The banker loving, baby-eating Tory party thread (regenerated)

[Chindie]

11 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

No, I'm not saying it is equal. In fact there are many millions more people who think right-wing policies are basically right, probably about 30 million or so.

Careful now. When people say the country basically leans conservative they get shot down.

[Davkaus]

I do sometimes suspect that the main problem the English have with the nazis is that they were german

 

 

[bobzy]

16 minutes ago, Chindie said:

Careful now. When people say the country basically leans conservative they get shot down.

Personally, I think the country leans conservative/right-wing as a whole but not on policies. 

[Davkaus]

9 minutes ago, bobzy said:

Personally, I think the country leans conservative/right-wing as a whole but not on policies. 

What does this mean? How do you think this manifests in a way other than supporting policies?

(I can't type this without reading it and thinking I sound like a dick, but I can't find a better way to ask it, so I apologse, but I tried ) 

[chrisp65]

12 minutes ago, Davkaus said:

What does this mean? How do you think this manifests in a way other than supporting policies?

(I can't type this without reading it and thinking I sound like a dick, but I can't find a better way to ask it, so I apologse, but I tried ) 

 

I think he means conservative as in socially incontinent, economically illiterate.

Basically, longer sentences for foreigners that I don’t know, especially if they’ve done something wrong, free money for my mates. Punish the unwed with a different tax and benefits regime, everyone gets a Boris Baby.

 

[HanoiVillan]

22 minutes ago, Davkaus said:

What does this mean? How do you think this manifests in a way other than supporting policies?

(I can't type this without reading it and thinking I sound like a dick, but I can't find a better way to ask it, so I apologse, but I tried ) 

People mostly don't vote based on policies. Even when they do, they do so based on hazy or partial understandings, or understandings filtered through layers of half-understood media analysis.

The key to understanding the Conservative party IMO is remembering that they are the party of incumbency (incumbent power, incumbent wealth, incumbent privilege) and the status quo ('these people have been in power for centuries, they know what they're doing'). And lots of people either have things they are worried about others taking, or are basically fine with the way things are now. Those are not unpopular propositions!

There's a line that goes around about the Conservative party being 'the most successful party in any western democracy' or some similar line to that. It's arguably true (they win a lot, and they've been around a very long time) but a] people shouldn't be too surprised that an advanced democracy that also has a royal family, a rigid class system and lots of inherited privilege would have a successful party dedicated to those interests, and b] it isn't *that* unusual for a party to successfully represent the elite's political interests (eg the Liberals in Canada, or the best comparison, the LDP in Japan, who have been in power for 62 of the last 66 years).

Edited October 6, 2021 by HanoiVillan

[blandy]

3 hours ago, HanoiVillan said:

The politics we have now is very obviously not a 'Corbynite wet dream'.

Indeed not. But it has led to nationalisation, leaving the EU, rising wages (for some sectors) more power to workers, huge national spending etc - all through Tory incompetence.

[HanoiVillan]

1 minute ago, blandy said:

Indeed not. But it has led to nationalisation, leaving the EU, rising wages (for some sectors) more power to workers, huge national spending etc - all through Tory incompetence.

I think you're going a little overboard here

'Nationalisation' is a very grand term for taking over certain rail franchises, leaving the EU was the goal not the result of incompetence, there has been no fundamental shift in the balance of power between capital and labour, and the huge national spending was dragged out of an unwilling chancellor by a once-in-a-generation crisis.

I agree that the Tories are flexible in their policies, and will switch to new ideas or nick Labour ones when it suits them, but the extent of the break can be exaggerated and the continuity underplayed.

[bickster]

1 minute ago, HanoiVillan said:

I think you're going a little overboard here

'Nationalisation' is a very grand term for taking over certain rail franchises, leaving the EU was the goal not the result of incompetence, there has been no fundamental shift in the balance of power between capital and labour, and the huge national spending was dragged out of an unwilling chancellor by a once-in-a-generation crisis.

I agree that the Tories are flexible in their policies, and will switch to new ideas or nick Labour ones when it suits them, but the extent of the break can be exaggerated and the continuity underplayed.

It's still what Jeremy would do though

[blandy]

1 minute ago, HanoiVillan said:

I agree that the Tories are flexible in their policies, and will switch to new ideas or nick Labour ones when it suits them, but the extent of the break can be exaggerated and the continuity underplayed.

That's what I was trying to get at really - the Tories, through incompetence, have enacted some policies which they would otherwise decry as Corbynite lunacy.

[chrisp65]

Well for what its worth, I’m actually considering a tactical vote for the tories…

 

(I am not considering a tactical vote for the tories)

[blandy]

1 hour ago, Chindie said:

Careful now. When people say the country basically leans conservative they get shot down.

Rightly so. Tories get in because they are essentially the only right wing party, whereas (almost) all the others are centre left or left wing.

• UK election results 1918-2019 | Statista

[HanoiVillan]

4 minutes ago, bickster said:

It's still what Jeremy would do though

 

4 minutes ago, blandy said:

That's what I was trying to get at really - the Tories, through incompetence, have enacted some policies which they would otherwise decry as Corbynite lunacy.

If the argument is basically 'Corbyn would also have spent a fortune on pandemic support' then sure, I think pretty much any politician would have done. I'm pretty sure Labour's rail policy in 2019 was a bit more extensive than sporadically taking over certain franchises.

'They would otherwise decry as Corbynite lunacy' is true of course, no argument on that.

[blandy]

9 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

If the argument is basically 'Corbyn would also have spent a fortune on pandemic support' then sure

It's more than that - it's that the tories have done loads of stuff that Jeremy has long supported. It's not a dig at saint Jeremy, it's a dig at the tories, to be clear. Nationalising stuff, support for British (or based in Britain) industry, calling for higher wages for workers and so on - all "anti-tory" policies, until they made the recent messes and had to try and fix them.

[bobzy]

55 minutes ago, Davkaus said:

What does this mean? How do you think this manifests in a way other than supporting policies?

(I can't type this without reading it and thinking I sound like a dick, but I can't find a better way to ask it, so I apologse, but I tried ) 

Xenophobic, homophobic, nationalist type things - probably more along the lines of social conservatism, but not really an extreme angle as such.  A dislike of immigrants rather than a hatred, a "what was wrong with a man being a man and a woman being a woman?" view of the world, "Engerland is the bestest place" - y'know, all those things.  Yet, on policies, more likely to be pro-greater funding for the NHS or in education or not reducing universal credit.  Probably not particularly fussed about doing anything proactive to help climate change, but would think anything that comes in "might be good".

The North East is probably (huge assumption) an area of England that is largely 'conservative' in views, but not in terms of policies.

[Genie]

31 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

Well for what its worth, I’m actually considering a tactical vote for the tories…

 

(I am not considering a tactical vote for the tories)

Why can’t England be an independent country and we leave Boris and co to run the remainder of the UK?

Nuffin personal, just thinking selfishly which seems to be the mood of the moment in the UK over the last few years.

[The Fun Factory]

1 hour ago, bobzy said:

Personally, I think the country leans conservative/right-wing as a whole but not on policies. 

If you mean economically to the left but socially to the right, with a strong belief in law and order/lock em up approach, then yeah I agree. I think that is what Bojo and the red wall approach has all been about, basically a land grab to the centre whilst keeping most of their traditional old tory support in the shires now that UKIP has collapsed.

[chrisp65]

2 minutes ago, Genie said:

Why can’t England be an independent country and we leave Boris and co to run the remainder of the UK?

Nuffin personal, just thinking selfishly which seems to be the mood of the moment in the UK over the last few years.

Well I guess you can put that idea to the already up and running Labour and SNP governments of Wales and Scotland. 

I suspect it would have to be the mother of all sales pitches, but always worth a shot.

First passed the post is your enemy here, not the Northern Irish.

 

[HanoiVillan]

22 minutes ago, blandy said:

It's more than that - it's that the tories have done loads of stuff that Jeremy has long supported. It's not a dig at saint Jeremy, it's a dig at the tories, to be clear. Nationalising stuff, support for British (or based in Britain) industry, calling for higher wages for workers and so on - all "anti-tory" policies, until they made the recent messes and had to try and fix them.

I'm not interested in defending 'saint Jeremy', I just think this is a much too surface-level reading of things. Whether one would have liked it or not, the rail reform promised in the 2019 manifesto looked nothing like removing licences from a couple of poorly-performing franchises. And *passing a harsh new immigration act, then ignoring business warnings of labour shortages, then waiting until too late to offer an insufficient number of visas while ret-conning that this was your plan all along* and *increasing the minimum wage, trialling UBI, pushing income protection insurance schemes and 'rolling out sectoral bargaining across the economy'* are pretty clearly (whichever or neither one prefers) so different that the fact they might both lead to a period of wage riges is not really the main thing about them. One of those approaches would lead to a notable shift in power between capital and labour, and one wouldn't.

Edited October 6, 2021 by HanoiVillan

[Stevo985]

1 hour ago, Davkaus said:

What does this mean? How do you think this manifests in a way other than supporting policies?

(I can't type this without reading it and thinking I sound like a dick, but I can't find a better way to ask it, so I apologse, but I tried ) 

As others have said, I think lots of people don't vote for policies. They don't know what they're voting for.

A woman I work with has always voted Conservative despite being an incredibly left leaning person when you actually speak to her. She has literally no answer when you ask her why she's voting conservative. It goes against everything she believes in but she just doesn't get it.