@Diamond What do you think of these policies? – Reversing austerity funding cuts – Renationalise public utilities and the railways so they're not run for private profit – anti-war – scrapping (or at least scaling back PFI) – higher income tax rates for the highest earners – reducing tax relief for corporations that make huge profits – lower corporation tax rates for small businesses – tax relief for companies that invest in people – investing in housing – investing in transport, including public transport – investing in childcare so parents can work without paying huge amounts of their income – renationalising bus services and reinstating rural routes – investing in 'forgotten' seaside towns – investing outside London and the south east – investing in the arts – ending charitable status for public schools – investing in education – scrapping – or at least reducing – university tuition fees – checking the monopoly of the Big Six energy firms – banning fracking – investing in nuclear power
What about our relationship with the EU? I cannot vote for any party which does not advocate for the fastest possible re-integration with Europe. It's highly likely I will be spoiling my ballot......
Yeah, it's terrible but I'm going to play the long game. Priority one, get rid of a Government that is almost entirely a collection of self-serving, asset-stripping bullies intent on punching down and stoking division. They're never going to rejoin the EU. Running the risk of giving them another five years to ransack and ruin the country even more over a single issue that's going to take a generation to sort out is like worrying about your lawn while your house burns down. Unfortunately in our FPTP system dominated by two parties it is a choice between 'dreadful' and 'far from ideal'. But 'far from ideal' is still an improvement. Brexit has directly impacted my business in many (small but cumulative) ways. It's a disaster for many young British people who don't have the luxury of an EU passport. But it's not going to be sorted out tomorrow and Starmer would be mad to put it front and centre now.
So no engagement with any of the things that directly determine how the country is structured and run – including things that directly influence your every day life – on the basis that you don't like Corbyn, who hasn't been Labour leader for more than four years? Have I understood that right?
Where that puts me on the political spectrum I have no clue, but I will be studying the manifestos when they're out. At the moment no-one is yanking my chain.
Both parties have great policies that they both promise and will both fail to provide without something else giving way. As I said, they're both poor choices but Labour are slightly less poor. No, the issue for me with Corbyn being Labour leader in the last election, (and he seems like a nice enough chap but no f***ing way I want him running the country), is that if you can elect such a nutjob leader once you can do it again, and I don't trust Labour not to do that again as soon as the election is over, I just have to hope that common sense prevails.
I don’t really want to get dragged into this but if your concern was the voting in of nutjob leaders, voting Conservative was not the best choice…
The fact that you voted for lazy, corrupt clown Johnson (and this was well known before the election) and by extension Truss, Sunak, Braverman etc puts you in no position whatsoever to call anyone else a ‘nutjob.’ Politics is awkward, with few saintly choices available. If there were, the Fourth Estate would ensure the public lynched them.
I'm really torn on voting or not, starting to think I might be more in favour of militant action to bring down the establishment, sounds more fun anyway.
All those policies I listed were Corbyn's policies. Now you might not agree with them but not one of them was crackpot or especially radical. Corbyn wouldn't have made a good PM but his ideas were not those of a nutjob. Starmer is the steadiest of steady eddies. Boring but competent – and he's effectively removed Corbyn from the picture entirely. Johnson – now he was a nutjob. Reckless, impatient, unserious and a liar. Odd, really, how the way people are characterised by the media burns so deeply into the national psyche. Truss – if you are a mortgage holder with any less than five years on your fixed term, her ideas will end up costing you money. They drove the economy into a wall. Dangerous, uncosted, radical ideology driven by a warped vision of the free market. Her ideas were those of a nutjob. Funny that they tend to get a free pass from many whereas Corbyn, who got nowhere near power, is still your boogeyman.
If I may say, I find your world view bleak. Perhaps it's the result of a generation or more of being told to hope for nothing, value little and consider above all the cost to the 'taxpayer' rather than the cost to society and the individual (who ends up paying more anyway but in the name of private profit). Britain has been turned into an expensive but poor country. We have the least value-for-money housing, most expensive but inefficient transport systems, poor health outcomes, worsening quality of food. All a direct result of the ideology that's driven the last 14 years. You will probably dismiss this but Britain was actually in a pretty decent place in 2010 – although the population was told to put up with austerity to pay for the recklessness of the financial sector. Don't invest in 'Clacton' – strikes me as a glib response to a positive policy. Some of Britain's seaside towns have been abandoned to their fate. What a country where the best solution is to just leave them be! (Or allow them to become low hanging fruit for freeport-style reform, which will benefit the few not the masses). Investment in people, places and things leads to prosperity. Yes it costs money but with obsessive belt-tightening you open the door for a huge transfer of wealth from the masses to the few, which we've seen over the past 14 years to the point where nothing functions in this country and the gap between the wealthy and the poor is wider than ever. The fear of a 'brain drain' and the idea that the profit motive drives prosperity has been debunked by people much smarter than me. The book 23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism is well worth a read – although it will contradict a lot of your current points of view.
Just for interest, can you list the ‘great policies’ you have noticed the Tories expounding recently?
No, but I can copy and paste them from the last election if you want, but what's the point! Both major parties promise the world and deliver little, and that's all that I can guarantee after future elections.
But surely that proves how poor the Labour leader was at the time? Did you know how poor the PMs after Johnson would be? Neither did I.
Corbyn wouldn't have pushed the nuclear button. Much as we all hate the thought of nuclear Armageddon you can't vote for that, you just can't, no matter how you spin it.
You knew the calibre of those in ascendancy under Johnson, who had expelled anyone with a moderate view. But in any case, the vote was for Johnson.
It’s an interesting question that Corbyn handled poorly. His big error was to be unable to give the performative and stupid answer ‘yes of course I would use it.’ His answer was essentially that if you are under attack with nuclear weapons you are ****** anyway, so everything has to be about preventing getting to that point. That’s insufficient apparently. Curiously, the response of our Russian enemies/friends was to back both Brexit and then the Tories with their disinformation campaigns. Seems they didn’t care for Britain having a peaceful leader or didn’t believe it would fundamentally alter British policy. Minor car crash video.
Going by the state of everything else the government is responsible for the upkeep of, I'm 99% sure the nuclear button wouldn't work anyway. The wiring will have been eaten by mice and the design of the room containing the button outsourced to consultants from Deloitte to mull over whether it had enough (correctly coloured) Union flags in it.
The use by the British to unilaterally deploy the deterrent is a myth. All the technology both hardware and software is totally reliant on the USA being prepared to supply spares and upgrades. They wouldn’t do so if they did not have a guarantee that the UK would use them without their agreement.The decision you deploy is fully integrated into NATO military strategy. The circumstances where the UK would unilaterally use the weapons without the agreement of Washington, are as likely as me winning the Euromillions jackpot. Not impossible but so unlikely in a practical sense you can say the UK would never unilaterally deploy its nuclear weapons. Corbyn could have said that if he did not want to say that as PM he would use all the resources at his disposal to protect the nation.
I think this is where a lot of the country is. I have voted for a local independent in the two or three elections, as i simply don't see that either of the major parties would make much of a difference to mine or my families lives. I fall into the 3 children category, one doing well and working, two finishing education, minimal mortgage. The tories have made a huge mess, not helped by the pandemic of course, but just make poor decisions continuously. Will Labour make me any wealthier or make my life much better? No. What ever they bring in will have an effect on the top 5%, who already pay around 50% of all tax to the government,(https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-8513/ ) and hopefully benefit the bottom 10%. As i fall into neither of those camps, a change of party really makes very little difference to me. The biggest influence on our living standards tends to come from the change in local governments and the services that they offer. Labour will get in, but i don't think it will be the triple figure majority that people think. I suspect it will be in the 30's or 40's,.
I did use the term ‘great policies’ as I can’t easily recall any such being included in the last Tory manifesto.
TBH, not everyone necessarily makes their choice purely on what benefits them personally. Some do seriously try to choose the party they believe will offer the greatest benefits to the nation as a whole, based on their perception of what is ‘fair’. The real win-win is when what is best for the nation as a whole actually improves the lot of the majority, which could be deliverable if honestly represented to people. I have never voted Tory even though their policies would nearly always benefit me personally, as I don’t feel comfortable with improving my lot at the direct expense of others. I’m sure I’m not alone in that stance.
Corbyn’s answers were very frustrating. It’s not as if he hadn’t a few years to work out his responses or that his anti-war leanings would have had any great effect on policy. He got outdone on national security when his opponent was a sexual incontinent who had visited Russian bunga bunga parties when Foreign Secretary.
He did. But the nukes issue came up in the 2017 campaign if I remember rightly, though was obviously used more far more effectively by Boris as a stick to beat Corbyn with than May ever managed.
Defence is one of those issues that, as things stand, the UK doesn’t really seem capable of debating sensibly. The idea of Johnson and Corbyn debating it is, in retrospect, absolute clownland stuff.
I certainly think the young do, those with younger families, building their lives, have mortgages etc and the elderly definitely. Especially those that rely on state pensions to live. As i said I hope that a change of party benefits the bottom 10% of earners, those that need the most help. I truly believe that it makes very little difference which of the main parties are in. They will give with one hand take with the other, Someone will gain, someone loses out. That's always been the way. Labour will invest in services, but at the cost of higher inflation and interest rates, but we will have better services. Unemployment will rise, youth unemployment again and we will all have to make a contribution to that. The Tories will come back in again one day, stop investing, reduce inflation and interest rates and services will diminish again. Employment will increase, so more people are paying tax, but at a lower wage cycle. its just the same circle as it has been for the last 50 or 60 years.
It's really not *that* bad. I was there a couple of years ago, or so. It's just been abandoned, really. There's no evidence that there's any money to spend on any nice things and so everything just looks tired and worn out. So many of these communities have just been written off by successive governments. In the early and mid-1990s large numbers of people with addiction problems, mental health issues and other treatable problems, were sent to fill up the faded B&Bs and half-empty hotels on the south coast. I was in Hastings / St Leonards for a few months on a course and it was like a zombie town at times. We have a habit of just trying to hide our social and economic problems away in places where the people can't complain. To a degree St Leonards and Hastings have repaired slightly to become quite bohemian, arty places. But the British seaside – which should be one of the country's biggest assets – has been wrecked by a lack of political care. Now they're having sewage pumped into the water too. It's beyond depressing that no one seems to see the potential and opportunity of spending money on having a country of nice things for the local population and, potentially, overseas visitors to come and spend their money here and give our ailing economy a much-needed boost. Instead the entire discourse is about 'HOW THINGS WILL BE PAID FOR'. It's so, so, sooo short-sighted and it's why we're in a sprial of decline as Britain has become expensive but also poor. Investment is not waste. Waste is funnelling billions into the pockets of cronies and back-scratchers and friendly corporations. If we all took the same anti-spending view on our private property, no one would replace a kitchen or bathroom, or invest in new appliances, or buy a new sofa ever again. We'd just let everything crumble and decay around us complaining: "Well, that kitchen is going to cost 15 grand."
Except that's not always true and the cynicism is self-defeating. Labour in 1997 effected a great deal of change, social change especially. Was it perfect? No. Did it create other issues that have posed challenges for later governments, yes? Was the war in Iraq an egregious error? Yes. But for a decade from 1997, Britain was fairer, more optimistic, friendlier and less corrupt. Britain today is mean-spirited, expensive, broken, untidy. I remember the early 1980s and what a shambolic mess so many places were. Well, they look the same again now.
I think the main question is whether people believe a party honestly has the interests of the many at heart. Then there needs to be a discussion as to how better to generate increasing GDP (especially per capita GDP) to deliver benefits to society as a whole. I'm not sure how to reconcile your two comments that you hope 'a change of party benefits the bottom 10% of earners, those that need it most' and 'I truly believe that it makes very little difference which of the main parties are in.' As for 'someone will gain, someone loses out', isn't that the point of the discussion? That one main party works towards ensuring the former category is a very small percentage of the population, whilst the other tries to ensure it is the majority of society that gains, with those currently creaming off all the money losing out. I'm also not sure about your automatic connection of 'invest[ing] in services' and 'higher inflation and interest rates' when 14 years of non-investment in services has delivered that result in spades. The required investment in the sevices and infrastructure of our ever more declining country will in no way lead to higher unemployment levels, especially not amongst 'the young'. Quite the opposite will occur. And as to the cry of 'how will it be paid for?' It will be paid for by the increased tax take that will follow the effects of higher employment at higher salaries, properly managed infrastructure projects generating increased business for all sectors of the necessary supply chains and the massive increase in efficiency and productivity that will flow from a transport network worthy of the name, driving on roads without having to cost in the expense of a replacement wheel every year after failing in the game of 'pothole roulette' we all enjoy so much, ensuring people can see a doctor with a relatively minor complaint before it develops into a serious one meaning they cannot work productively for the common good. This list could be easily lengthened. No, we do not have the 'spare cash' now, because it has been 'allowed to be' (a cynical person may prefer 'positively encouraged to be') funnelled into the pockets of CEOs etc of such shining stars of 'the market' as water & other utility companies. It will need to be borrowed, and yes, that will increase the National Debt and it will attract interest payments....but surprisingly, international money markets are not at all averse to loaning money at preferential rates to countries that present a coherent plan with a timeline aimed at long term structural investment to generate high return on a sustainable basis. What they do not like is bat5h1t ideas such as borrowing money to implement crazy neo-liberalist tax cuts, especially not from a country that did not seek to take advantage of historically-low interest rates to invest, whilst so many other countries did. Any wealth that the UK has enjoyed has usually been created by major capital investment projects generating profits: ships for global trading returns, and the Victorian railways investments are two examples. The alternative is to decide it's too expensive to pay for a new roof so attempt to deal with multiple leaks via the use of buckets to catch the water. And then to find out that you need so many buckets and have to replace your rotten carpets so often that eventually it costs more than the initial quote for a new roof. That is where the current government has left us. It will take years to fix the mess, but if we don't start sometime, then the water will keep coming in...
I think this is superficial over-generalisation. I was young once. I've always voted for what I believed to be the best for the country. Why will unemployment rise?
I was also young once & I'm sure many would now class me as 'elderly'. Neither condition has ever caused me to vote Tory.
