I can understand why folks in the past voted Tory in a broad brush sense. Personal responsibility, retention of personal or family generated wealth, social conservatism etc. Never appealed to me but I could see how it appealed to some.

However, what we have now appears to be a nasty, brutish and narrow sect making no pretence of governing by consensus. There’s also a shocking lack of accountability. I’m genuinely worried about where that is going to lead.

I agree with Rustyspanner. Reasonableness is being treated as weakness. Ignorance has been made a virtue. In my “bubble” people are beginning to feel estranged from the state they live in.

I agree with that and after what has happened over the last few months I would imagine most people feel estranged from the state. I think especially the last week or so. I normally take people on face value so what been happening has definitely made me think about my future decisions.

 I’m lacking

The swear filter changes everything to 4x *’s

****

****

****

My mum votes Tory. She told me that she thought that the government were doing a good job with Covid. My dad, who also votes Tory, nearly choked when he heard her say this then went off on one calling them “self serving Pricks”. Yet he still voted for them. I’m sure that they both clapped for the NHS that they clearly want privatising, They vote Tory because of industrial unrest in the 1970s. In-laws don’t trust Labour because of the 70s too, but they vote Green.

Other relatives of mine vote Tory because the think there are too many “darkies” in the country.

I never have and probably never will vote Tory.

Either I’m lacking imagination or there’s no 4 letter word that makes that sentence syntactically correct.

Evil?
Lazy?
Nobs?
Posh?
Gits?

It appears you lack a degree of imagination

It appears you lack a degree of imagination

Not as lacking as the capital letters and use of they rather than the or those.

I opted for vile.

and use of they rather than the or those.

Where i’m from, they is often used interchangeably with those. In the vernacular of course.

“They Tories are ****” scans perfectly well in Glasgow, just as “Them Tories are ****” would in London.

Of course, we all know that it’s correct to say that “Those Tories are ****”

And fundamentally, that’s what Tory voters have done.

And that is why, at the moment, I hate them.

You are expecting them to be rational. People are not. People are hugely irrational, on the whole.

If you introduced someone to a homeless person, and then offered them the chance to put them in a box and let them starve to death, most people would not do it. The issue is that people do not make a connection between the people they read about or see on the street and actual human beings. They are not being callous and nasty deliberately, they are just not bothering to think about it. MOST people do not think too much about things they cannot control or that are truly upsetting – which is why we need stuff like holocaust museums.

The way most people vote, if they do so at all, is simply a reaction to the gossip that they’re hearing (which includes a lot of media output). It’s just a big soap opera with its baddies and goodies. They do not link this with actual people’s suffering. That’s why they say things like ‘ah they’re all the same aren’t they?’ No, they are absolutely totally not the same, not in the least.

I do not think most people know what the party ideologies actually are, nor do they understand what they mean.

I’m not sure what you’re saying. I’ve been called a thick racist for voting for brexit. Maybe I’m confusing this (slightly more rational) forum with some of the idiots encountered on Facebook. Apologies if so. I’m not reading the brexit thread again

Are all brexit voters thick and / or racist? Obviously not, though there are direct correlations.
The lower your educational standard, the more likely you were to vote for brexit (voter age was the other primary demographic). Immigration concerns was the number one reason cited for voting in favour of it. This isn’t pejorative, it’s a simple statement of fact, you can look it up.

Turning that around, are all the thick racists all brexit supporters? Probably. If someone is the sort of person who would say something like “why don’t you just piss off back where you came from?” to someone else’s actual face, I’d wager good money that the likelihood of them being pro-brexit would be vanishingly close to 100%.

Are the remoaners claiming that the brexies are all thick racists? This is the lie part because no, we aren’t. Or rather, a few individuals might be, but they’re a small minority and not representative of the whole. It’s a straw man, it’s like complaining that Muslims are suicide bombers.

Do the brexies like to claim at every opportunity that they’re being called names in order to demonstrate how hard done to they are? Hell yes. Would you care to compare what you’ve been called, and how often, with what I’ve been called in the last four years? It’ll be a long list and most of it wouldn’t get past the swear filter. If you want to see true vitriol and hatred on a grand scale you just need to go spend ten minutes reading your bedfellows’ bilious output on the Leave.EU Facebook group or indeed anywhere else that’s carried unmoderated political discourse, it’ll quickly put the notion of someone calling racists racists into perspective.

If you wanted to you could draw up a really long list of actions/inaction by any party that paint them in a poor light.

Yep. There’s plenty of times I’ve heard variations of “oh, I could never vote for Labour because of the Iraq war.” The thing is, that was almost 20 years ago and the damage the Tories are inflicting is happening right now. One of those things is slightly more pressing than the other, we cannot change the past but we can influence the future.

Because, how far do you go back? Tony Blair resigned in 2007. You’d be hard pressed to find any politician – or indeed, any human – who never made mistakes. Churchill wasn’t the saint history remembers him as, he could be a right bastard. Christ, Ed Milliband got pilloried for eating a bacon butty incorrectly.

The swear filter changes everything to 4x *’s

Not everything.

The way most people vote, if they do so at all, is simply a reaction to the gossip that they’re hearing (which includes a lot of media output).

I think inertia plays a big part here too. People vote in a particular way because they always have. People vote Labour or Tory because they are Labour / Tory voters. The political discourse you get on here and elsewhere is between people who are actively choosing to participate in it. We’re back to that unrepresentative minority concept again, most people simply don’t care sufficiently to look into it.

We saw this with brexit also. At the time of the referendum very few people on either side of the debate really understood the ramifications of it (despite retconned claims to the contrary from some quarters). Since then a lot more information has come to light. So we’ve got the vocal remainers on one side and the vocal leavers on the other, both intransigent because both ‘know’ that they’re right, but in the middle you’ve got the majority of the populace going “meh, so if I put a cross in this box it’ll all go away, right?” They’ve had four years to Learn Some Things and yet they simply cannot be bothered, they just don’t care.

https://yougov.co.uk/topics/politics/articles-reports/2019/12/23/their-own-words-why-voters-abandoned-labour

I’ve been called a thick racist for voting for brexit.

It is a pretty common things to say on this site, certainly in the generality. It certainly was on the Brexit thread and I don’t recall any Brexiteers complaining about it in the last year or so, because there were bugger all of them on that thread.

As far as the obvious unmoderated abuse of Tories on here, first I am not a huge fan of extensive moderation, certainly wouldn’t report posts, I find it useful for people’s bigotry to be out in the open. Anyway, remember what the Blessed Margaret said, if they are attacking you, you are winning the argument. The last four elections results would seem to bear this out.

Holding a different viewpoint to you makes me no more of a “bigot” than voting for Brexit makes you a thick racist.

I agree that dismissing people with prejorative labels has done very little to get us out of this mess. People on the remain side need to start listening to Brexit voters to understand why they did what they did. No one side has a monopoly on hurt.

People on the remain side need to start listening to Brexit voters to understand why they did what they did

We tried that. Didn’t work. They either go quiet or get angry and then change the subject.

In any case, this is a four year old 2000-page conversation. There is no reason for them to do what they did to which “brexit” is the answer. Someone voted for brexit because they don’t like our immigration policy, fine, let’s fix our immigration policy. We can do that unilaterally by parliamentary decree but brexit won’t achieve it.

As far as the obvious unmoderated abuse of Tories on here

For your answer to this I refer you to my reply earlier in this thread in response to the previous time this baseless accusation was raised.

Christ, Ed Milliband got pilloried for eating a bacon butty incorrectly.

Now be fair, he **** mullered that butty.

Regarding the Iraq war , it’s worth reminding anybody citing that as a reason that only 2 conservatives voted against it 84 Labour mps voted against it , most of the next conservative government voted for it.

Holding a different viewpoint to you makes me no more of a “bigot” than voting for Brexit makes you a thick racist.

Indeed it doesn’t, but being intolerant of people with different viewpoints could well do though.

For your answer to this I refer you to my reply earlier in this thread in response to the previous time this baseless accusation was raised.

I already had, it didn’t accord with what I’ve witnessed over the years on here which was the basis for my comment – which also means it wasn’t baseless.

I honestly think that Labour (the very top that control the party) did not want to win the last election hence leaving vote haemmoraging Corbyn in charge. I think most realise Brexit is going to be a shambles so quite happy for the tories to own it. Also seeing some comments regarding Starmer not putting the boot in regards Cummings etc well they are probably sticking to the old phrase of ‘if you give someone enough rope’

As in “if you give someone enough rope they’ll have enough to kill off a large number of the population”?

I already had, it didn’t accord with what I’ve witnessed over the years on here which was the basis for my comment – which also means it wasn’t baseless.

So then you’re asserting that there’s double standards. Example or retraction please.

Even if people don’t closely study the past, the ideologies of each party etc,. it should really be clear to most what the intentions are of each party and how they act/react to situations – almost a what would tory party do vs what would labour party do.

Because the tories are better at being tories than Labour, despite their best efforts.

“leaving vote ‘haemmoraging’ Corbyn in charge”

Interesting people keep repeating this lie – I suppose the maxim is true in that regard. Just to note: Labour got 10.3 million votes in the last election. That’s’ more than Milliband, more than Brown and more than Blair in the 2005 election. Corbyn was the most effective opposition leader by inflicting the most defeats on government. The MSM were universally opposed to him because they reflect the interests of an established elite.

What public figure can survive that sort of onslaught and still have any sort of popularity? In that sense, the 2017, and 2019 election were all the more surprising. Remember that at the height of the panic, the DM was printing 17 or 18 double spreads with mudslinging. Here’s a great example of the BBC spin being challenged by Dennis Skinner. That it is the same presenter who ‘took a night off’ recently speaks volumes.

https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=105332637872402&set=a.104693384602994

During the recent general election, I heard one traditional labour voter put it better than Anyone else I’d heard recently. He said that labour was no longer the party of the working man. He felt that labour today was the party for people who don’t work or don’t want to work. He felt that the only realistic alternative for people who work, and want to get ahead by their own efforts, is the Tory party.

For myself, I don’t live in Englandshire, so I don’t get to choose between labour and Tory. But I still think that traditionally, the Tory party has stood for the ethos of “get business And the economy right, and there will be more money to go around for everyone, which will pay for hospitals, trains, etc etc etc”. Labour have always been more of a “take care of the vulnerable first, and this will be a place where people want to live and work”.

It’s really sad when people (in this forum) fall into hardened groups on either side of the divide. Labour voters who automatically think that everything the tories do is evil. And Tory voters who believe that labour will automatically destroy every business in the UK within moments of taking power.

Interesting people keep repeating this lie – I suppose the maxim is true in that regard. Just to note: Labour got 10.3 million votes in the last election. That’s’ more than Milliband, more than Brown and more than Blair in the 2005 election. Corbyn was the most effective opposition leader by inflicting the most defeats on government. The MSM were universally opposed to him because they reflect the interests of an established elite.

Thats a very positive way of downplaying getting your arse handed to you in the last election.

Tory party has stood for the ethos of “get business And the economy right, and there will be more money to go around for everyone, which will pay for hospitals, trains, etc etc etc”.

That *was* what the Tories were about but the current incarnation don’t really seem anchored in any sort of economic or social doctrine. I think the core theme is English Nationalism. They can swing whatever way is expedient on social and economic issues.

Our local conservatives were raging about one of the labour run councils (there are 5 councils making up the region) getting involved in funding and running a hotel development. Meanwhile, the conservative mayor made it his election pledge to buy the frickin local airport.

The decision to buy the airport in 2019, timing wise, was an absolute disaster. £10m of tax payers cash handed to private investors. Rate payers now left with a cash burning disaster of an airport which now has no viable long term business plan. Clearly buying the airport goes against all traditional conservative principles but was popular locally because of nostalgia and local prestige.

What Johnhe ^^^^ said. This forum is full to the brim with the sanctimonious.

TBF, the Tories are doing quite well by themselves at the moment on this score, without any help.

Labour voters who automatically think that everything the tories do is evil.

Despite popular misconceptions, the economy has never done well under the tories* so they tend to ‘press down on the margins and cut costs’ ie reduce pay, cheapen goods, cut tax for the rich. However apparently the Nudge Unit have been tasked for some while to research expansive Keynesian anti-austerity strategies but I really can’t see this spineless lot doing anything ambitious that would benefit the many. More likely a few plum contracts for Serco etc who will temporarily recruit people on minimum wage so the only expansive bit will be the shareholders’ wallets.

*it’s worth remembering that the ‘terrible’ 1970s was a period of greater equality on the Lorenz curve. Having no street lights in cities also encouraged all sorts of marvellous youthful pursuits, it wasn’t just about uncollected bins and unburied stiffs.

Despite popular misconceptions, the economy has never done well under the tories

Yes, some of us know that while the majority just believe the hype around Tories being better at economy, giving people a better chance to be one of the elite etc,. whereas in reality it is the opposite.