I’ve always felt that Labour can’t be trusted – they might claim to have the interest of the disadvantaged at heart, but I’m not sure I’ve ever seen the evidence.

Pick a town in the north that had been decimated by Fatcha and go for a walk around it. You’ll see schools and hospitals and all those kind of important things, all built under Blair and Brown. Would they have been built under 13 years of the Tories? Of course they wouldn’t! The Tories would have just started their austerity agenda of dismantling the social fabric 13 years earlier.

These things aren’t specifically there for ‘the disadvantaged’, they’re there for everyone. We all benefit through this infrastructure investment as a society. Well… all of us who can’t afford private education and healthcare, anyway

Would the labour party, Blairite or otherwise, bring in policies like the bedroom tax? The shambolic misery of universal credit? Or a system which actively persecutes the disabled? I very much doubt it

I’m a member of the Labour Party and my other half claims to be non political. Except that I know she is a bit of a closet Tory. Why? Because despite the fact she is more likely to agree with a more left wing policy agenda, she feels the Tories are more competent.

Without asking them all, it’s an impossible question to answer.

As I’m sure you knew when you posted it!

I don’t accept that it’s an impossible question to answer as it was worded in order to gauge what someone’s opinion might be. I wasn’t looking for any sort of absolute answer. My point it that people generally vote in their own self interest. Whether that is on the right as they feel that they will be richer as a result or for the left as they feel that there should be more a redistribution of wealth so that they are better off.

It’s not so much about would Labour voters be prepared to pay more tax, it’s more about the corporations that pay sfa like Amazon, Google, Facebook

or in other words “someone else”. Were these companies to pay more in taxes then yes there would be more money going into the government coffers but we had better all be prepared for our pension pots to be worth a lot less as a consequence.

Pick a town in the north that had been decimated by Fatcha and go for a walk around it. You’ll see schools and hospitals and all those kind of important things, all built under Blair and Brown.

I was back in my home town not that long ago and I saw precious little evidence of schools and hospitals from the Blair/Brown era.

all built under Blair and Brown.

Under an incredibly expensive PPP contract?

It’s a lot more nuanced than you portray – to hear you speak you’d assume the Tory party had never built a school.

I can’t understand why the Lib Dems aren’t more popular. OK, there was the blip with the coalition, but generally, they seem slightly left of Blair/Brown to me and they’ve had some genuinely likeable leaders.

Virtually the first thing the Tories did when they got in was to close down all the Sure Start centres that the labour government had built. To me, that pretty much summed up the difference in priority between the two parties

The Tory party believes the public sector comprise of a couple of rooms full of people doling out contracts (and billions of quid) to Virgin, Capita and G4S

To me, that pretty much summed up the difference in priority between the two parties

Yes – and just as it was starting to show the benefits too.

People* don’t vote Tory because they want to stick it to the poor and amass as much wealth as they can for themselves.

Similarly people* don’t vote Labour because they want all the major industries to be run so that the workers can pillage them while doing FA or so that the feckless can slob around smoking crack on benefits.

The fact that these might be the consequences is one reason why people vote for the other option, but mainly people vote Tory because they believe in financial prudence, self-reliance etc. and people vote labour because they believe that as social animals we work better together blah blah. In other words people are generally voting for good, even noble reasons, much of the time.

Americans pay less tax but then the wealthy fund universities, orchestras and theatres. We pay more tax and fund those things through those taxes. Two ways to achieve similar ends.

* Rees-Mogg and Derek Hatton excepted.

To me, those on the right exemplify the basest traits of human nature – willful ignorance, lack of empathy, contempt for those less fortunate than themselves and a desire to prioritise their own petty self interest over the good of society.

This. With all the talk over the last few years revolving around Brexit and being called traitors, and enemies etc, there is only one internal enemy this country has had and that is the tory party.

This party must be destroyed.

Not a completed idea, just sticking it in here to add to the discussion

The question is how would you get it to work? Most early democratic systems started off with that idea (including UK and US) but they all evolve into the party systems. The only true non-partisan systems (by true I am excluding those which ban party politics due to being authoritarian states) are very small countries.
So whilst I like it in theory I really dont think it works in practice. There seems to be a fundamental flaw in it which drives towards a party system. I think part of it would be the difficulty in making sure you know what each person stands for.
There is also the problem of how to get it to work with anything other than FPTP.

Those were the words of Alistair Campbell. And he’s not wrong.

The problem is new labour didnt win the centre ground by good politics. They won it by abandoning their normal constituents and just hoping they wouldnt notice and allowed the hard right to drag the “centre” so far right that even mildly left wing policies are now seen as hard left.
There was a reason Blair left when he did. He wouldnt have won again.
A large amount of the disillusionment with politics which is plaguing us today is down to Blair and his “third way”.

Yes, I believe a lack of joined up thinking (or at least lack of thinking beyond the current parliament) is the root cause of a lot of this countries ills at the moment.

Both major parties are guilty of it – they get in power for a couple of terms, think they are going to be there forever then go all Nero on us in the third term.

The country has had enough and kicks em out.

If we could actually have a bit more consensus around decisions we might not have this 10 (ish) year cycle of one lot reversing everything the other lot did.

The fact that these might be the consequences is one reason why people vote for the other option, but mainly people vote Tory because they believe in financial prudence, self-reliance etc.

I love the self-reliance. Without the state we’d all be for the chop at some point in our lives.

I’m not having a go at you – but financial prudence – it’s a complete red herring in the context of Conservative fiscal policy.

Governments don’t balance books, least of all the Tories – they occasionally admit to this but it sure is a good stick to bash your enemy with. Hence the success of the Tories after Gordon Brown – who was never that bad at all. But the papers did a great job on him.

Tories are simply driven by market ideology – some are level headed about this but I think some are genuinely bitter and twisted about too. And they’re running out of steam with this notion. I really hope Bernie Sanders makes an impression in the States too.

(Good thread BTW – nice to move away from the hell-camp that is Brexit – with other considered views.)

This party must be destroyed.

Sorry but that is mad.
Its as bad as saying Labour should be destroyed.
Any system needs multiple political viewpoints to avoid group think and a dangerous focus on one cause of action or another. As Nico says people arent voting for the tories since they think the poor can be ignored but because they believe the theory that its self reliance and prudence etc (whether those claims by the tories are true are a completely different story) and that by encouraging those you get the best outcome as opposed to the nanny state/communism or whatever.

Don’t have time to read the whole thread but in answer to the OP:

Do you have concerns with your vote based on social conscience, the NHS, poverty etc?

Ye-es. In particular, Theresa May’s (may be a whole arm of the Tory party’s) obsession with inserting government legislation into family life under the guise of “we know better, so we’re going to protect you from yourselves”; and its casual disregard for basic human rights. Most obviously this is under various internet snooping bills/ regulation of the individual’s internet activities; and latterly in repeatedly trying to opt out of the ECHR and illegally removing the citizenship of a British citizen, among others.

However, the NHS is an utter sh*tshow, and it is far from clear that more funding will improve it. There’s an entire stratum of middle management that needs to be removed, but the organisation has a no redundancy policy, so won’t do it.

More pressingly, Labour in its current iteration can’t be trusted with anything as serious as power. Corbyn is an unreconstructed hard-leftie; his support for Maduro isn’t of itself a problem, but it lends weight to the party’s complete absence of understanding of how government works in a capitalist society. One cannot simply renationalise entire swathes of the economy without some magical moneybox. And the ongoing anti-Semitism scandal* demonstrates that as people, the Labour party are no less objectionable than the Tories in their sense of entitlement and casual treatment of people as less than people.

*-fwiw, disliking Israel’s actions isn’t anti-Semitism IMHO, but anti-Semitic epithets clearly are.

I am in 100% agreement and feel the same.

#metoo

I have voted Labour, Green and LibDem in the past. Fairly committed LibDem voter now as they are the only viable alternative to Tories here.

I can’t understand why the Lib Dems aren’t more popular. OK, there was the blip with the coalition, but generally, they seem slightly left of Blair/Brown to me and they’ve had some genuinely likeable leaders.

1. People voting as they always have done.
2. See it as a wasted vote on account of the trifling number of seats obtained compared to number of votes.

Now if they would come out as “The Remain Party” and hoover up 50% of the vote!!

Anyway my constituency is Con/Libdem. Currently Con but come the next election I think it will swing back. Mind you there may be no more elections, we may slide to full on totalitarianism before.

The problem is new labour didnt win the centre ground by good politics. They won it by abandoning their normal constituents and just hoping they wouldnt notice and allowed the hard right to drag the “centre” so far right that even mildly left wing policies are now seen as hard left.
There was a reason Blair left when he did. He wouldnt have won again.
A large amount of the disillusionment with politics which is plaguing us today is down to Blair and his “third way”.

I’ve never agreed with that.

in the 90s Labour saw that the UK had changed, people no longer worked for a single employer their whole life – they didn’t care about workers ‘rights’ via unionisation or collective bargaining – they voted with their feet. The best way to ensure working people had good terms with their employer was to have a high level of employment and a base level of fundamental rights to avoid exploitation, including a legally enforced minimum wage. During this era employers competed for good staff by offering not only decent salaries but packages which meant even the entry level shelf stackers of the world got a decent pension, more than the legal minimum of holidays and others non-taxed ‘benefits’.

The government of the day (it was never just the Tony Blair show, unlike some other politicians he was willing and able to work with followers of different dogmas) forgot about Left v Right, Labour v Tories or all that bullshit that had dragged the UK down and broken Governments since Commoners got the vote.

By doing so the UK enjoyed the longest period of continued growth in it’s history, which allowed us to have better funded public services than ever before without bankrupting the country, we had more people going to university than ever before, less child poverty than ever before, less homelessness than ever before.

No Blair wasn’t perfect, he started very well but became increasingly worse. The war in Iraq was easily his worst ‘crime’ and he should have resigned because of it, in the end he hung on too long for the sake of his own Ego, Brown was never as easy to like and every day Blair stayed was one less day Brown had to establish himself. Ultimately though it was the Great Recession what did for New Labour, they built themselves (and Brown especially) on Economic acumen. Brown didn’t cause The Great Recession, but he’s probably guilty of allowing our Housing Market to bubble which made it worse for us. He didn’t sell all the gold at the wrong time either, that’s a usual Old-Labour / Tory slur, he just didn’t have the foresight to see 9/11 coming, no one did. No party, however much they’re at fault or indeed just how brilliantly they handled it (honestly, Brown was one of the few heroes of the Banking Crisis and lead the rest of the world in the early days) was going to survive that.

No, they sun didn’t shine every day and not every former mining / factory town was suddenly transformed into a economic nirvana – but fundamentally they did was good a Labour government should do, they gave the most opportunities to the most amount of people they could and protected and supported the most amount of people they could who couldn’t do for themselves.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5jX2Ye9D8Qg

Labour aint all power to the people.

More pressingly, Labour in its current iteration can’t be trusted with anything as serious as power. Corbyn is an unreconstructed hard-leftie; his support for Maduro isn’t of itself a problem, but it lends weight to the party’s complete absence of understanding of how government works in a capitalist society. One cannot simply renationalise entire swathes of the economy without some magical moneybox. And the ongoing anti-Semitism scandal* demonstrates that as people, the Labour party are no less objectionable than the Tories in their sense of entitlement and casual treatment of people as less than people.

Well you seem to have swallowed the Tory press campaign hook, line, sinker and a small dinghy. None of these reasons to distrust Labour stand up to scrutiny, which is not your fault but it does illustrate that people vote for some misguided motives.

I don’t accept that it’s an impossible question to answer as it was worded in order to gauge what someone’s opinion might be.

I gave you my opinion.
You ignored it and said I didn’t answer your question! 🙂

My point it that people generally vote in their own self interest.

I answered that as well. 🙂
Not everyone who votes Labour does so out of self interest.
Some people do it because it’s the best thing for society as a whole.

One cannot simply renationalise entire swathes of the economy without some magical moneybox.

What about buying votes?

We need to move away from the party system and just deal with things on a issue by issue basis.

I don’t think it is necessary to do away with the party system, just do away with the ‘string leader’ version. MPs used to be much freer and more responsible to the voter and less to cental office than they are now.

None of these reasons to distrust Labour stand up to scrutiny,

What, even the anti-semitism?

ETA: Hang on, don’t answer yet, I need to go and get some popcorn…

The Tory ‘self reliance’ thing is based in the mindset of classic conservatives, who believe the old ways are the best. Same thinking that brought you that exit thing. It was true that when families were large, people were born, lived and died within a 3 mile area. They were best positioned to help each other. People don’t live like that anymore though.

The current Tories do seem to be run by classic conservatives at the moment, who are massively in favour of self-reliance, except that they are totally blinkered as to their own non self reliance

The unpopularity of the Lib Dems is largely down to the fact that they pushed for PR from the get-go. That put people off, I think. Every place that uses the first past the post Westminster system that has had a referendum has rejected it. Despite it’s obvious advantages.

The other way that has worked to allow smaller parties to become viable alternatives, which seems desperately needed, is a per vote subsidy. Get over a threshold of the popkuar vote in a given riding, you get a set amount per vote. That would give genuine alternative parties the money they need to become viable.

The things I hear the most from people who do are small government/self reliance (verging into tax is theft and all that) and governments/nanny state telling people what to do (mostly rule one stuff like don’t be racist, don’t call disabled people offensive names) moving into PC Gawn Mad – they only have womem footballers on the BBC cause they have too stuff. Basically small government to protect the old white men of the world and reinforce their power.

Taking a step back you can see why people are fearful of social mobility and equality as it will increase to competition for them and their kids by including the rest of the population.

There is a space in the middle where you can leave some of that dogma aside, protect the people and incentive business but it’s a hard balancing act.

The other big problem is long reigns by one party mean in the end it needs putting out of it’s misery, the last Labour government had run it’s course, despite what some would say limping along in minority would have killed them more. They had reached the entitled to rule stage, same as the tories did in the 90’s it’s a deficit of the 2 party system that it results in a big swing when it happens.

I’m not a massive fan of all the Labour policies but a lot is getting lost in the shouting, re nationalising the railways for instance, we already pay a huge amount to Network Rail, each contract that ends just needs to be not renewed and run by the relevant department. Then the tories will have something to sell off in 30 years time.

unlike some other politicians he was willing and able to work with followers of different dogmas

From what I have read he really wasnt. He was forced to work with people of different dogmas (eg Brown) but he wasnt overly fond of the idea (Prescott by all accounts earned his money as deputy by keeping things under control) and the entire third way had a habit of trying to close down debates. Its unclear where the momentum for many of the policies came from. Blair was very fond of the private sector is best dogma and has hamstrung public services with crippling long term contracts.
The lack of control of the housing market is something which still cripples us today with the tories continuing the habit of throwing money at it to keep it going ever upwards.
They left a massive section of the population feeling unrepresented since, correctly, they thought Blair was more concerned about swing voters and the city and press barons than them. Which in turn gave UKIP and co the ability to dive in and push dream politics to them.
They failed to deal with the changing economy beyond some laws with dubious usability which failed to deal with the developing gig economy. He left the unions in a mostly crippled state where they couldnt respond effectively to those circumstances.
As for the crash. New Labour fetishisation of the banking sector and buying into the regulation is bad really didnt help us there.

The unpopularity of the Lib Dems is largely down to the fact that they pushed for PR from the get-go

In many cases the unpopularity comes from the fact is they let Cameron outplay them and only offer the miserable compromise of AV.

In many cases the unpopularity comes from the fact is they let Cameron outplay them and only offer the miserable compromise of AV.

Well, yes, they did forget the cardinal rule of don’t be the smaller partner in a coalition.

I was thinking more of their failure to catch on prior to Clegg’s breakthrough in that election.

A further reason the UK is in such a state is that for the last 30 years, people have voted for tax cuts rather than investment in infrastructure and services – funded by the privatisation of state-owned assets and the abject failure of our Government to effectively manage privatised contractors. I’ve despaired at times at the incompetence of civil servants who ‘manage’ those contracts – but they’re given limited authority / freedoms and consequently make bad business decisions to merely get ‘on contract’ with limited funding to suit political expediency rather than good business sense – sometimes unwittingly finding that they still hold the liability for when things go wrong. On the other side, you have unrealistic proposals like expecting privatised companies to fund the pension liabilities for ex-government employees within short-term contracts. We also have city investors saying that they no longer want to invest in businesses involved in government contracts as they’re such a crock.

Clegg’s breakthrough in that election.

There was no LibDem electoral “breakthrough” under Nick Clegg.

In the 2010 general election the LibDem vote increased by a mere 1%, they actually lost 5 seats. That’s dispite the fact that both Labour and the Tories had been widely discredited.

The only significant electoral breakthrough the LibDems have experienced in recent times ocurrred when Charles Kennedy was leader, he offered a relatively left-wing alternative to New Labour.

Nick Clegg swung the LibDems dramatically to the right and ultimately proved to be a disaster for them.

There was no LibDem electoral “breakthrough” under Nick Clegg.

It was very close though in the middle of the leader debates he shock the whole thing up and was polling way above what was expected. It changed how the other 2 dealt with them.

What this thread is exposing is how hard it is to sort the current issues into left and right.

What this thread is exposing is how hard it is to sort the current issues into left and right.

But issues can’t be sorted into left and right, or is that what you meant?

even the anti-semitism?

Particularly the anti-Semitism, e.g. read some background here:
https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/tom-bower-book-dangerous-hero-jeremy-corbyn-labour-leader-truth

But issues can’t be sorted into left and right, or is that what you meant?

Big and currents, globalisation, the environment, brexit, immigration etc.

Labour do have some anti semitic issues, they also have some pro Palestine ones, tories have Islamic issues. Reflection of our current country.

There was no LibDem electoral “breakthrough” under Nick Clegg.

They hadn’t even made it to second party before that. Being part of a coalition government on whose support the government depended was a breakthrough for them.

I don’t think Nick Clegg swung them to the right, except he got done over by his far more experienced and right leaning coalition partners who wooed him, promised him the world and made off the next morning with his wallet. That was also what caused the subsequent loss of support.

In hindsight, he probably should have listened more closely to Gordon Brown’s overtures.

I worked for many years on election duties, sometimes in the polling booths. What actually is depressing is when families come in and junior (or the wife) just shouts across “Dad, who do I vote for?”. No thought, nor understanding.

Cheers Malvern Rider that was an interesting little read 🙂

Was in a pretentious Cheshire country pub this evening. The hot topics were fears of their children watching internet porn/dark web and how outrageously inconvenient it had become to get into the village, CoOp and Waitrose, where subtle but intentionally confusing traffic calming has been introduced.

Just about sums it up. Range Rover priority lanes and parking, internet censorship because of the children, surveillance of said children, pothole busting and you’ve got most of bases covered!

cromolyolly

Member

They hadn’t even made it to second party before that. Being part of a coalition government on whose support the government depended was a breakthrough for them.

A breakthrough yes, but not an electoral one- they had a totally unexceptional, actually slightly below par election, it just so happened that other parties put them in a position where their reduced of MPs was important.

It seems to have totally entered the british election mythology though. I mean, I was genuinely surprised when I checked the numbers myself at the start of the coalition.

Being part of a coalition government on whose support the government depended was a breakthrough for them.

OK, fair enough, but the “breakthrough” was solely dependent on the Tories not doing very well.

Losing 5 seats in the 2010 general election was not a good result for the LibDems.

Under Charles Kennedy the LibDems were the only credible alternative to the neo-liberalism espoused by both the Tories and New Labour. In constrast under Nick Clegg’s leadership the LibDems turned up late to the party embracing neo-liberalism, ironically, just when the shit hit the fan, ie, the international credit crisis.

Nick Clegg’s betrayal of millions of LibDem voters had completely predictable consequences. As the ensuing catastrophic collapse in LibDem support proved.

A breakthrough yes, but not an electoral one

Not in the sense that they had huge numbers of votes, no but in the sense that they came out of an election as a party of real influence, yes.

It seems to have totally entered the british election mythology though. I mean, I was genuinely surprised when I checked the numbers myself at the start of the coalition.

Well, yeah, all of a sudden they had a platform, they got attention, the got to put their manifesto on the national stage. They went from a fringe party that was always banging on about PR and had John Cheese make a promo for them to a ‘real’ party, overnight. That’s huge. As was the implosion.