You should be ashamed of yourself if you vote Tory and…

[SasherinSuite]

Have children educated at state school
Use the NHS for ANY reason
Have children considering going to university
Have elderly parents who will require state support
Use public transport
Are a teacher, health professional, public sector worker
Live in rented accommodation
Are a low paid worker

You are a hypocrite of the highest order

Im not being dismissive.

I am thinking they have no principles.

HtH.

To paraphrase Bevan, the reason Thatcher got elected and the reason that bumclowns May & Co will get elected is the same - because the Tories are past masters of persuading poverty to keep wealth in power.

To paraphrase Bevan, the reason Thatcher got elected and the reason that bumclowns May & Co will get elected is the same - because the Tories are past masters of persuading poverty to keep wealth in power.
I was at university when Thatcher was elected. I didn't vote for her. One of my fellow students did. She said 'Things can't go on the way they are'. I was shocked. But we had just had The Winter of Discontent.
Rubbish piled high in the streets.

Rubbish piled high in the streets. Bodies not buried. Hard to get people to vote for the party that let that happen on their watch.
I didn't vote Thatcher but I can't be snarky about those that did.
It was only Smith and then Blair that undid that damage. The stupid war fucked all that up making them hard to trust again. But Corbyn is not the answer.

You see this is what scares the life out of me as a Labour voter all my life . And who has done my time knocking on doors and delivering leaflets. How do those who support corbyn think elections are won. They are won by converting Tories to Labour. So you can call people who vote tory shameful all you like but guess what you need them, its a bugger isn't it.
The political naivety of it.

Yeah, they created this narrative that striking workers meant the end of civilisation and also that what the workers were about was said end of civilisation which interestingly persists to this day.

So, given you don't think much of the Tories could you explain why you think people should vote Labour at the moment? I want Brexit sorted out, and no more flim flam about not respecting the referendum result. We're not going to get that from Labour, are we? They are all over the place, saying one thing one day, different the next. People like AC Grayling are telling people to vote LD or Labour tactically to stop Brexit. That's not going to persuade any leave voters to trust Labour, is it? And I'm afraid my overriding feeling is that a huge proportion of ppl on the left have spent the last year or so telling me I am some sort of deplorable. It's very hard to feel that these same people can now represent me and govern the country in the way I and people like me want. My instincts are on the left but I think Corbyn is a bit of a shower whilst the parliamentary labour party and those who have tried to get rid if him are manipulative, unpleasant and undemocratic. There seems little of appeal.

Anyway, Tories are always going to be better at persuading people to vote for them because that's all their campaigns are about - finding ways of getting votes in order to entrench privilege.

Labour, being a party of workers' representation and also having an ideology, is always going to be more diffuse and crucially as we are seeing with Corbyn can get so caught up in all that that the battle for hearts and minds gets a bit of a swerve.

Labour should be asking itself why it isn't convincing enough people. That may be true but I am not sure that now is the time.

To those who are left but loudly criticising and refusing to vote for Corbyn, you may not be voting Tory but you are making their win more inevitable.

That may be true but I am not sure that now is the time

I really couldn't disagree more. I think it's now or never really.

GetIn Could you explain some of the ideology to me? I always thought the Labour party stood for empowerment of the working man and woman, but clearly that is no longer the case.

Actually I think that Labour should be asking itself exactly that. The wider party has always been ragtag and radical but the PLP came into existence to represent the views of workers in Parliament. If they can't get elected, then they have failed in that. God knows I'm no fan of Blair but he absolutely understood this.

Wrongtrouser I would say that's still the case. What makes you think it isn't?

As for ideology, it's as I say diffuse but my own take on it is that Labour is about giving a voice to the people who are the wealth creators rather than the wealth owners, to ensure a fair wage and dignity for the working person and for collective endeavour to provide a democratic, fair society that ensures minimum standards of living such as shelter, healthcare and education together with true equality of opportunity.

Other people might think differently though!

I think that Labour would do well to trumpet their achievements in this area btw - for eg we'd have no NHS or paid leave if it wasn't for Labour.

I meant now is not the time to demand it. I don't think there is time or money to get close to the Tory level of sophistication of winning votes before the GE.

Well, because what I've been reading in the Guardian, Independent, New Statesman and elsewhere from ppl on the left, not it's true from official Labour party sources, (and the same has been said by a few pp on this thread) is that working people should not be empowered to make political decisions because they make the wrong ones - mainly re Brexit. I have read almost nothing about empowering ppl but endless reams about how ppl have been duped, are stupid, are un-educated, are racist, don't understand the issues or reality, shouldn't have been given the chance to vote on EU membership etc, etc. It is as if the left are interested in empowering only as far as ppl want the "right" outcome. As soon as there is a difference, that all seems to have gone out the window. Which is not really about empowerment.

Life time labour voter voting this election for conservatives because of Brexit...i get it

Life time labour voter voting this election for conservatives because they are disallusioned with labour policies or now prefer conservative policies or their circumstances have changed....i get it

I honestly don't understand why an apparently life time labour voter who has no problem with the party and its policies would jump all the way to the right without popping by lib dem or green , even if they dont like the labour leader

I honestly thought we were supposed to vote for the party and its policies not its leader...if it is just the leader then i have no idea who to vote for, i dont think i like any of them

I will admit i havent checked the manifestos recently so maybe labour and tory policies are more similar now

Get, Labour can't deliver with Corbyn. It's as simple as that. I don't think people are stupid and that is why I am certain that Labour won't win.
All the lovely messages about Labour 's history are what got Blair elected. That and being a centrist that seemed more trustworthy with the economy.

And so again I direct you to Bevan. There is a long and unglorious history of people voting for parties that are not in their best interests, because due to messages about aspiration/freedom they think they can have a slice of the pie. I'd never call someone thick for doing so though they've just hitched their cart to a different horse.

People just don't think along class lines in the way they did in Bevan's time. It is foolish to think they do.
More people own homes, have degrees, travel abroad, read up on the wider world. Trying to shove people back into a box marked "class" is a waste of time.

More people care about who can make a proper fist of the economy (or look less bad than the others). This election is about Brexit and nothing else. Don't even know where JC is on that.

People have always been aspirational. I agree that class distinctions are perhaps harder to spot now (probably why the tories will get in forever) but regardless of how many degrees a person has due to the expansion of higher education many are still on zero hours (ie the new version of the van at the end of the street) contracts and lots of white collar jobs are now minimum wage. The details have changed but the issues haven't.

As for home ownership, it's at the lowest level since the 70s and actually we are moving back to being a rentier economy except without the protections (rent controls and security of tenure) that there was in Bevan's time.

People don't see this, largely because Labour isn't pointing it out to them. It's frustrating.

Oh and people have always read up on the wider world. My grandaddy left school at 14 but he read all the classic literature texts and even though he never spent a night away from home he took the time to read about other cultures in encyclopaedia etc which arguably gave him a clearer view than fucking Chloe on her gap yah banging on about how poor people are so happy and life affirming.

m.youtube.com/watch?v=0M91g4OlGEY

fucking Chloe on her gap yah

It's exactly that kind of vile statement that makes me despair of the left - so much class hatred.

Right. So you think that Chloe on her gap year is going to solve all the problems associated with global inequality, despite the fact that she has none of the skills or knowledge (ie construction, tendering, sustainability) needed in order to build an orphanage or whatever the fuck else she's up to and also despite the fact that her poverty tourism has directly come about as a result of said global inequality? At least the people born into poor countries leave a small footprint.

And also at least my grandaddy understood that meddling without knowledge was harmful, rather than setting themselves up as saints in some pseudo wank version of colonialism and calling themselves enlightened.