Labour voters….

[CurlewKate]

…… what do we do now?

It's not quite what I said, and I certainly wasn't the only poster on mumsnet to agree with the other poster's point on that thread. Which also recognised that the electorate don't generally vote on a single issue. Which is common to this thread too.

I’m happy to give them time to turn things round. They inherited a broken bankrupt country. I’m in it for the long game. Trouble is we live in a world where people expect instant gratification. There were never any quick fixes and they did warn it wouldn’t be quick or easy

As an electorate, I think the opposite - after all did the country not persevere with the Tories, giving them 14 years to turn fortunes round? Patience is our virtue. No one is expecting quick change, but what no one expected is for things to go from bad to worse in such a short time. If this is their trajectory, I shudder to think what else is to come.

I would have absolutely agreed until the immigration speech. The fact that he could actually use language like that has shaken me.

@HappiestSleeping

Which also recognised that the electorate don't generally vote on a single issue.

Brexit is a single word, but if it wreaks the economy and makes everyone worse off, what were the other issues that were in the Liberal Democrat’s manifesto that were considered worse than being worse off?

My home county is Durham. For almost a century of Labour history (due to mining industry), it’s changed to Reform. So, pleased that my vote counted.

Reasons (in no particular order) why I voted for Reform are:

No tax for the first. £20K of income. If this gets people off benefits, it should cover the loss of tax and NI. Also remember, that the personal allowance has been stuck at £12,570 for a long time.

Scrap I35 for contractors. This makes it easier for contractors to work away from home.

No inheritance tax for estates up to £2 million. Assets that people have accrued throughout their lives have been paid from nett income after tax. So, to tax again seems double dipping.

Due to high cost of housing, many young people can only get on the property ladder with help from their parents. If the current young generation are unable to accrue assets, how will they be able to provide for themselves in old age and retirement?

This will increase the number of people relying upon help from local councils to fund health care and care homes. To cover costs, councils will have to increase council taxes even further.

As for immigration, yes it’s too high. However, look over the channel and it’s higher. UK comes in fifth after; Germany, France, Italy and Spain (in that order). So, I can’t see those countries agreeing to take more so that UK has less.

You'd need to ask someone who thought that there was anything worse than Brexshit. Quite frankly, at the time of the referendum, I thought it was the worst thing, and nothing that has happened since has changed my mind. I am not a big fan of the Lib Dems, but I would struggle to name any single item I think that they could do worse than the Conservative party did. Maybe they would do better than Labour, maybe worse, but at that time, I don't think anything mattered more than getting the Conservative party out.

And, of course, there have been several unpredictable events since then that have further compounded the problem. Ukraine, Covid etc.

*No tax for the first. £20K of income. If this gets people off benefits, it should cover the loss of tax and NI. Also remember, that the personal allowance has been stuck at £12,570 for a long time. *

It wouldn’t touch the sides

*Scrap I35 for contractors. This makes it easier for contractors to work away from home. *

Perhaps you could explain how.

No inheritance tax for estates up to £2 million. Assets that people have accrued throughout their lives have been paid from nett income after tax. So, to tax again seems double dipping

Most estates are predominantly due to property inflation, ie money that has never been taxed.

Due to high cost of housing, many young people can only get on the property ladder with help from their parents. If the current young generation are unable to accrue assets, how will they be able to provide for themselves in old age and retirement?
This will increase the number of people relying upon help from local councils to fund health care and care homes. To cover costs, councils will have to increase council taxes even further.

It’s unclear what point you’re making here or which policy you’re referencing.

@BIossomtoes

The personal tax allowance has been frozen for several years. This drags more people into paying tax with those at the lowest end of earnings affected the most.

Freezing the tax allowances is effectively a tax on inflation. Nobody should be taxed on what they can’t control.

If a job is inside IR35, it’s the same as PAYE regards tax and national insurance. Okay for permanent staff who intend to work for the same employer and don’t need to relocate and live in temporary accommodation.

For contractors who move around from one client to another for short durations, it’s not possible as they would be incurring costs of their permanent home and temporary accommodation at the same time. Outside of IR35, cost of travel and accommodation costs are tax deductible.

Property values are indexed to take into account inflation so that only the real gain is taxed.

IR35 also forces the contractor to pay employers nic as well as employee nic! It really doesn't equal the playing field to make them like a PAYE workers as some uninformed posters above seem to think. And yes to your examples of travel and accommodation costs - there's also equipment, insurances, professional fees etc which also makes it very different from ordinary PAYE workers.

@HappiestSleeping , if you think disenfranchised Conservative voters will vote Labour because TTK has made an effort to look like he gives a 💩 about immigration you’re in for a huge surprise. Getting rid of NHS England was an excellent move for which I applaud the Government but that’s very definitely not going to make me vote for them.

I think it will end up being Lib Dem vs reform. Labour have upset a lot of their electorate and that won’t be forgotten about.

I always vote Conservative and quite like Kemi but she seems really unpopular and unless they have a change of leader and/ regain in popularity again then I will be voting Lib Dem. Reform are way too far to the right for me and there is no way I would ever vote for Labour.

It was always very clear Labour were going to be a shambles of a Government. I and many others warned about the dangers of electing them, but all we got back was “I’m fed up of the Tories”. There is no purpose to Labour any more. Reform reflect the views of the traditional Labour voter far better with the Lib Dem’s catching their middle class, be kind contingent.

The world has changed - Labour are irrelevant and probably so irrelevant they’re not really fit to be the opposition party let alone in government, they don’t know what they stand for anymore. The Lib Dem’s would be even worse.

The best bet is for the Tories to keep centre but have a workable plan to combat immigration issues and tackle the integration issue of people, including 2nd and 3rd generation immigrants who are already here.

Reform do not represent Labour votors especially as they are mostly former conservative Party members

But a lot of Tory voters were previously Labour voters who have now moved to Reform instead. Labour did nothing to get them back over the past decade or two.

Isn’t Reform polling well in Wales, they will more likely be switching from Labour. I’m not sure they’re immune. Plus it’s the ‘red wall’ all three parties have tried to get or will try to at next GE.

I didn't say it would catch them, just that it is his intention. Tony Blair did the same thing in the 90s. They all do it to a greater or lesser degree, other than possibly Corbyn, who, much as he was unelectable for many other reasons, at least hoisted his flag and stuck to it.

Ultimately, there are so many broken things at the moment, no party will be able to fix them all, certainly not in a single term.

Edited to add - if immigration is your thing, Labour have done more about it in the last 9 months than the Conservative party did in the last 5 years. Whether you think what they've done is right or not is a different conversation, but more returns is inarguable.

I agree with this. If former traditional Labour voters switched to Conservatives then it's not a big stretch for those types of voters to switch to Reform. I would assume most of those types of Labour voters would be OK with that switch as Reform appear from the polls and local elections to appeal to them.

The types of Labour voters that probably won't change are the Guardian type metropolitan voters, most Muslim voters, the voters who are invested in the DEI system and trans etc (which old Labour voters will not be) and those that the unions support like doctors, train drivers, state workers etc. I'd assume they wouldn't want to vote against their own interests so will stick with Labour. Those are specific groups of people with specific interests. I don't think the rest of the country will go for Keir so it will be a numbers game. He's lost pensioners, farmers, anyone interested in preserving our countryside, wealthy people(and their taxes), private school parents, people hoping to pass anything on to their children, the private sector, business owners, kids hoping for a part time job etc.

As to alternatives to Labour and Conservatives, the Conservatives only have Reform whereas Labour voters have a few left/of centre parties to chose from eg Lib Dems, Greens, SNP etc.

The crossings have risen significantly since the election. So yes Labour have certainly done more about immigration.

Raising the tax allowance to £20,000 would cost 50 billions, I wonder how that would be funded. Liz Truss had a budget of £45 billion of tax cuts and we all know the result of that.
It’s like dangling a carrot for a donkey at the edge of a cliff.

The state needs to do much less, much better. Concentrate on what we need rather than spending vast sums setting up useless quangos so the government looks like its doing something. Far too many unprodutive managers. Bonfire of the quangos etc.

Then we should be allowed to keep more of our own money. It won't happen though. Because we are run by politicians.

What have Labour done? Apart from the last week when KS is all of a sudden “on it’” the subject of immigration has hardly been touched on and numbers have risen in the last year

Net though, more migrants have been procesed and returned. The important measure is not how many arrive, it is how quickly they are dealt with.

The obvious solution to preventing arrivals in small boats would be to enable the ability to apply for asylum before reaching UK soil.

Starmer has to move further to the right to catch the disenfranchised Conservative voters, without pissing off the usual Labour voters.

I think that about sums it up. Starmer is between a rock and hard place.

Voters like me would like to see him being more radical - public investment in services being top of the list. But he cannot go overboard on this without inviting accusations of financial irresponsibility.

What I do know is that any politician we vote in will not do everything we want - that is a fact of life - and I would rather have Starmer's decency at the helm than the nonsense we endured for 14 years from the other lot.

I think he is doing well on the world stage and showing statesman-like behaviour, something that has been in short supply from British politicians in recent years.

I am hoping that once Labour is bedded in they will start to tackle the things for which we voted them in: NHS, care reform etc.

I do not necessarily disagree with what they have done so far but feel these issues should have come further down the line after they had established their public service credentials - they have got the optics wrong I feel.

I agree. I could have understood it if he had said there was a need to be careful with immigration for the time being to preserve social cohesion while people were doing it tough but blaming immigrants for the UK becoming an “island of strangers” was a different kind of language.

People no longer talking to each other, mixing and knowing each others’ names is something that happens among UK born people too. People today no longer mix as much in general because of the impact of the internet, Netflix etc. In person, old style activities such as clubs, sport participation, volunteering, churches etc have all seen declines in membership. This is not good for mental health and has a far greater impact on people becoming relative strangers.