Tories - Personal Thoughts Over The Last Ten Years

Hoping to get a general feeling on what people's thoughts are after the last 10 years of Torie control? Are they still worthy of your vote?

I have always been a Torie voter but cannot bring myself to vote for them again. This is mainly down to the corruption that has been so openly on show the last 18 months and the fact that the whole thing reeks of jobs for the boys. I know this is the same for all politicians. The problem I have is they don't even try and hide the lies now!

At the last election, I got to the ballot and still didn't have a clue what to do. It was like choosing between being shot or stabbed!

Having spoken to many friends, family, and work colleagues they are all of similar opinion and yet the polls still have the Tories ahead! Is this just another case of them being so far out of touch that they don't really know, just like Brexit?

I'd love to get some thoughts from a wider audience.

 

Sorry just noticed this is in the wrong section. Can someone move?

 

Tories?

I shitt'em...

 

Who is out of touch? The tories, your friends or the voting public?

 

... and the Mafia

 

The Tories. I think they believe the job is done and that they will win, easily.

 

That's what the remainers thought.
You can't trust polls or the voting public.
The door is so open, just needs a good alternative to lead the public through to something better.

 

They will. As long as everyone gets their 'pigs in blankets' at Xmas.

 

Da pigs r wiv da angels bro.

 

Similar boat. In no way would I label myself by party as I'm pretty neutral, but I have generally voted Con or LD due to local candidates. I can't vote Labour as they would literally stop my job from existing, and my other job was terminated immediately because of Brexit (thanks for that...).

I'm never voting for this abysmal party though unless there is full-scale change. U-Turn after U-Turn, lie after lie. I know that politicians struggle with the truth but this is next-level bullsh*t that can be instantly discredited. Most of today's party love-in was a total lie. I'm sorry but if you voted for Brexit for the right reasons, you've been had. It was simply a very successful power grab that got these muppets to the helm.

What's worse? Labour have formed the most pathetic opposition. Trump ended up in the White House because Clinton was a dreadful candidate. Well same story here. I'm not sure where Labour are heading - there seems to be very little of left-wing politics that you could call progressive. How bad do you have to be to lose to this government by a landslide?

I think the Lib Dems will do quite well with swing and disillusioned voters, as they did in my constituency recently. They won't win and nobody wants them to win (especially not the Lib Dems themselves)...but a coalition to keep a leash on one of the other two parties would be my hope and that would almost certainly be Tory.

Honestly it's very saddening to see the state of this country. This lot definitely aren't the answer and I feel pretty similarly about the others.

Vote by policy or vote because your local MP is good (or terrible). Or draw a big **** on the ballot paper.

 

I’m curious to know why Labour would stop your job from existing? Are you a hitman?

 

Haha. I won't say exactly but it was one of their policies to ban what I do. So yeah, hitman

 

I can only guess at energy or weapons, but you don’t have to say.

 

Great post. It is indeed an awful situation to be in politically.

You would think the Lib Dems would have found someone decent to lead them when both the opposition are an utter shambles.

Unfortunately it would seem we are stumbling towards a form of capitalist communism.

The longer the Tories are in power I fear the harder it will be for the public to oust them.

This was quite eye opening if anyone fancies a watch, talk about jobs for the boys:

Sent from my CLT-L09 using Tapatalk

 

They may be giving "jobs for the boys" but how does it make it harder for the public to oust them?
We all have a choice at elections so if we want to vote for someone else we can or are you saying they will fix the elections?

 

I don't think the elections are rigged but the media are so they might as well be. The longer the Tories remain in power the more distorted our views of the opposition become, making it harder for the public to make informed decisions based on facts.

I saw an edited and unedited version of a Starmer speech and you could take away two very different views from watching each... guess which one was all over the internet and the other you had to physically look for. We now live in a world where it is so easy to attack the person and not the subject. Social media has exacerbated this as people want to know everything in under 30 seconds.

Do we know if the Tories are allowed to use taxpayers' money in the build-up to an election to run their campaign? I remember seeing an article that broke down the budget for the remain/leave campaigns and they were MILES apart... One of the main issues here is the vast majority of people now form their opinions via social media and it is very easy to run mass campaigns using disinformation, and you can do it relatively cheaply.

 

If people are stupid enough to form their opinions from social media then we are in trouble.
Unfortunately too many are led by social media and press soundbites and don't check the real facts.
Politicians also play the game with soundbites and do not help the general public make a considered decision.

 

Sadly. there is no good alternative, nor does one appear to be on the horizon.

 

Absolutely. His speaches are so full of pandering and virtue sgnalling that when you cut them down to the 'substance', they represent a very different message to the one people were intended to take away.

What you say here is exactly spot on.

On attacking the person and not the argument, looking at the Labour conference, they spent practically the whole time attacking the person of their fellow members, including a motion to remove the whip from Rosie Duffield for expressing an opinion that many in the party consider verboden, and not worthy of debate. Members expressing support for freedom of speech were booed, and white people were told that their questions were not welcome, and to co-operate by not putting their hands up. It was Rosie Duffield that did not attend the conference, for fear of being assaulted by misogynyst male party members who had been attacking her on social media and email. When was the last time elected members of a political party didn't attend their conference for fear of assault, whilst others had to attend with security details for their protection? Two years ago at the last physical Labour conference, when the party's anti-Semetic credentials were being spelled out to the world.

It even turns out that there were sticker campaigns in the toilets, and a jewish member got up to say he was hit with anti-Semetics slurs during one speech that addressed the subject. Is that how adults behave these days?

There has been no equivalence with the tories. And following Rayners conservative scum call to arms, Ian Duncan Smith gets physically assaulted by Labour supporting louts in the streets of Manchester.

There are also the posts on this forum, with my polite dissagreements responded to with ad-hominem and no attempt at argument what so ever.

I am not sure it is the conservatives, or the right, that are the perpetrators of the problem you identify above. But if you think you are better off with Labour, more power to your elbow, but think twice before going to conference.

 

The Tories have had a dreadful decade. They smashed public services, impairing the effectiveness in all areas, were unfair and harsh driving people to suicide over disability benefit cuts and deportations. They offered ridiculous fig leafs like ‘we are all in it together’ while the private wealth of a few soared.

They did this with quite a fair wind. Although borrowing after the crash was high, most of the last decade was easy economically, because of how good things were globally and how low interest rates were. The Tories still didn’t want to share so pretended we were held back by the EU from helping our own citizens.

Extraordinarily the Tories entered this decade far more popular than they entered the last. They have completed an absolute conjuring trick that they were somehow not responsible for the damage they wrought, damage and lack of investment they freely now admit exists. They are propelled on hot air alone, by their attacks on others in their culture war and the emotional investment supporters have in Brexit. They have no substance whatsoever. They have not planned, cannot fix even simple problems. Just ignore them. Just promise more ridiculous things, that everything is great. The recent conference shows what a jape it is for them being in power.

And it seems there is no stopping them.

 

Perhaps it is something to do with the fact that ANY young person prepared to put the effort in will be rewarded with the ability to buy a house and raise a family.

And all that despite Labour, under Blair, opening up the borders to cheap labour, saddling kids with ridiculous debts for half assed degrees that they realised, all too late, did them few favours, and openening up the doors to Scottish cessation.

I think most people have a shrewed idea of the state the country would be in under a Labour party led by either "take the knee" starmer or comrade "lost his marbles" Corbyn. But at least they would have the promise of free broadband, paid for by the people who can be bothered to earn enough to pay taxes, whilst also having to pay for their own internet.

People know the situation. The tories will have to fall a heck of a lot further before people perceive them to be a worse bet than "don't mention your cervixes" Labour.

 

Interesting (but obviously ultimately completely irrelevant) polling data here:

 

Interesting. Opinium have a very good record for accuracy, and predicted the 2019 election with 100% accuracy.

However, that was a poll for a general election that would have a clear and definite result published a few days later, where as the above poll is a piece of market reasearch that would face no scrutiny.

The Boris poll was apparently conducted with a sample size of around 1300 people, and reports that the questions were responded to, with an opinion, by between 66% and 89% of people asked. This really doesn't seem to ring true, if it is suggesting that the sample watched the whole of, or greater part of the speach.

Seems more likely to me they were targetted, or invited rather than random groups, and that even then, it is more likely they were responding to opinions they had read in the media or on line. Even TV and YouTube ratings for the speaches suggest that only around 10% of the population, at the most, watched the speaches to any extent, so a response expressing opinions from 90% of a sample is suggesting very strongly that something about this poll is not at all right.

I do not believe, if I were to randomly approach 1300 people in the street, that even a quarter of them would have watched either Starmer's or Boris's speaches - a snap poll I conducted at work today, revealed that 7 out of eleven people polled didn't have much of a clue what I was talking about, three of them called Boris a W****r, and one said that Starmer was a 'joke' - with ten not even knowing that two speaches had taken place, and only two of them having seen any part of any of them. I can only assume that the polls were conducted in a far more targeted manner than just 1300 random UK residents, in which case a better description of the samples should really be given to understand where these opinions are coming from. If I am correct, it was actually two different samples, one for each speach, rather than a single sample comparing the same people's opinions of each speach, which pretty much invalidates them as an accurate measure, unless Opinium can show how they ensured the quality of their poll.

Interesting experiment! Ask your friends and colleagues how many of them saw any of the speaches, and what opinion they had regarding the questions put to the original sample(s).

Just a thought.

 

Must be hard to separate out what people felt about the speech from simply what they already thought.

 

I think maybe in this instance the methodology is betrayed by the byline - "voters were shown key sections of the speeches..."

Now obviously that opens up a whole can of worms about what sections they were shown, how Opinium decided they were key and how they decided someone was a 'voter'.

I agree with you entirely about the impact and breakthrough to the general public of a conference speech by any leader. Even I'm not going to sit and watch one and I'm probably more engaged than a lot of people.

 

What lingers though is the general impression. Both leaders will be happy with that.

Starmer as the serious opposition, a man of real career substance standing up to the heckling (one daft old bat) and Johnson, the What Ho! visionary, one part Churchill, two parts Just William, slinging confidence in good Old Blighty in the face of naysayers, neerdowells and doubters.

Mission accomplished for both.

 

I don't either will be too disappointed. Party conferences (and the conference speeches) in the doldrums between elections are pretty much only a pep rally for the enthusiasts anyway. In that sense I think Starmer had a much harder time, due to Macdonald making a scene and the way the heckling was reported... although both speeches were apparently light on policy and high on gags for the already-converted.

The way I see it, because 99% of voters don't watch the whole speech it all comes down to how the media presents it. The Tory press and cheerleaders have been contorting themselves in crazy ways to back up Boris' bluster and that's certainly quite funny to watch, but sadly it's effective. People just don't seem to care that three weeks ago The Sun, Daily Mail et al were telling Boris to sort out Xmas, issue loads of visas, work with big business to sort it, heed the warnings etc, yet now in a massive about-face they're largely agreeing with him that big business needs to stop whining and the magical land of low tax, high wages is just around the corner (honest guv). Even the odd dissenting columnist still finds time to throw in a "isn't it more fun with jolly Boris than boring old Starmer" to their articles.

I suspect what's coming through in the poll above is the same thing Corbyn had. Namely, present any of his policies to the public and the vast majority would get high approval ratings. Same with Starmer - in isolation, people will like some of the things he says and the way he says them. But stitching the whole thing together into a presentable package that people will vote for, potentially in the face of hostile media coverage, is a massive hurdle.

 

That is one of the most pertinent comments you have ever made on here.

Sorry to sound patronising, but comment well made.

 

Agree. It will be very hard for Keir to compete with Boris' incredible (Trumpian?) talent for hurdling and reframing previous mistakes (and getting the media to do likewise) to create a publicly held view that they were inevitable and would have been made by anyone. When a huge number of decisions are either mistakes, or political choices designed to save face for other political decisions or mistakes.

However tangible politics is influential politics, and when the hauliers issue refuses to go away, costs of goods and services exceeds wage inflation and people's Christmas dinners consist of a nut roast and some peas and carrots, Starmer may find it easier to cut through.

 

I just hope Starmer has some policies in the pipeline ready for that turn of events. Because as much as it pays in opposition to keep your powder dry for a bit and hide your real hand, especially with a slippery customer like Boris in power, there comes a point when voters want substance. I was pretty disappointed Labour had no real response to the Tory social care ‘plan’ last month. They seemed to be caught cold.

 

Agree.

I understand why Starmer is keeping their cards close to their chest and also why he’s focussing on internal politics first, but not building a consistent case and showing his values through time, he’s going to need some stand out policies to win over voters.

 

I’d like to think that policy and substance matter, but they have been largely irrelevant recently. Boris had one policy Get Brexit Done and that proved very popular, never mind the woeful lack of substance behind it.

Corbyn on the other hand had policy, much of it good, some of it half-baked, coming out of his hairy old ears. Too many people rejected it because they either found him, after two years of carpet bombing by the press, unfit or they didn’t like the disastrous u-turn on Brexit. Much of that policy, if only in name, is now owned by the Tories.

Starmer will concentrate on fitness, to demonstrate that if he is neither Johnson or Corbyn, the sane man in the room. His strategists will have it in mind that Cameron ended New Labour with no policy offer whatsoever or at least immediately abandoned anything they did promise. The public voted them back in with an increased majority.

The next election will be fought in very broad strokes, sadly Brexit may still dominate. Johnson will promise the sunlit uplands are still ahead, don’t abandon them now. Starmer, well how many dreams can he crush and get in? No to Remainers, he can’t promise closer Union, no to Brexiteers, he can’t tell them the PM is doing anything but talking out of his arse and no to his own party, he won’t keep his promises. Not sure any smart policies are going to make the difference, so it must be fitness. He is not Boris, that’s the policy offer.

 

For me it is quite simple. Labour have two big problems. The general public have an ingrained distrust of them (supported by the media). And they are constantly infighting.

Meanwhile the Tories have a solid and loyal 40% behind them which is often enough under FTPT.

They also have the ability to regularly renew with any divisiveness restricted to just when they elect a new leader. They are then quite happy to unify and blame previous Tory administrations and leaders for any issues with the promise that the new leader is different and will now fix it all.

I have no doubt that this is how Johnson's "reign" will end. He will be talked about in the same disparaging terms as Theresa May is today by a new Tory government and leader, perhaps as soon as after the next election.

Far play to them. It works. Much better than Labour's inability to unify behind anyone or anything does.

 

He has said yes, and taken the knee, to Identitarians, BLM and trans activism, and, to be fair, "sort of yes, but probably no, no way, it depends, I'll get angry if you ask me again!" to everything else.

When speculating the virtues of any person, it seems futile to ignore their previous actions in a manner not permitted to others they are being compared with.

Fact is, Boris has a direction, Kier doesn't even have a position to start out from. Not one he won't disavow when the going gets mildly awkward anyway. For anyone who is looking for policy and substance, I am afraid Kier and Labour must seem practically invisible at the moment.