Why do working class vote for Torries?

[ArvidsDaddy]

Apologies for being provocative. If what it said in the news is to be believed, I am puzzled by why the traditional Labour voters in the North (and South) would vote for the Torries? It is a bit like Turkeys voting for Christmas, both in the election and the Brexit vote. Lack of education? Lack of self-confidence? Lack of empathy?

‘Benefit fraud only accounts for a small portion of welfare payments’ - true, but what about all the people who are legitimately claiming benefits but are perfectly capable of working? Bearing in mind you are legitimately ‘disabled’ if you are an alcoholic, or addicted to heroin. That you can be ‘too ill’ to work because you have a bad back?

Lib Dems are banging on about free life long education - it shouldn’t be free forever. You will get people starting and dropping out of courses because they can’t be bothered right now, why would they both, they can do it next year again. Imagine how much that would cost, for no benefit.

Labour talk about putting minimum wage up, with no mention of how it will affect cost of living - people on minimum wage would still be poor, but because food, meals out, petrol, childcare, public transport, clothes etc would be made more expensive the people on above minimum wage would also be skint.

I don’t particularly like conservatives at the moment, but I think I like them more than the alternatives.

Lack of education? Lack of self-confidence? Lack of empathy?

Being patronised by lefties with this kind of insulting attitude? Left-wing parties are dying across the world because they have nothing but contempt for their traditional voters, and those voters have noticed!

Labour keep the poor poor and reliant to maintain their voter base.

@GotAnyGrapes17 But why are these people continuing to make poor life choices, as you put it? It'd be better to fund support for people to look for jobs (if they're able) and improve education and self-esteem and raise wages so people can actually afford to live if they work. It's not benefits that's the problem, it's the low wages meaning it's not worth it for some. (Same as high cost of childcare meaning some women don't work even if they want to). Incidentally, I'm really in favour of the universal basic income. I think it could revolutionise how we work, the benefit system, parental leave etc and solve many many problems.

(And I live in one of the most deprived towns in the south west, just for clarity)

Understand the damage labour policies will do?

What like the horrific ones the Tories have inflicted upon people for 9 years?

I truly cannot get my head around why anyone with a single sensible thought in their brain would want to allow this government to continue in power. What with the 4 million children in poverty, the preventable deaths from austerity, the mental health crisis, the horrendous underfunding of the NHS, schools, firefighters, police. Like, are you dead inside or something?

Oh and a question I’ve been asking for a week: where is the Russia Report?

@posterBluntness100 Definitely not intending to be offensive; rather, as I said, trying to be provocative. Let me try to be more so, as follows.

1. I don't think that it is offensive to say that the working class are associated with voting for Labour, traditionally.
2. Niether is it offensive to point out that the rich have better access to education opportunities (i.e. public schools which lead to top ranking universities).
3. It is also not incorrect to say, according to the statistics after the referendum/election, that the younger, better educated portion of the population are more left-leaning.

These are facts, and I am merely puzzled while seeking an answer. No offence intended - I hope we could discuss this openly.

Right to buy was a massive factor in the growth of support for the Tories in working class communities. So many people in the industrial town where I grew up in Derbyshire bought their council houses - including members of my own family. It transformed lives and communities and it transformed aspirations for their children.

Middle class people simply don’t understand the difference between the aspirational ‘respectable’ working class who want to better themselves, and the underclass who don’t.

Some appalling stereotypes on here of the "deserving" and "undeserving" poor type.

On paper I should be a Tory voter: university educated, higher rate tax payer but I wouldn't dream of voting for them in the upcoming election. Their policies have caused massive hardship and the gap between rich and poor has widened massively.

I can also say from personal experience (my father became disabled, my mother was his carer) that even under what might be called a "true" Labour government (I.e.not Blair) in the mid to late 70s life on benefits was shit. It's far, far worse now.

I do agree with @MustardScreams - I cannot see how someone can have empathy and compassion and continue to vote for this government.

Just for a bit of perspective for the ‘damage caused by benefit cuts’ argument. One of my relatives was ‘disabled’, and decided she couldn’t work. She received disability payments for a while, it was then decided she was capable of working (she was) so the disability portion of her benefits stopped. She appealed and eventually received £6000 in back payments - £6000. She went on a drink and drug binge and ended up in hospital having fits and convulsions.

Overly generous benefit systems cause harm. You want to build confidence and self esteem in people? make them go to work. Work gives people purpose, pride, they pay for stuff themselves, they have something to talk about, they respect things more because they’ve paid for it.

I grew up on a council estate, I now work with people who struggle to function and need help with things most of us take for granted. I work with a man with moderate learning difficulties - he works in a garden centre. If he can, why can’t someone with a bad back work in a shop? I work with a 17 year old mum who volunteers during the time her son’s dad has him, she’s got purpose and aspiration - why can’t the mum of school age kids do something productive to give back to society with her time?

I agree those things are not offensive op, I never said they were. What I said was offensive was your reasons in your op.

it puzzles me why such working people with middle class financial capacities would vote for a party that perpetuates a system lacking in empathy and encouraging meanness.

Because they're ok and don't care about anyone else.

@Kungfupanda67 I don't disagree that working is best for most people. But most people on benefits DO work. They just get paid awfully for it. (Or not paid at all, in my current situation but that's another story!)

One example of someone abusing the system doesn't mean we should scrap the system. This sounds like my boss who thinks because one person pulls a sickie, none of us should get sick pay.

There's wannabe middle class types, the ones that think by voting Tory it puts them in a higher order.

I know lots of working class military that vote Tory because they associate Tories with being pro military but don't bother to look into and understand what the Tories have done to the military over the last decade. Plus many point blank refuse to vote for Corbyn, again largely out of misunderstanding and ignorance.

Massively generalising obviously.

@Itsjeremycorbynsfault

Yes you are correct, I claimed housing benefit, and then further down the line, tax credits and working tax credits. There is no shame in being entitled to support you bettering yourself.

The difference is, I have always worked. I've never claimed Income Support/ job seekers.

Tax credits supported the child care that I had to pay when working full time.

I am not sneering in the slightest, bit there has to be some motivation to press on with working your way out of benefits.

@AgeLikeWine Calling any people 'the underclass' is pretty lacking in empathy.

I do get the argument that reliance on benefits is dreadful. However, I argue that it is the lack of empathy and real opportunties that leads to such visciously hopeless cycles. It is not the Labour but the Tories that would like to keep people worse off - which makes people weak and submissive, keep making poor choices, and thus powerless to strive for better. I think it is a Tory mentality - perhaps demonstrated in some of the posts here - that one can only prosper at the expense of others, and that once one prospers, they can only keep it by keeping others from sharing the prosperity. That is, Tories and their policies are mean. They try to make you believe that it is necessary, if you would like to prosper.

@fromthefloorboardsup I 100% agree with pretty much every aspect of your post.

The real problem is that a full time minimum wage requires subsidising by the state. There is no shame in earning minimum wage....if you work full time, you should be able to be self sufficient and not need had outs. Unfortunately this is not the case. I don't know the answers to how we change that. What I am sure of is that it will not come from a Labour government, in particular, a Labour government as Labour is today.

@fromthefloorboardsup no, one example shouldn’t, but it’s not one example, it is so wide spread.

If labour planned on increasing in work benefits, I would support that. I completely agree that people who work full time should have some quality of life and not be worrying how they’re going to feed their family at the end of the money.

Like a previous poster said I think it’s the difference between the working class, who work and contribute to society, teach their kids that they can work hard and earn nice things, and the under class, who make the choice to live on benefits and teach their children the same. And there are whole estates and families who have generations living like that.

The class system is so outdated in terms of financial capability and potential. There are far more traditional middle class people voting labour than ever before. Perhaps a very comfortable upbringing and no major worries throughout their entire lives (more time to think) has meant they are able to demonstrate more empathy to those less fortunate and feel strongly about fighting for a cause, going against the grain, against their parents views.

A working class person working long hours in a manual job getting up at 5am and not home until late will find they have nothing in common with many of the 'luvvie' type labour supporters. The champagne socialists and entitled students have completely alienated many labour supporters.

@Kungfupanda67

Great post. And this is the point I was trying to make (probably not as well as you did).

I work in the social/public sector, there are people that want to work and strive to better them self's, and people that don't. Simple as.

@GotAnyGrapes17 But you're lucky that you were able to get a job. My dad had always worked until his company went into administration in 2008 and he got no redundancy pay, no notice pay, no pension etc. He had to get job seekers because although he tried his absolute hardest he couldn't get a job for over a year. He was in his 50s, no one would look at him. Eventually he got a low paying job but Jobseeker's Allowance helped him to carry on enough to get that job. It was also still nowhere near enough money to support a family. There was no question of just living on it. But it was there to help in a time of desperate need. You talk about JSA like it's something to be ashamed of. I think if you've managed to always be employed you are lucky (I am also in this group but I am still youngish). Some people are not so lucky even if they have worked hard all their lives.

Equally my DP's dad was in the army and killed himself because of the lack of mental health support. DP's mum was left with 5 children. She worked really damn hard but she needed help and I'm glad the state was there to help them out.

Reading about poor people's lives before the welfare state is truly horrendous.

I think in the more recent past the tory party has been considerably closer to the centre. OK they're more right wing under Johnson, but under Cameron they were much more moderate. They appealed to working class people by doing things like increasing the personal allowance, scrapping tax reliefs for landlords so they didn't have an advantage over first time buyers and increasing stamp duty on second homes, and helped small business owners out by doing stuff like cutting national insurance when they took on their first staff member. They didn't just have policies that helped the rich - they were targeting ordinary people.

They're a different party now, some of the loonies that Cameron managed to successfully keep under cover have managed to break out into the public eye! But I think there will be plenty of working class, traditional labour voters who still vote for them because they voted for Brexit and feel like they're the best option if they want to leave the EU.

It's an awful lot more nuanced than you're making out. I'm always perplexed by people who think it's as clear cut as 'vote Labour if you're a good person', 'vote tory if you're rich, evil or stupid'. You must know it can't be as simple as that!

@fromthefloorboardsup you don’t like the term underclass, what do you prefer? Underclass was used by sociologists the new class structure in the uk. They’re not working class, the majority don’t work - they live on a mixture of benefits and proceeds of crime, their children aren’t read with at home, they don’t attend school regularly, their parents don’t tend to value education, they don’t contribute to society, many have drink and drug problems. It’s a separate demographic to the working class, and it’s been created by having an option to rely on benefits for your whole life