Why have the Tories mismanaged the country so badly? (title edited by MNHQ at request of OP)

[HebburnPokemon]

Genuinely interested in views on this: why have the Conservatives made choices to preside over the virtual demolition of this country? - to the point where they are facing the biggest defeat of their existence. They have not only damaged the country, they have destroyed themselves! This level of self-harm is unheard of.

I'm trying to make sense of it. Even Covid & Ukraine cannot explain the sheer degree of this implosion. This is not your bog-standard "political cycle" of ruling party enjoying a decade of power then inevitably falling out of favour. Lib Dem are on course to become the opposition ffs!

The rules were forced on us by your left wing media representatives.

Oh @Hepwo you're posting nonsense. Even you can't believe this tripe.

No they were forced on us by your right wing government. You know, the one that had just won a landslide.

What do you mean? The rules came from the government and in some cases were enforced by the police. Cummings was instrumental in policy at the time. Ergo people were angry and justifiably so.

I’m no Tory, but I suppose they were in power during unprecedented times.

Coronavirus.
Brexit.

They didn’t handle either very well, but I guess we’ll never know if Labour would have done any better.

The pandemic was a little microcosm of Tory ideology.

Did they prepare? Was the NHS in fighting fit condition? Did the Tories maintaib the preparation by earlier governments such as the Strategic Reserve of PPI? Did they buy PPI from established British companies with relevant expertise, did they use resources at British universities?

No.

They delayed everything

And paid over the odds for shit goods and services

Because their priority wasn't saving lives or economic prudence.

It was shoving as much public money into the pockets of their buddies as they could.

VIP Lane PPE, respirators made of Dyson hoovers, test and trace,...none of it was done for the good of the country and the amounts of our money paid out was eye watering.

You can't run a country like that.

Yes.

Labour were responsible for it along with a number of other countries who practiced too loose fiscal/monetary policy. When various Labour party politicians were talking about "it started in America" they were desperately trying to deflect attention from their own culpability. "No more (Tory) boom and bust" wasn't it if I remember rightly ? That really aged well.

They could have bucked the trend and held back the crack up boom that was caused in house prices which blew out in 2007 using various tools, either fiscal or monetary policy.

They didn't and we had to print enormous amounts of money as a result to try to starve off a depression. The effects of this put us on the trajectory to austerity in the 2010's and are still being felt today.

It's OK Liz. Your distraction technique is working and nobody's blaming you.

But they brought in Brexit by holding a referendum.

But they brought in Brexit by holding a referendum

A referendum they had to hold.
UKIP were becoming way too popular ( therefore powerful ) so the Tories thought. ‘oh give them their referendum - shut them up once & for all’

They never thought we’d vote to leave.

The Tories are responsible for the referendum whether they thought we'd leave or not.

The awful spectacle of left wing journalists queuing up to one by one, bristling with rage and venom, ask the same questions over and over of a father about why he took his sick wife and autistic child to stay with relatives for help was enough to make me realize hatred will always come first with a large section of the left.

Seriously. This is about Dominic Cummings? That's erm, imaginative.
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

The Labour government were not responsible for the crisis. The recession was caused by the housing bubble bursting in the US amongst other things.You could argue that banks should have been under stricter regulation, however, this is easy to say with hindsight and no other political party was arguing in favour of more regulation at the time. In fact, the Conservatives argued for less regulation of the banking sector. They've always stood for deregulation.

Satire surely?

😂

Yes, UKIP was so popular it got no seats in the previous year’s election. There was no necessity to have a referendum at all. Cameron was weak and wouldn’t stand up to the ERG extremists in his party. Some leader.

They chose Boris Johnson. Had they chosen an alternative Brexiteer things would be nowhere near as bad.

I think I’m a natural conservative, but I’ve just voted Labour for the first time in my life (postal vote). The reasons for my vote are:

Austerity. Once upon a time I used to say I could see the sense of austerity, if you don’t have the money then you shouldn’t spend it and we all need to tighten our belts til the crisis has passed etc. but now I can see how misguided that was. In many instances cutting services down to the bone has led to more problems - which ultimately costs the country more money - so much of austerity has proved to be a false economy.

Brexit - I most emphatically did not vote for this and I am still angry about it. The sheer arrogance of the Conservatives holding a referendum when they didn’t need to, the delusion of assuming the country wouldn’t vote leave. The Conservatives lost my vote at this point, but I think it was within their power to win me back, except for:

Boris Johnson - oh my God, where to begin? Way back in the day (before Brexit) I thought Boris was amusing, ho ho ho Boris Johnson, that’s about as much as I ever thought about him really. I guess it’s fair to say I wasn’t that politically engaged. After Brexit, I was not amused. When Boris won such a massive majority in 2019 I was appalled - and confused - my thinking was clearly at odds with the rest of the country’s. I didn’t understand how they could vote for this buffoon.

Under Boris things got worse almost immediately - mainly because of Covid. To be fair to the Conservatives, this would have been tough for any government to handle and, seeing as Labour were calling for longer, harder lockdowns, I think huge damage would have happened to the country whoever was in charge. However, I like to imagine that the incompetence (eg letting primary schools go back for one day and then locking down), corruption (eg PPE contracts) and hypocrisy (Partygate) were not inevitable. Surely we can get a better government than this?

So, what with the incompetent way they handled covid and all its attendant issues, the way they got rid of centrists like Rory Stewart, and the high handed contempt they showed (eg proroguing parliament), the Conservatives had well and truly pissed me off - and that was before the Liz Truss mini budget malarkey.

We can’t blame the Conservatives for the War in Ukraine, of course, but the resulting cost of living crisis, combined with high levels of taxation, is also adding to the general dissatisfaction with the current government.

I mean, the whole shebang is falling apart: the NHS, education, sewage filled rivers, you name it. They’ve had 14 years and look at the state we’re in - it has to be time to let someone else have a go.

I detest the Rwanda plan and I am unimpressed with gimmicks like National Service and the Conservatives are not exactly helped by the general stench of corruption (eg betting on the election date).

God knows what will happen under Labour - I’m a bit scared of what they’re going to do, but for the reasons given above, I’ve gone and voted for them now so fingers-crossed eh?

Yes. Shock as government actually allows a democratic vote on self determination.

Actually allowing people to make a decision rather than just being told what to do.

The irony is both Labour and the Lib Dems promised referendums at various points over the preceeding years. Labour refused to hold them. The Lib Dems never got the power to do so.

Labour had as much culpability as any other western government for the credit boom.

The Tories deregulated the market allowing the bubble to form. Basically that is true of many situations. When you push policy in a certain way eventually it gets taken to excess and it needs to be reversed.

When the bubble got too big Labour should have stopped it. They didn't. They rode the wave until it blew up completely.

Same with Right to Buy and building council houses. Thatcher may have actually started it. But Labour did nothing to reverse the process in their 10 years + in power. Isn't there a famous stat that Thatcher built more council houses in a single year than Blair did during his entire tenure ?

Why was that I wonder ?

Austerity. Once upon a time I used to say I could see the sense of austerity, if you don’t have the money then you shouldn’t spend it and we all need to tighten our belts til the crisis has passed etc. but now I can see how misguided that was. In many instances cutting services down to the bone has led to more problems - which ultimately costs the country more money - so much of austerity has proved to be a false economy.

Yes, the 'austerity' was aimed squarely at the most vulnerable in society and that's what I can't get past.

It was purely ideological. There isn’t a single economist who endorsed it.

Greed.

The failure was in the US in the first instance: no one disputes that. As explained, Labour did resist demands for more relaxed regulation and those demands came from the Conservatives. The banking failure in the UK would not have been prevented if Labour had adopted a different policy as the risks were not understood at the time and were as a result, systemic and not national.

Yeah. When their priority was so clearly, profiteering from a pandemic, scratching backs, feathering nests,and storing up favours it's a wonder the country got a look in at all.