway )
and they all said not voting labour as would be bad for them and all now detest the tories so all going Lib Dem or reform they keep asking me but I said I don’t know and I still don’t

got to say I’m not as clued up on politics as them and I struggle with understanding it all and what to believe
(maybe none) any one help me get a better understanding, everything I read I find overwhelming

Reform

DH is a high earner.
We will vote Labour, in my case with a lighter heart than under Corbyn.

Starmer is canny and understands that first you need to get in power before you can do anything. He knows he is trying to hold together a broad group of traditional working class labour voters and a bunch of new champagne socialists and starry eyed young voters bent on "social justice". He is keen not to alienate any of those groups which is why he appears to not have any strong beliefs himself and feels hard to pin down.

I work in education at local authority level and the Tories have ruined it. Decimated local authority funding. Destroyed services. Made the curriculum so bloody hard and packed that it is causing mental illness in teachers AND children. The rate of "school refusal" has grown virtually exponentially. Ed psychs have been cut so far that there is no early intervention and they are all stuck in EHCP assessments so all leaving. Speech therapists so overstretched that no one gets effective support. Special schools forced to academise to be allowed to expand. Now we have these academy chains run by business people with no clue about education on enormous salaries.

I can't believe so many people are voting Reform. After That Man destroyed our country with Brexit.

Oh and wrt "trans kids" - I am quite hopeful that this has been a social contagion and is already dying a bit of a death amongst teens. I am far less concerned about adults deciding to ruin their bodies. I suspect legislation will be kicked into the long grass on that front. Fingers crossed.

Labour.

I think the tax thing is a bit of scaremongering, tbh - Labour have been more transparent than any of the other parties on what they will do with a number of taxes, including the big one (income etc).

Rebanding houses for council tax is something none of them have said they will do but it desperately needs doing. It is ridiculously out of date and unfair and I would welcome anyone trying to modernise it.

Even if I do pay more in tax under Labour I would also welcome that if I got decent public services back from it. Right now I pay about £20,000 a year in direct taxes and probably another £10,000 in indirect ones (that 2nd figure is definately a finger in the air guess!) and appear to get sod all. I cannot see my GP, my family is waiting months for potentially life altering treatment, the rivers and seas are full of actual shit, the roads are a disgrace and I've had them twice damage my car, the council collect ever decreasing amounts or types of rubbish/recycling so I now have to take my own recycling on a 20 mile round trip to dispose of it responsibly, the justice system is on it's knees:

• True story on that, I helped detect a serious digital sexual crime 4.5 years ago. I literally only just got an email from the police telling me it might go to court. 4.5 years to go from someone being caught dowloading illlegal material to it going to court.

Back on tangent, I want someone serious back in charge of the country. Starmer may not be the messiah we all need, but I am sure as hell going to give someone else a shot and he's the most serious option with the best chance.

I'm actually going to disagree with myself a bit here because I have only really just thought through the impact on select committees. Wouldn't affect what legislation gets passed or the actual business of the House but they do provide a useful scrutiny function, particularly about broad issues and the performance of government departments.

So while it makes little to no difference to the business of the HoC, the role of select committees would be watered down with a very large majority without an increase in smaller parties.

However the projected increase in the Lib Dems and potentially Reform would offset the Tory/SNP decline quite a bit. So after the 2019 election, you had 266 "non-party of government" MPs for select committees to be drawn from; using the YouGov MRP as a fairly central (but gloomy for the Tories) projection you'd have 206 - so enough for functioning and useful select committees, just drawn from a broader political base.

Labour.

Lib dem as no chance of labour in our area. I've always voted not conservative but often struggled with the alternatives.
I actually like Keir Starmer. He's not a great politician but I think he is genuine and honest (enough) I don't think he as self serving as many others.

@marciaa

I can't vote Labour or Lib Dems due to their treatment of women and children. It's going to be Reform for me.

Based on their opinion of women?

Current Reform candidate Ian Gribbin said the below and is still standing for the party.

Thoughts on the below? I presume you weren't aware of a standing member of the party saying all of the below. He believes that you are subsidised by men to merely breathe. And that healthcare should be less available to women as they have a longer life expectancy but pay less tax as a sex class.

If you have daughters or other young women in your life who you love, do you think it's right to vote for a party with a candidate who has such clear disdain for women yet retains the party's full support? As mentioned I can only hope you weren't aware of this...

Mr Gribbin wrote online that womenn were the “sponging genderr” and should be “deprived of health care”.

The previous month he criticised women, the BBC reports, posting on the site’s message board: “Do you think you could actually work and pay for it all too like good citizens?
“Men pay 80% of tax – women spend 80% of tax revenue. On aggregate as a group you only take from society.

“Less complaining please from the ‘sponging gender’.” He added that women are “subsidised by men to merely breath (sic)”.

He reportedly wrote in December 2022: “Men pay 80% of tax. Women take out 80% of expenditures.

“Square that inequality first by depriving women of healthcare until their life expectancies are the same as men, Fair’s fair.”

I think he's a better politician than Rishi Sunak!

Everybody should vote selfishly and then it will automatically result in a government that represents the majority of people.

Trying to second guess what's in somebody else's best interests is foolish.

This is the closest we've ever got to voting Labour but we are not confident enough about their strategies to fund all the promises. We're fine with Keir but don't want to risk Corbyn.

I don't work, dh is in top 0.1% but our adult kids are only just starting out.

We want a fairer country with an NHS fit for purpose but we also realise there's a line to be crossed with the highest earners- there has to be an incentive to stay.

Labour. I would never ever vote Conservative.

If you vote Labour why on earth would you be worried about Corbyn?!

Corbyn’s not even a Labour candidate. He’s gone.

Labour isn’t making any promises. Every other party’s manifesto contains far more policies with cost implications. The biggest criticism of the Labour one is that it’s way too cautious because Reeves is hellbent on killing the myth that Labour is fiscally incompetent.

LibDem, primarily because we think Labour is not being honest on Europe or the economy (and the whole "mandate for growth" is such a meaningless truism that it is off putting).

DH is Mr 40%, he’s definitely voting Labour.

I’m in the Carer’s Allowance (so bugger all) earning bracket, and I’m voting Labour too.

Thank f*ck DH has a good job or we’d be completely fucked.

BIWI
Ah yes. The Jeremy Hunt who has so much more financial and economic experience than Rachel Reeves

I would say so. Your copy and paste confirms that Jeremy Hunt co-founded a successful business which was later sold for over £30 million, netting him a personal profit of over £14 million - whereas Rachel Reeves' and her team at HBOS lost money and market share due to pricing errors. It's all very well learning economic theory but Rachel Reeves hasn't been successful in the real word.

in the real world

@BIossomtoes "We're fine with Keir but don't want to risk Corbyn."

How do you think we might end up with Corbyn? (Not meant to be antagonistic- I really don't understand how it might happen.)

It wasn’t my post. It was in one I responded to. My point was exactly the same as yours.

@BIossomtoes Many apologies! I was a little surprised.....

REAL High earners are not voting for Labour I can tell you that for nothing!!

Hi LHQ! 👋🏻

I mean, surely two seconds' thought shows that a selfish vote is one that ends up with a fairer, more sustainable society for everyone so that people don't grow up in abject poverty and misery. Just makes for a nicer life all round.

@ohthejoys21
"We're fine with Keir but don't want to risk Corbyn"

How do you think you might end up with Corbyn? I genuinely don't understand this point.

John Caudwell and Jim Ratcliffe too poor for your tastes?