Labour, Conservative... Can someone summarise them I am confused!

[Missetch]

I don't know where to start with supporting either and it's probably because I feel overwhelmed with what they stand for...

I could do with a nutshell version of them to help me decide who I want to support...

Can anyone help?

Are you expecting an unbiased response on MN?

Anything really...

Oh I see! but yeah as biased as you like!

Labour - for the many

Conservative - for the few

Howzat?

Or as my Dad explained it to me when I was 6

Labour is for the working man or woman. The Tories are for the rich.

Labour - metropolitan elite, PPEs, millionaires and luvvies who claim to have ordinary people's interests at heart

Tories - metropolitan elite, PPEs, millionaires and luvvies who claim to have hardworking people's interests at heart. Modernisers, so very similar to Labour PPEs etc

UKIP - party of the people, for the people, by the people. Very few PPEs, no luvvies, a few millionaires.

In more detail

Labour - nanny state, welfare party, higher taxation, dumbing down, lowering of aspiration, emphasis on community rather than individual and less interested in freedom, liberties and self-determination, more interested in equality and equalisation

Tories - nanny state, lower taxation, aspiration, emphasis on individuals rather than community and more interested in freedom, liberties and self-determination

UKIP - common sense party, cut the green crap, lower taxation, self-determination

Well a Labour government would not have done the cruel Bedroom Tax
The excesses in welfare changes that Iain Duncan Smith has done.

Or given people on 150 grand a year tax cuts.

Labour would probably have had a similer number of women in the Cabinet (Because they have many more women MPs than the Tories.

To be fair to the Tories, who are not a fair party. Thye will opt for compulsory female candidate lists (eventually)

What Claig said.

Labour used to stand for working people but not since new labour.

Prepare to be even more confused.

Labour - state should provide
Conservative - state should enable people to provide for themselves

Which is what claig said really....

And digdeep - why should the state (ie me) fund spare bedrooms for people who have got more bedrooms than people, when I can't afford enough bedrooms in the house I work hard to pay for?

On a more useful tack, you could take a look at the 'Voting Counts' website. What you are seeking is unbiased information, which you are unlikely to find in this Forum. Good luck.

Well , serious political parties always want to win. Opinion polls are very powerful these days. (Cameron sacked mate Gove because of them)

The Tories never won a majority with the support of some working class people.

In the 1960s the research showed women voted Tory in large numbers.
Double what men did.

Anyone know what the current research shows on this gender angle?

( I am not an activist but take a serious interest) I would vote GREEN if they had any chance of winning. But will stay with Labour. Never voted Tory or Lib-Dem

SORRY.....I meant "The tories never won an election WITHOUT the support of some working class people"

You're likely to be trampled by a stampede of hobby-horses if you stick around here. As you can see, it's started already.

My perspective is that the Tories encourage individual responsibility. Work hard, study hard, strive to better yourself. In general, the Tories support privatisation and have a core belief in the importance of the free market economy. There's less of a desire for red tape, government intervention or hand-outs.

Labour: far more reliance on the state. Less of a 'get up and go' attitude. More of a belief in mediocrity. People aren't expected to take responsibility for themselves as there's always a safety net.

UKIP: racist, bigoted, ill-conceived and ill-thought out policies. Designed to exploit the fears of the less well educated.

What FreckledLeopard said.

Makes me laugh when people day Tories are for the rich!

Tory governents traditional enourage personal GREED
And GREED is not really very good.

Any modern society needs a "safety net" Unless the government backs FOOD BANKS on every street corner in poorer districts.

David Cameron recently tapped up billionaires for his Tory party.

ETON is not a comprehesive school It is full of toffs who invade Tory Cabinets.

Added tp this the Tories win most seat in rich areas and Labour tends to win in poorer. areas. We could site SURREY Barnsley.

There is the odd exception. If you are interested you can check the Times Parliament book with results of 2010 election. Esther McVey has a scouse accent. That is amusingly different for a Tory minister.

Politics has an amusing side. But I have never fealt a great thrill pf power when casting a vote. Mumsnet has more clout than my vote

I am sure I am now going to be lectured about the 80 marginal seats
which decide elections.

That is what the main parties say. And you can beleive them on that.

I livie in a "marginal" seat. Makes it more interesting Camerooney and Ed Miliband will turn up to do some propoganda.

I dont like year long election campaigns where all leaders do things for the headlines.

Are you lot Marginal or safe seats. (Any party members posting on mumsnet? (Not Dave, Ed and Nick anonymously surely?)

Missetch ....Labour has an anti business, tax everyone high and spend like a drunken sailor in a brothel ideology that fails every time and left an economic and social basket case in 1979, and another one in 2010, and THEN the Conservatives have to take the tough decisions to sort it out.

Labour supporters have to blame the Conservatives ‘helping the rich’ which is rollocks, as the 50p tax rate they introduced by Labour after 13-years in power raised nothing, and the rich are paying more taxes under the Coalition, than under Labour e.g Brown lowered Capital Gains Tax down to a tapered 10% and left it at 18%, why, if not to help the rich?

Read the open post from this link; it takes a specially type of incompetence to take the fastest growing economy in Europe they inherited in 1997, and hand over what they did in 2010 via THE POLICIES THEY INTRODUCED.
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/politics/2049409-Do-you-think-Labour-DESERVES-to-get-a-majority-in-2015

We had the Labour ‘thickies’ introducing these policies, as usual it takes Conservative ‘brains’ to get the economy back on track.

Here was Labour’s 2010 General Election manifesto, do you see any policies to build the social homes available that were less in 2010 than when they came in despite all the increases in government spending? A policy to CREATE private sector jobs they lost (many before the 2007 crash) as they increased public sector jobs by 1 million funded by taxes that were decreasing?
Labour’s 2010 General Election manifesto – at a glance.
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/election_2010/8615297.stm

I could go on, but this is proof they had NO ANSWERS to the problems they created, and only those with blind ideological faith would think that mass immigration (mostly non EU citizens) living and working here under Labour HELPED the working classes of the UK.

All of the problems the Coalition have had to fix e.g the LACK of bedrooms for 5 million waiting for social housing, CAME from a 2010 Labour government, NOT the ones from 1997 the Conservatives handed to Labour.

ME BUT I suppose these things are are up to a point a matter of opinion

But some say the BEDROOM TAX has driven poor people to despair and even suicide. And benfit suspensions which have taken MONTHS to put right have caused similar distress. Duncan Smith does not face public questions very often, And is said to bend the truth in his statements on the failings of his new system THE POOR DO MATTER what ever Tories.

I have missed the Test Captin cook still in?

Digdeepforanswers …… OK so you do not disagree with the total eco social Horlicks Labour left, but disagree with ‘the Bedroom Tax’ the coalition brought in.

Four years on, I have to admit I’m with the Lib Dems on this, the figures show it has not worked as planned, so with harry-hindsight it was a bad policy, but lets look at WHY such a desperate policy was introduced.

According to the charity Shelter’s figures I could link to, in 2010 there were 1.7 million families (5 million people) desperate for social housing. According to various sources I have heard, there were over 800,000 to 1 million spare bedrooms not used by those who were in them.

Surely any socialist would agree that helping the MANY without bedrooms (or in bad housing) was more important than allowing the FEWER with spare bedrooms to remain in them, when like everything else the coalition inherited, URGENT action was needed, with no plans left by Labour to BUILD more social homes – and a honking £157 billion overspend to sort out.

So this was the problem, the coalition had to hit the ground in 2010 running and to them this seemed a short term solution to HELP the homeless recorded by Shelter, so any accusation they did this for anti poor ideological reasons is both pathetic and baseless when looking at the demand for homes they inherited.

After 4-years, I have no idea how many of those waiting now have homes, but it is clear there were not enough homes for those with spare bedrooms to trade bedrooms down to.

Every government makes mistakes, but this was one out of immediate desperation to give the homeless homes that suited NOW, not a policy by design.

And frankly I’d be more peed off at the government who KNEW they were encouraging mass immigration, were told in 2004 PRE via the Barker Report (with no idea of the immigration to follow), they had to build TWICE as many homes per year as they ever did, so left this problem in 2010 – and blames the coalition for todays housing markets/crisis.

But who am I kidding, voters always punish the political party that has to sort out the problems, not those who are incompetent in the GOOD and bad times and pretend they have a money tree to sort them out.

Missetch ..... basic Conservative ideology; the size and cost of the State should be where it NEEDS to be to do it’s job, not sucking in more and more taxes from everyone, as ‘the people’ should be able to keep as much as they earn as possible, but not lower their expectations on what the State provides from cradle to grave.

They also believe the State should help individuals to help themselves via a good education and a thriving private sector that creates sustainable employment, not nanny them via a State than can only function by the taxes from businesses and those employees, and condemn them to welfare dependency, often for generations.

Note that Labour left a £157 billion annual budget DEFICIT, now down to just over £100 billion, that on the cumulative national debt, of £1.3 trillion, CURRENTLY costs the taxpayer £52 billion a year, in interest charges alone.

Labour believe in NONE of the above, which economically and socially is why the economy tanks under the weight of debt when they leave power. Look at the last time they left power with employment HIGHER than when they took over.

Look at the tax rates for everyone they left in 1979, and in 2010 they said a new Labour administration would spend MORE on a fat State with a £157 billion deficit, and tax MORE, but as the government in power for 13-years REFUSED to tell the people in 2010 where those extra taxes would fall - when the size of our annual £157bil overspend could be nowhere near covered by taxing the rich, as the tax take of next to nothing via a 50p income tax rate proved.

Labour proved in 13-years just throwing money at sectors without reform did not work, but they are not used to managing an economy in deficit (likely to be around £100 bil in 2015),

So under Labour we will once again get inefficient and expensive government, much higher taxes for everyone (they alluded to in 2010), and a national debt going ever higher – taking more and more interest charges out of ANNUAL government budgets and leaving the estimated 1.5 trillion debt itself, to our grandchildrens grandchildren to be paying it off.

I think the poor matter. And the Conservative party has historically been linked to the RICH

Isitmebut....All the papers are talking up Puting and Regan today.Do you think it could be a major world catastrophe. Or will it be like the
last malaysian plain which ditched? Has not been found and our press have dropped it.

Still I suppose the Word NEWS does come from NEW so the papers have a point.
Since Murdocks sun went big you cant tell the broadsheets from the tabs. Torygraph and Guardian headlines follow the SUN But the broadsheets use bigger words in the articles.

Of the columnists TORY I like the people who think forthsemselves Mathew Parris, Oborne and Widdecombe, but NOT Max Hastings . Too dogmatic. Max thinks hes right when hes wrong.

Labour Lib columnists? Young Alan Jones is the unofficial opposition. But he takes it very seriously. Writes well. Hope he isnt daft enough to be an MP.

Polly Gruniad. Is full of compassion BUT she did recommend a Lib-Dem vote in 2010 ( she meant well, but she wont do it again|)

ALL HEAD and no heart makes very callous politicians in my view. But it is a matter of opinion

Someoneond said to me the other day "You are the last one who reads newspapers. " Not really, the dailies sell 10 to 13 million a day.

But the Sundays have a less Tory bias. Keep reading and writing.