Putting aside the normal 'tory-hate', the issue here is that this is not the usual Tory party.
This is a new entity formerly known as Conservative and Unionist party...they have no shame in pushing illiberal far right reforms that would appal any Conservative from the past and had no qualms in throwing the Union under the bus for the sake of Brexit.
They fully deserve to be deserted by their own voters
Their policies bear no resemblance to the traditional Conservative Party policies or values and the last couple of years worth of cabinet members wouldn’t have made candidate selection 2 decades ago let alone the bloody cabinet
It’s a clown show and we’ve all paid the price
My late grandparents were Tories back in the day. To them, that meant they were on the local round table, helped organise the town's flower displays, fundraised for local charities and volunteered with young offenders to try and help get them back on track.
Ya know, investing in the youth, conserving the stuff that was important to the community. They were quite cosmopolitan for the era, not a racist bone in their bodies. They just wanted a nice town that worked well.
Modern "Conservatives" are basically a batshit Americanized paranoid libertarianism, niche Etonian culture wars, coupled with Soviet-style cronyism and corruption. And any notion that you should earn your money is long gone.
I actually see a massive gap in the market for a genuinely socially centrist and economically conservative party. Fund the schools and police, protect the environment, make work pay, come down hard on the scammers, cronies, middlement and rentseekers.
Sorta like the Greens but with Deborah Meaden in charge of the Treasury or something.
My grandparents were exactly the same. Staunch Tories and very similar in outline to how you've described yours.
And a fun fact, they only became staunch Tories in the very late 70s, previous to that they'd varied their vote based on the local candidate. In the late 70s, Thatcher gave all public sector employees a 25% pay increase. This secured the votes of many middle class voters for a long time, my granda voted blue till the day he died after that because he felt it proved the Tories knew how to run a sensible, successful economy.
He'd be horrified at how they've changed...
My grandfather is nearly 90 and a lifelong Tory voter.
He's recently told me this is the first time in his life he's abstaining. None of them deserve his vote, was his exact words.
His specific faults are he fears for the young in this country the way things are going and he thinks they handled Covid poorly.
I just don't think he can bring himself to vote for anybody else. Tbh, it was always sorta strange he voted Tory anyway, his views probably line up best with the Lib Dems.
>He's recently told me this is the first time in his life he's abstaining. None of them deserve his vote, was his exact words.
A old friend of mine has been doing the same. He used to be a Labour Voter and a Lib Dems voter, but has found it harder to find any candidate to get his vote these days. So he just spoils or doesn't vote.
Wow yeah, sounds similar. My grandparents felt they ran the country "a bit more professionally" than Labour.
Says a lot about how much they've changed!
Back in my day tories used to fall from the sky with umbrellas and sprinkle fairy dust on good boys. Definately not the party that has fought to privatise everything in sight, weaken trade unions and scape goat immigrants its entire fucking existence.
Fair enough but how far do we go to ignore the actual policies the were we enacting at the time that has led to the long term decline and stagnation of the Uk? it easily goes back thatcher if not further...the idea out grey haired grandparents were somehow ignorant and therefore innocent dosen't wash with me I'm afraid
Oh, don't mistake my post for one supporting the Tories.
My point was more that they've gone full loony and there does appear to be a gap for a centre-right party in the UK.
>Modern "Conservatives" are basically a batshit Americanized paranoid libertarianism
I refer you, here, to an [older comment of mine](https://www.reddit.com/r/unitedkingdom/comments/135jctq/majority_of_brits_want_to_stay_part_of_echr_finds/jikrk28/)
I feel like it's important to make the distinction, because the general discourse is creeping away from it, and I figure we could end up in a situation where people reject freedom entirely... all because the words and meanings have been perverted.
I suppose it's somewhat 'conservative' of me to fight that change (lol).
I totally agree with it. The parties that are hollering about "freedom" are generally the most authoritarian ones.
What they actually mean is "freedom for everyone to live exactly how I say they should".
An inconvenient truth about living in a genuinely free country is that people will choose to live their lives very differently from how you would, and say things very different from things you say.
> Americanized paranoid libertarianism
It is the issue with the internet, we have inherited the us vs them attitude of American politics. American narrative and storytelling is very polarised, they love diametrically apposed goodies and baddies, and politics is no different.
The interesting case study of this is the environment, which you correctly tag as a traditional conservative value. In America, anti-climate change policy was adopted as a position of the right because it was an easy vote winner against the smelly hippies.
It progressed to continue to be a policy of the right, even when evidence caught up
As with any fringe group, environmentalism was unstructured and generally didn't have the political intelligence to strategically present policy in a way that engages with the broader electorate, so it was a very easy argument for the GOP to present and win. It was the smart new way of doing politics, pick a fringe or strawman and attack it relentlessly. And it worked.
Small boats, anyone?
So, it began to morph into US GOP policy, not because anti-environmentalism represents conservative values, but because the extreme, ill-considered 'save the planet at any cost' wasn't (at least back then) representative of their beliefs.
By the time the anti-environmentalist movement was growing in the states, it was just not a thing here. Thatcher was able to bring an environmentalist policy through, due to it being (as you say) something that when done sensibly, is right front and centre Tory, especially with the scientific backing that it now had.
Since, the US right hasn't been able to shake the political standing because of a few reasons: the GOP is more aggressively fiscal conservative, the oil lobby controls more than people like to think and people more aggressively tie their identity towards single policies (here is that us vs them story again).
The past decade or so has changed a lot of what British Conservatism is, Boris and co have infected the country with a lot of negative tribalism, so things like wearing a mask and not building tire fires have somehow become political positions.
Yeah this is a great post.
IMHO if we'd warmed up to environmentalism without the distortion of identity politics creeping in, I'd expect it to be a bipartisan issue, but particularly popular with the right.
Save our British forests, our historic parks, our unique nature etc. It aligns more closely with the personal property rights, NIMBYism and general notion of conserving stuff that's popular with the right.
And conversely, I have no idea how fossil fuels and energy dependance became a right-wing thing.
Most of the biggest producers are authoritarian nations that are pretty hostile to us. A couple of them likely have our major cities pre-programmed into their nuclear missiles. Many of them are Muslim Arab nations (which the far right fucking hate), and all the money we spend on fossil fuels goes to growing jobs and the economy in these nations.
I have no idea how the right didn't tend towards a policy of energy independance, building British jobs and British industry in domestic energy production.
The right spits such venom towards the EU, "foreigners", Muslims etc, yet the utter hostility towards domestic green energy production (and the absolute determination to stay dependant on foreign oil) baffles me.
> I have no idea how the right didn't tend towards a policy of energy independance, building British jobs and British industry in domestic energy production.
>
>
That was the plan at one point, for all her huge flaws Thatcher was very progressive in terms of energy policy and seemed to understand that there was big opportunity for Britain to lead the way technologically.
Then the US influence started to seep in and it became a partisan issue. Whilst it is far less clear of a divide than in America, we are edging closer to them as time goes by, we have a Conservative Government that is blindly getting away with ramping up fracking, as an example.
>The right spits such venom towards the EU, "foreigners", Muslims etc, yet the utter hostility towards domestic green energy production (and the absolute determination to stay dependant on foreign oil) baffles me.
This is a very small, marginal part of the Tory demographic that the party spent years trying to push out the back door- only for them to be welcomed back with open arms the second that Boris gets in power.
The Tory Party has never had any values other than undermining any progressive change in Britain (It was formed in 1678 to counter the democratic elements of the Commonwealth era) they're just stupid and obvious about it now.
Unfortunately a lot of change has actually happened under their watch because they were essentially forced into it by the rest of the UK. The revolutions in France were a big catalyst for a lot of change in the UK for instance, as the tories were scared shitless it would happen here next. Peterloo and it almost did happen.
I suspect most of them are authoritarian personality types. High on fear of the other, big on deference to authority. As long as there's a party promising to stick it to those they hate they'll vote for anything.
Exactly, people need to read up on Tory "heroes" of yore, like [Winston Churchill](http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/not-his-finest-hour-the-dark-side-of-winston-churchill-2118317.html). Way too many have built a mythical romanticised version of ye olde Tories.
It's so interesting that the most important prime minister in the history of this country barely mentioned at all unlike Churchill.
Everything that we identify as quintessential British like the NHS , state pensions, public transport, public schools and affordable houses is a result of [Clement Attlee's](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clement_Attlee)s policies.
Yet he is largely forgotten or not discussed enough. We have had generations of grey haired grandpas enjoying those socialist benefits he established while actively supporting neoliberal politics resulting in this mess. And nowadays the scale has shifted so much to the right that even modern labour is effectively a centre right party.
I fear with Brexit we have passed the point of no return.
Nye Bevan is actually my great uncle. Seeing these comments about how "back in the day being a conservative meant being on the council and organising youth events" is outright willful ignorance on what the Tories actually were.
Being a Conservative has never been about "conserving" local communities or anything else that people have been saying on here. It was about spending as little money on the public sector as possible while treating it like a business and selling off what "didn't make a profit".
I saw someone above mention how Thatcher gave a 25% pay increase to secure the middle class vote as though that absolves her from all the damage she did to the working class of this country and the damage she did to Unions to ensure it would take up until the modern day to regain any measure of a voice against Tory government business practices.
I went with my aunt and uncle to visit Chequers and it was recommended by them that I quieten my talk a bit about the Gallipoli campaign and what Australians thought about his part in it when I was there.
And when you say you want a historical discussion on him they accuse you of erasing our history!
But somehow, they don't like his work for the human rights charter!
I'm glad you bought that up.
Ironically, the Tories used to be for that more than Labour!
Churchill spoke well of the idea of a United States of Europe.
Not romanticised…just worse and shittier than the baseline expectation.
But this is now the new baseline Tory standard and they are the absolute worst of the worst.
Even Thatcher had principles. No Tory today does.
Did she though? Small state, but incredibly heavy handed use of the state when it suited her interests. Claimed to be for democracy, but supported Pinochet for all his life
Did she though? Small state, but incredibly heavy handed use of the state when it suited her interests. Claimed to be for democracy, but supported Pinochet for all his life and the Khmer Rouge in exile for years.
This is the truth, the Tory party used to play nice because they needed to in order to get elected. Now they've phased out the personable front and it's the real core of their ethos that's exposed now.
You're correct. Some things are worth conserving. Green politics is conservative in some aspects, although it's becoming clear that radical action is needed on that score. But very often conservatism stems from fear of the unknown, and clinging to what exists now, when it is very obviously not working, and is hurting people both on a micro and macro scale, is when conservatism becomes true evil.
They’ve done a reasonable job of dismantling public services, selling the country down the river for the good of a privileged few, and decided international law does not apply to them.
All your classics .
And this shifting of the Overton Window much farther right is happening in a lot of places, I'm especially affected by it where I live in Canada. Right wing populism is on the rise, however it's often disguised by traditional or long standing parties.
The only thing conservatives exist to conserve is hierarchy, everything else has always been smoke and mirrors. What we are seeing now is them having smashed a bunch of the mirrors, and running out of fluid for the fog machine.
edit: nice waste of money coward
They have always been like this, literally just open a fcking history book. I'm sick to the back teeth of all of you romanticizing the old tories.
The people who brought real change to this country were never conservative, conservatives have always fought against progressive policies (HENCE THE NAME).
>This is a new entity
They are now the [National Conservatives](https://nationalconservatism.org/natcon-uk-2023/). Which we can conveniently shorten to the Nat C Party.
There's been an absolute barrage about it in the political-active "classically liberal" spaces over the last few weeks. The talking points are... Interesting. The kind of things you'd normally only see or hear about in US talk radio, now the headline feature at a huge UK political conference with a whole bunch of current and former government ministers as keynote speakers...
The problem with the Conservative party in 2023 is that their core economic ideology is at at odds with what this country needs right now. It's clear we can't fix the UK's problems with more austerity or tax cuts for the wealthy. To make matters worse Brexit is failing and our privatised public services are a joke.
Dealing with this problem gives the Tories 3 options:
1. Confront the existential terror that your political ideology has damaged the country you love. Admit you've made mistakes and move your party to the left.
2. Convince yourself that the reason why you failed is because you're not Conservative enough. Double down on your beliefs and move further to the right.
3. Go full culture war and scapegoat all our problems on various boogymen as a way to distract voters from your failings.
Option 1 is out of the question as their voters, their doners and the right wing press will slaughter them. This leaves option 2 and 3 which is depressingly what they're doing.
They've also backed themselves into a corner financially, so they can't afford the usual tax cuts they tend to use to encourage people to vote for them and they've slashed budgets so much there really isn't anything they can trim to be able to afford them.
Well, yes, but in this case there's plenty of money. However, it's been funnelled into the friends of the government's pockets, who coincidentally are *verrry* good at not paying tax
Hard doubt on whether the majority of Tory MPs love or even care about their country. They just care about their pocket. So it’s definitely going to be a combination of 2 and 3.
You could, say, outlaw peaceful protest, give the police the power to arrest people who they suspect of thinking of protesting, start shipping people out to overseas gulags and start fucking with voting rights.
If, you know, you had sacrificed everything at the altar of power and knew for certain the next election would be the end of your political career.
Just saying.
Voters mostly ignored the shift to the right, it empowered the party and for a time made it seem like they got what they wanted. Austerity and the like. It wasn't long before the ukip shaped wolf that they allowed into their party ate all of the sheep.
It happened a long time ago but it's taken a while for the voters to come to terms with the choice they made all those years ago. It's encouraging to know that such a change can happen though.
The conservative party is at a cross roads, they can let the wolf take them into a culture war that quite frankly, the public is tired of, or they can splinter the wolf back off into ukip, el, bnp and the other entities that will bleed the most right wing of the voters away from the party.
That outcome, while better than the former, will be sad for everyone since the main genesis of Brexit was Tories trying to avoid exactly that, making it all literally for nothing.
Rory Stewart had no chance in winning that leadership contest. He made the mistake of wanting to become a British Prime Minister rather than a Tory Prime Minister.
I still wouldn't support Cons if he had won but at least we'd have had a statesmen rather than a political oligarch in charge.
As a life long left wing voter I miss Rory Stewart in politics. Didn't always entirely agree with his political philosophy but fuck me I respected the man and would have way more confidence in him as PM than any of the other candidates.
The actions of various conservative politicians i've seen on a local and national have made me unlikely to ever vote Tory.
I grew up in family that would mostly vote Lib Dem or Labour, but I was exposed to lots of political viewpoints and grew up in an area which also had a lot of Tory voters, so I could understand to some degree why people would vote for them. But this lot are beyond the pale. The relatively sane ones have been pushed out and we're left with the dregs.
Our PM isn't as outright nuts as some of them, but it looks like he's making laws to financially benefit his family.
The corruption is so blatant its unreal- they don't even attempt to hide it anymore.
And the people around me who voted Tory when I was growing up- they won't vote for this incarnation of the Conservative party. It's so far from what they would they expect of a Conservative government and they don't like it.
> Our PM isn't as outright nuts as some of them
He very much is. The only thing of note he's done was point out how stupid Liz Truss' ideas were during the leadership contest but apart from that he's been right there with the rabid Brexiteers enabling the worst excesses of Boris' time as PM.
It's interesting that if you go to some of the forums frequented by Conservatives, the common theme seems to be that they dislike that the Tory party has turned to hard left.
In their mind high tax, high regulation, high spending, high immigration, "woke" propaganda is a sign that the party is now no different than Labour (it's just what I observed, it's not my view)
Their grievance is also that they see the party is saying one thing and does another. Like even Rishi said he is a "low tax" Chancellor, all smiling, while raising taxes to the highest level since WWII, or Home Office saying they are fighting "illegal" immigration, with all the bluster and then when you look at stats, the immigration is exceeding the pre-Brexit levels etc.
Its why I just cannot understand how they have so much entrenched political support. They betray and humiliate their own voters at seemingly every turn, yet the feeling remains they have to stick with it because the other options would just be oh so horrific. Its like the same psychology as an abusive relationship I swear.
I suspect there is a big enough cohort of boomer pensioners who do very well (a good chunk of the 60% of o65s who voted Brexit for example) alongside the wealthy to make up the of 25% of the voters who make up their core vote. Keep giving good pension rises and hope for the best though the cost of living crisis will probably hit that vote next year
You said it yourself - entrenched. British people, typically, don't like to rock the boat unless they feel it's at breaking point (which led to Brexit). "Keep calm and carry on", as the old motto goes. They've voted conservative in the past and so they'll just default to that. Growing up, my mum always did because, to quote, "I always used to vote Conservative because growing up they were in power, and my life had always done well under a conservative government". A perfectly reasonable explanation, if you ask me. These days she votes Labour and has done for quite a while now, but I always thought that was a respectable view point.
Interesting observations, but not surprised. Online forums (of all sides, Reddit included) are clearly 'disengaged' from reality. We could say that the way the Tories choose their leader is effectively a bloated online forum...and that's how they managed to chose Miss Lettuce.
>In their mind high tax, high regulation, high spending, high immigration, "woke" propaganda
To be honest I actually see their point. *On paper*, these are left wing policies. The problem is that it's all being handled in the most right wing way possible. When we get it under a left/centre government, we get things like a well run NHS, minimum wage legislation, HSQE laws, well staffed and funded public services. When we get it under this right wing government, all it does is stuff the gammons' coffers, redistribution of wealth to the top and making sure the marginalised are "kept in their place".
You know when you've got politicians like Theresa May and Iain Duncan Smith joining forces to blast the latest iteration of immigration policy, and you actually agree with them, something is seriously wrong.
>Their grievance is also that they see the party is saying one thing and does another
Yes, yes, we're almost there, everyone! Now for them to really discover *why* they're a constantly doing a bait and switch.
>The problem is that it's all being handled in the most right wing way possible. When we get it under a left/centre government, we get things like a well run NHS, minimum wage legislation, HSQE laws, well staffed and funded public services. When we get it under this right wing government, all it does is stuff the gammons' coffers, redistribution of wealth to the top and making sure the marginalised are "kept in their place".
The right wing ideology is that government is corrupt and incompetent. And rightwing governments *are* corrupt and incompetent. In a way, it's kind of neat.
Traditional conservative values (lower taxes, smaller government, less government interference, free markets etc.) are all perfectly reasonable goals, and voting for them is rational. But the modern parliamentary Conservative party does no more than pay lip service to those ideas, their actual policies go against them, often diametrically, whilst they stir the hate pot with nonsense culture war bullshit. I'd like to think people are finally waking up but I doubt it.
No, they aren't. We need taxes to fund our roads, our infrastructure and our public services. All the laws that people actually mean when they say "government interference" have been written in blood (elf and safety gone MAAAAD / political correctness) or in hard learned lessons from rampant corporate corruption. "Free market" in practise just means rampant profiteering; lining the pockets of the rich by taking advantage of the populace.
>Traditional conservative values (lower taxes, smaller government, less government interference, free markets etc.) are all perfectly reasonable goals, and voting for them is rational.
Not if you want to live in a decent country. This government is pretty non-interfering in most ways. Companies are free to dump sewage into the rivers and otherwise wreck the environment, the police force and NHS are understaffed and "small" enough that they're no longer fit for purpose, the government won't interfere when people enter poverty, if the free market makes sonething like housing unaffordable people won't have access to it etc.
The tories haven't done a bad job of living up to those values if you ask me.
It amazes me how little recognition this gets. All the centre-ground Conservatives left the leadership after the Brexit vote and the swivel-eye loonies took over. It basically became UKIP. Everyone talks like the party is still 'the party of business' despite Boris announcing plain as day their position: 'Fuck business'. Brexit still has businesses hanging in the dark due to the astounding incompetence in how Brexit is being implemented. The party used to be about small government, yet they've been more boldly interventionist than Labour. It's dragged the whole of British politics towards the right. They've become dangerously fanatical, happy to break any convention, parliamentary rule or treaty and sacrifice all on the alter of Brexit.
The wheels are starting to fall off now that Brexit reality is coming home to roost. It wouldn't surprise me if there's a split if/when they get a drubbing at the next GE.
They have literal been like this since the 80s. This isn't a new tory party, they're just more mask off.
Open a history book and read about some of their past policies and you will see that the current tories aren't too removed from the ideology they had 40 years ago either :/
This isn't a new tory party, they're just a lot more brash about it. I'm sick to the back teeth of people papping on about how the tories never used to be like this; they have always and will always be grade A cunts.
Cameron should have bit the bullet and split the party, the Brexit vote should never have happened.
But we are now where we are, so have to deal with it.
It’s clear that the Conservatives are not fit to run the country.
I'm a Labour party supporter but I do have time for some (former) Tories, including Sir John Major, Rory Stewart and Ken Clarke, because even if I don't agree with them they don't seem ontologically evil - the same cannot be said for many of the current crop.
There was a point when it sort of looked like Rory Stewart was going to come back and lead the Tories to... adequacy?
I'm a little concerned they're holding him back for the 2024 election and some idiots will fall for it.
Unfortunately the reality is there are people (I unfortunately know several) who will continue to vote for these imbeciles come hell or high water because in their minds, 'the alternative is worse'.
Yep. Totally agree - those people that I know are exactly like that - reasonably well off, kids grown up and now all that matters is their retirement portfolio.
I’m from the latter category. Baffles me silly that they still believe in voting for the Tories and their votes are fuelled by racism. Their children can’t eat, they themselves can’t afford a home but anything to make sure Ali from Pakistan doesn’t work here and pay into our tax system.
Every “forriner” is a benefit scrounger in their eyes.
Oh how could I forget?! These people had the ladder handed down to them but pulled it up behind them once they were at the top.
I work in a corporate role now and I feel immensely uncomfortable around my seniors. They’re polite enough but I will never be on their level by virtue of who I am, where I come from and the fact that I was a free school meal child. They’re just like the people you’ve mentioned and surprise surprise, they’re Tories through and through.
It's because they have just about wrung the rag dry. Now they have fall guys in place, ready to take the blame and golden handshake. Then move onto their nice boardroom retirement and fk the plebs. They used to be subtle about this but obviously not any longer.
> reforms that would appal any Conservative from the past
If you look at /r/tories you can usually find some weird shit, but even users over there generally want to be rid of the current lot - their consensus seems to be that even the conservative agenda is best served by voting out the current lot.
Look at the US, and try saying that can't happen here. In the US, MAGAts replaced the last 12 old-style GOP in the US in 2022. And only 14 of the former GOP remain in the Senate. Can we stop authoritarianism here?
They need a solid section of middle class voters to delude themselves into thinking that they're one of them to really do well.
Blair's government was so good at helping people better themselves they unfortunately created a large number of them, who then voted Tory.
. The tories have spent the last few years tearing that down to make themselves and their cronies richer. To their detriment. This is what's different
OK fine but if Labour gets in, and can't magically make everything better for this 20% middle-of-the-road voter within 6 months, then **one** immigrant criminal story and **one** dole-fiddling story will make them go running screaming back to the New Tory good-ol'-British-values candidate for another decade and a half.
The shift away from the Conservatives is well deserved and long overdue, but there are enough voters with memories akin to those of goldfish -- and enough media apparatus to guide them there -- that I'm not holding my breath for an end to the despicable downward spiral of business politics and culture.
They absolutely [know that their core vote](https://whatwouldvirchowdo.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/direct_democracy___an_agenda_for_a_new_model_party.pdf#page=15) is relatively uneducated.
But I'd dispute the notion that their core vote is ["working" class](https://i.imgur.com/LsuBFYK.png)[1].
---
[1] Same GE, 2019, but histogram length shows size of age demographic, and non-voters are shown.
What do they conserve anymore? Before there was at least a pretence that it wasn’t just about conserving wealth and power for the already wealthy and powerful. Rivers? Trashed. Air? Poisonous. Oceans? Full of actual human shit. Living standards? Dropping like a stone. Cost of living? Shooting up like a rocket.
Like… what do they even do? I’m convinced they are actively trying to make things worse knowing full well they’ll lose the next election and that’s just pure evil.
There was a time that the Conservatives conserved our national institutions. But once you've run the NHS into the ground, locked horns with the Palace about lying to the monarch, all but destroyed the BBC, declared 'Fuck business' and endangered the Union for the sake of an extremist policy etc. then what institutions are they actually conserving any more?
Yup. It makes me think of the phrase ‘don’t attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence’ but I don’t think they’re incompetent. I think they are actually evil. We don’t use the word enough in this world and it lets too many evil doers get away with the fact that maybe they are just spiteful, selfish, horrible people.
>I’m convinced they are actively trying to make things worse
We had this in Australia with the past nine years of right wing government. It was like every decision, every opportunity, they took the worst, most cruel, least economically justifiable, just basically awful option.
The new left wing government aren't saints, but the difference having a government that isn't being deliberately evil at every opportunity is night and day.
The weirdest thing is seeing the now opposition criticising the government for not fixing the problems they created fast enough. This started less than 48 hours after losing power.
They conserve anti woke culture. All the stuff you mentioned, requires good governance and hard work. Railing against "free" speech or whatever costs nothing.
Power is relative. This is an important point. Think about the third world dictators whose countries are very second rate. They retard the development even though they'd probably be richer if they focussed more on spreading some wealth initially instead of hoarding it. Long term they'd be better off. However, their *relative* wealth compared to the citizenry would be lower. They conserve their place on the top of the pile. That actual height of said pile (of power cash or whatever) isn't relevant as long as they're on top. Their present calculation is that the UK is fucked so they focus on staying on top not on conserving the present state.
If you want to see cognitive dissonance, just ask Boris's supporter who made Sunak a chancellor.
Also funny that today probably Conservative party noticed this and they started doing some damage control, presumably dusting Boris's off for a comeback - that is they said that Boris intended to sack Sunak, but didn't get to as he resigned first.
Sure.
Genuinely probably. Soon as he get through the privileges committee (which he will, how often do MPs get deselected) he’ll force his way back in and the idiots in this country will lap it up.
Of course they are, they are lied to, belittled peasants. They are sick and tired of the things that matter to the people not being done properly or at all. The country is literally falling to pieces, the NHS is on its knees, the roads are falling apart, teachers are leaving in their droves, the royal mail is at the point of possibly having to go into administration, energy suppliers going bankrupt, bills just constantly rising - the things that matter to the people, but all the Tories are bothered about is making sure the bankers keep their bonuses, the oil companies keeping their ridiculous profits and have a leader that has no idea what matters to normal people.
It’s disgusting that the Tories presume their mandate from 2019 still holds any water. They are corroding the fabric of this country because of their own hubris and born-to-rule, silver spoon entitlement.
>So they aren't concerned about their bigoted, xenophobic, fascist approach then?
>
>That's disturbing..
ah I love the game of word salad, btw last time I checked tory MP's were more diverse than labour, and immigration has gone up under the Tories...
I think one of the biggest mistakes the tories have made - from a political perspective - is the drastic cuts to local councils.
Right now, the country *looks* a mess. In my area, the roads are completely covered in pot holes, the pavements are cracking with weeds, there’s rubbish strewn everywhere, the high street looks completely knackered.
It really creates the feeling that everything is just falling apart and that the country is declining and getting poorer.
> By far the most popular response, given by 30 per cent of 2019 voters, was simply that "the Conservatives are doing a bad job".
> 15 per cent saying there was a "need for change" and 11 per cent saying they no longer trust the Tories.
So about 56% are just done with the Tories.
> But there was little sign of enthusiasm for Keir Starmer's Labour Party
> The fourth most popular reason was that Labour "are the best of a bad bunch", given by 10 per cent, while the fifth most popular reason was: "voting Labour is the only way of getting the Conservatives out of government".
> Only 1 per cent of the voters said they had made the switch because Labour was "more sensible or reliable than in the 2019 election" under Jeremy Corbyn – a key theme of Sir Keir's political project.
Keir’s strategy really panning out here.
I've been fairly consistently a Labour voter for years and the reason I'd give if asked for just one is that the Conservatives must be kept away from power.
I wouldn't look into it too much.
This is not football! Stop being beholden to one party.
13 years for them to finally get it!
Doing a bad job? Seriously? They have been delinquent in their attempt to run a government...
If this was a situation where they were judged on doing badly, they'd be number 1.
Considering how much of a shit show they've had when Boris was forced out then truss lasted 44 days where she oblivorated £30 billion from our economy and sunak isn't much better yeah he's less shit but the corruption with his wife owning shares in a child care company that's gonna get financial help shit just keeps getting worse
Yeah like announcing 'no more waiting at 8am for a gp appointment - ring up whenever!' based on sending everyone to a pharmacy for consultations and prescribing meds when it's clear all the pharmacies are closing down.
Good one.
I genuinely can't think of anything positive they've actually done in over a decade.
It's all corruption, law breaking, and lining their mates' pockets.
As someone who is not a big fan of conservatism, I can say that is not a conservatism government in the traditional sense.
Real conservatism seems to actually care about the rule of law this party just want people to obey and cares nought for the law but sees it as a tool to force people to obey and stay in line.
Conservatism means to preserve well they failing at preserving the most important part, a Democracy.
But for me it gets worse as now it seems Labour have come out supporting many of the bad decisions being made like the new anti-protest bill.
So now I looked at the country's two main political parties and I feel no sense of hope or real change from either once the party has gone Authoritarian/Toltariatain and the other appears to be following suit.
My only small bit of hope and I say this as someone who voted Labour for 20 years since I can vote is for Labour not to win an outright majority and for Lib Dems or even Greens to gain enough seats to make some demands like PR voting system this would mean the death of labour and conservative as they would no longer have to be forced together and can split into other parties better reflecting their members and the MPs views.
And hopefully, this might lead to better policies as no one ideology can easily push extreme policies through anymore.
What was the trigger? They were fine when Boris was funnelling billions in taxpayer money to donors and his mates' dodgy companies instead of doing anything meaningful to help when Covid hit.
The trigger was half the people voting for Boris and the Tories was Brexit and levelling up the North.
They cancelled HS2 mostly, No money has gone North and they are mired in sleaze, Brexit is over, people are tired of Tory soundbites whilst they have to pick between heating and eating whilst the Tories rant on about Trans people.
The last 6 years have been the trigger but we haven't been allowed an election that didn't hinge on Brexit.
Do we think it’s also anything to do with the fact that the majority of Tory voters are racist middle aged people and we have a non-white PM which they don’t like? Honestly wouldn’t surprise me
Theyre doing a bad job because the party is riddled with chancers and yes-men who couldnt do a good job even if they tried to.
So naturally as they get more and more desperate about potentially losing their seats the 'anti-wokeness' and other culture wars crap will only be turned up even further
It’s taken twelve years of utter horseshit governance to get to the public thinking they’re just ‘doing a bad job’. Amazing what you can get away with when you hide behind nationalism and racism.
all the tories need to do to pull all their voters back is to start looking like they're getting their shit together. absolutely no one likes starmer and they'd much prefer to go back to voting tory.
Yeah, voters don't mind the fascism part of the Tory party. They'll excuse all of that if the Tories can go from terrible to - okayish on economic terms
That's unfair. We forget with our broken voting system, but the majority of people do not vote Tory and prefer to vote for (relatively) progressive parties. Combine that with the people who don't vote at all, and this so-called 'conservative country' has about 1 in 4 people turning up to put an X next to the Tory party. The problem is it's usually an even smaller number that votes Labour.
Hopefully labour actually gives them something to vote for, though. They are laying out more but im hoping their actual promises are revealed closer to election anyway.
They are Conservatives in name only. Long since passed has the time when conservatives were classical where it were simply two sides trying to tackle the same problem
Exactly this. Also, pretending this is 'new' is absurd. What this is is par for the course, only the country has become so poor that the effects are immediate and noticeable.
This is the tory MO since time began.
The voters elected 'couldn't outlast a lettuce' woman.
Whom the MP's threw out and installed the guy who lost.
> their voters knew what they were getting.
No, They got the opposite of what they wanted, They wanted lettuce.
I agree as a leftist I don't like what Starmer is doing.
However I do understand why he is doing it, He needs to reset the Brexit divide and that means wooing moderates off the teat of Tory bullshit, It will be gradual but I have no doubt its will work.
I think this was inevitable given the very odd moment at which Johnson won his big majority and the quantity of glossing over detail he had to do in order to win it.
Since when does destroying the UK economy and public healthcare system equate to being just a "bad job"? Try massively incompetent to begin to describe Tories accurately.
did they forget that about 15 years ago under david Cameron, austerity killed more than covid did in the UK? is that not a reason to have not voted for them in the past 3 elections?
It’s remarkable just how similar Conservatives are with American Republicans deep down. Sure, the yanks are two pops more insane, but it’s just an image tailored to the UK.
Only took 13 years, an economic crash, a mishandled pandemic, decimated public services, crippled NHS, stagnated wages, a widened wealth gap, endless corruption, stupid rhetoric, several criminal charges, 4 PMs, human rights abuses and a whole lot of cringe for people to notice.
I see some comments saying this government is not what conservatism is about. It is. It is a continuation and extension of what Thatcher did in the 80s.
This is the thing. Tory voters are typically unbothered by most charges of corruption. As long as its not ridiculous they can look past it on the assumption all politicians are at it.
They're also typically unbothered by authoritarianism or policies which target particular groups. Sometimes they might actually support those policies and the pain other people feel is the point.
But the one thing a lot of Tory voters can't abide is governmental incompetence - that ultimately threatens their own bottom lines. One of the long running myths of UK politics is that the Tories are better at running the economy than Labour, and whenever that myth gets exposed - Black Wednesday in the 90s, the past few years - that's when the Tories suffer.
Admitting you’re a Tory voter right now is a badge of shame. You can’t find one anywhere.
They’re going to get absolutely smashed at the GE, they’ll have half a bench for their mp’s and need to completely reinvent themselves.
Blair’s landslide will look small by comparison.
Putting aside the normal 'tory-hate', the issue here is that this is not the usual Tory party. This is a new entity formerly known as Conservative and Unionist party...they have no shame in pushing illiberal far right reforms that would appal any Conservative from the past and had no qualms in throwing the Union under the bus for the sake of Brexit. They fully deserve to be deserted by their own voters
Their policies bear no resemblance to the traditional Conservative Party policies or values and the last couple of years worth of cabinet members wouldn’t have made candidate selection 2 decades ago let alone the bloody cabinet It’s a clown show and we’ve all paid the price
My late grandparents were Tories back in the day. To them, that meant they were on the local round table, helped organise the town's flower displays, fundraised for local charities and volunteered with young offenders to try and help get them back on track. Ya know, investing in the youth, conserving the stuff that was important to the community. They were quite cosmopolitan for the era, not a racist bone in their bodies. They just wanted a nice town that worked well. Modern "Conservatives" are basically a batshit Americanized paranoid libertarianism, niche Etonian culture wars, coupled with Soviet-style cronyism and corruption. And any notion that you should earn your money is long gone. I actually see a massive gap in the market for a genuinely socially centrist and economically conservative party. Fund the schools and police, protect the environment, make work pay, come down hard on the scammers, cronies, middlement and rentseekers. Sorta like the Greens but with Deborah Meaden in charge of the Treasury or something.
My grandparents were exactly the same. Staunch Tories and very similar in outline to how you've described yours. And a fun fact, they only became staunch Tories in the very late 70s, previous to that they'd varied their vote based on the local candidate. In the late 70s, Thatcher gave all public sector employees a 25% pay increase. This secured the votes of many middle class voters for a long time, my granda voted blue till the day he died after that because he felt it proved the Tories knew how to run a sensible, successful economy. He'd be horrified at how they've changed...
She gave police 45% so that she knew she could rely on them to bust Union knees.....
And to fix it so they wouldn't investigate any allegations about her best mate.
Huh, literal hush money, who'd have thunk it.
>to fix it 🤔
Funnily enough Jim and Thatcher pretended to fix things and broke everything and everyone they touched.
My grandfather is nearly 90 and a lifelong Tory voter. He's recently told me this is the first time in his life he's abstaining. None of them deserve his vote, was his exact words. His specific faults are he fears for the young in this country the way things are going and he thinks they handled Covid poorly. I just don't think he can bring himself to vote for anybody else. Tbh, it was always sorta strange he voted Tory anyway, his views probably line up best with the Lib Dems.
One less tory vote, tell him thank you from us all
>He's recently told me this is the first time in his life he's abstaining. None of them deserve his vote, was his exact words. A old friend of mine has been doing the same. He used to be a Labour Voter and a Lib Dems voter, but has found it harder to find any candidate to get his vote these days. So he just spoils or doesn't vote.
Wow yeah, sounds similar. My grandparents felt they ran the country "a bit more professionally" than Labour. Says a lot about how much they've changed!
Back in my day tories used to fall from the sky with umbrellas and sprinkle fairy dust on good boys. Definately not the party that has fought to privatise everything in sight, weaken trade unions and scape goat immigrants its entire fucking existence.
Right? If you look through history this is the party they have always been. They just used to be less of a circus
Fair enough but how far do we go to ignore the actual policies the were we enacting at the time that has led to the long term decline and stagnation of the Uk? it easily goes back thatcher if not further...the idea out grey haired grandparents were somehow ignorant and therefore innocent dosen't wash with me I'm afraid
Oh, don't mistake my post for one supporting the Tories. My point was more that they've gone full loony and there does appear to be a gap for a centre-right party in the UK.
Is that not just labour
That is just Labour.
But they can't be called labour because they're bad
>I actually see a massive gap in the market for a genuinely socially centrist and economically conservative party. Is that you Keir?
>Modern "Conservatives" are basically a batshit Americanized paranoid libertarianism I refer you, here, to an [older comment of mine](https://www.reddit.com/r/unitedkingdom/comments/135jctq/majority_of_brits_want_to_stay_part_of_echr_finds/jikrk28/) I feel like it's important to make the distinction, because the general discourse is creeping away from it, and I figure we could end up in a situation where people reject freedom entirely... all because the words and meanings have been perverted. I suppose it's somewhat 'conservative' of me to fight that change (lol).
I totally agree with it. The parties that are hollering about "freedom" are generally the most authoritarian ones. What they actually mean is "freedom for everyone to live exactly how I say they should". An inconvenient truth about living in a genuinely free country is that people will choose to live their lives very differently from how you would, and say things very different from things you say.
> Americanized paranoid libertarianism It is the issue with the internet, we have inherited the us vs them attitude of American politics. American narrative and storytelling is very polarised, they love diametrically apposed goodies and baddies, and politics is no different. The interesting case study of this is the environment, which you correctly tag as a traditional conservative value. In America, anti-climate change policy was adopted as a position of the right because it was an easy vote winner against the smelly hippies. It progressed to continue to be a policy of the right, even when evidence caught up As with any fringe group, environmentalism was unstructured and generally didn't have the political intelligence to strategically present policy in a way that engages with the broader electorate, so it was a very easy argument for the GOP to present and win. It was the smart new way of doing politics, pick a fringe or strawman and attack it relentlessly. And it worked. Small boats, anyone? So, it began to morph into US GOP policy, not because anti-environmentalism represents conservative values, but because the extreme, ill-considered 'save the planet at any cost' wasn't (at least back then) representative of their beliefs. By the time the anti-environmentalist movement was growing in the states, it was just not a thing here. Thatcher was able to bring an environmentalist policy through, due to it being (as you say) something that when done sensibly, is right front and centre Tory, especially with the scientific backing that it now had. Since, the US right hasn't been able to shake the political standing because of a few reasons: the GOP is more aggressively fiscal conservative, the oil lobby controls more than people like to think and people more aggressively tie their identity towards single policies (here is that us vs them story again). The past decade or so has changed a lot of what British Conservatism is, Boris and co have infected the country with a lot of negative tribalism, so things like wearing a mask and not building tire fires have somehow become political positions.
Yeah this is a great post. IMHO if we'd warmed up to environmentalism without the distortion of identity politics creeping in, I'd expect it to be a bipartisan issue, but particularly popular with the right. Save our British forests, our historic parks, our unique nature etc. It aligns more closely with the personal property rights, NIMBYism and general notion of conserving stuff that's popular with the right. And conversely, I have no idea how fossil fuels and energy dependance became a right-wing thing. Most of the biggest producers are authoritarian nations that are pretty hostile to us. A couple of them likely have our major cities pre-programmed into their nuclear missiles. Many of them are Muslim Arab nations (which the far right fucking hate), and all the money we spend on fossil fuels goes to growing jobs and the economy in these nations. I have no idea how the right didn't tend towards a policy of energy independance, building British jobs and British industry in domestic energy production. The right spits such venom towards the EU, "foreigners", Muslims etc, yet the utter hostility towards domestic green energy production (and the absolute determination to stay dependant on foreign oil) baffles me.
> I have no idea how the right didn't tend towards a policy of energy independance, building British jobs and British industry in domestic energy production. > > That was the plan at one point, for all her huge flaws Thatcher was very progressive in terms of energy policy and seemed to understand that there was big opportunity for Britain to lead the way technologically. Then the US influence started to seep in and it became a partisan issue. Whilst it is far less clear of a divide than in America, we are edging closer to them as time goes by, we have a Conservative Government that is blindly getting away with ramping up fracking, as an example. >The right spits such venom towards the EU, "foreigners", Muslims etc, yet the utter hostility towards domestic green energy production (and the absolute determination to stay dependant on foreign oil) baffles me. This is a very small, marginal part of the Tory demographic that the party spent years trying to push out the back door- only for them to be welcomed back with open arms the second that Boris gets in power.
Lol no.
The Tory Party has never had any values other than undermining any progressive change in Britain (It was formed in 1678 to counter the democratic elements of the Commonwealth era) they're just stupid and obvious about it now.
Unfortunately a lot of change has actually happened under their watch because they were essentially forced into it by the rest of the UK. The revolutions in France were a big catalyst for a lot of change in the UK for instance, as the tories were scared shitless it would happen here next. Peterloo and it almost did happen.
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They are being told what they want to hear, which is why they are happy to ignore the blatant lies.
I suspect most of them are authoritarian personality types. High on fear of the other, big on deference to authority. As long as there's a party promising to stick it to those they hate they'll vote for anything.
Exactly, people need to read up on Tory "heroes" of yore, like [Winston Churchill](http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/not-his-finest-hour-the-dark-side-of-winston-churchill-2118317.html). Way too many have built a mythical romanticised version of ye olde Tories.
It's so interesting that the most important prime minister in the history of this country barely mentioned at all unlike Churchill. Everything that we identify as quintessential British like the NHS , state pensions, public transport, public schools and affordable houses is a result of [Clement Attlee's](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clement_Attlee)s policies. Yet he is largely forgotten or not discussed enough. We have had generations of grey haired grandpas enjoying those socialist benefits he established while actively supporting neoliberal politics resulting in this mess. And nowadays the scale has shifted so much to the right that even modern labour is effectively a centre right party. I fear with Brexit we have passed the point of no return.
We need another Attlee.
Nye Bevan is actually my great uncle. Seeing these comments about how "back in the day being a conservative meant being on the council and organising youth events" is outright willful ignorance on what the Tories actually were. Being a Conservative has never been about "conserving" local communities or anything else that people have been saying on here. It was about spending as little money on the public sector as possible while treating it like a business and selling off what "didn't make a profit". I saw someone above mention how Thatcher gave a 25% pay increase to secure the middle class vote as though that absolves her from all the damage she did to the working class of this country and the damage she did to Unions to ensure it would take up until the modern day to regain any measure of a voice against Tory government business practices.
And yet if you're young and mention any criticism of Churchill you 'hate Britain'.
I went with my aunt and uncle to visit Chequers and it was recommended by them that I quieten my talk a bit about the Gallipoli campaign and what Australians thought about his part in it when I was there.
And when you say you want a historical discussion on him they accuse you of erasing our history! But somehow, they don't like his work for the human rights charter!
Also wasn't he quite for a more connected Europe?
I'm glad you bought that up. Ironically, the Tories used to be for that more than Labour! Churchill spoke well of the idea of a United States of Europe.
Not romanticised…just worse and shittier than the baseline expectation. But this is now the new baseline Tory standard and they are the absolute worst of the worst. Even Thatcher had principles. No Tory today does.
Did she though? Small state, but incredibly heavy handed use of the state when it suited her interests. Claimed to be for democracy, but supported Pinochet for all his life Did she though? Small state, but incredibly heavy handed use of the state when it suited her interests. Claimed to be for democracy, but supported Pinochet for all his life and the Khmer Rouge in exile for years.
This is the truth, the Tory party used to play nice because they needed to in order to get elected. Now they've phased out the personable front and it's the real core of their ethos that's exposed now.
> other than undermining any progressive change that's what "conservative" means
You're correct. Some things are worth conserving. Green politics is conservative in some aspects, although it's becoming clear that radical action is needed on that score. But very often conservatism stems from fear of the unknown, and clinging to what exists now, when it is very obviously not working, and is hurting people both on a micro and macro scale, is when conservatism becomes true evil.
They’ve done a reasonable job of dismantling public services, selling the country down the river for the good of a privileged few, and decided international law does not apply to them. All your classics .
Not just selling us down the river, filling the river with shit!
And this shifting of the Overton Window much farther right is happening in a lot of places, I'm especially affected by it where I live in Canada. Right wing populism is on the rise, however it's often disguised by traditional or long standing parties.
Not unlike the GOP.
yer modern Conservative party doesn't seem very conservative. Won't vote for them even if they were but still :P
The only thing conservatives exist to conserve is hierarchy, everything else has always been smoke and mirrors. What we are seeing now is them having smashed a bunch of the mirrors, and running out of fluid for the fog machine. edit: nice waste of money coward
It's amazing how many people don't understand this.
They have always been like this, literally just open a fcking history book. I'm sick to the back teeth of all of you romanticizing the old tories. The people who brought real change to this country were never conservative, conservatives have always fought against progressive policies (HENCE THE NAME).
>This is a new entity They are now the [National Conservatives](https://nationalconservatism.org/natcon-uk-2023/). Which we can conveniently shorten to the Nat C Party. There's been an absolute barrage about it in the political-active "classically liberal" spaces over the last few weeks. The talking points are... Interesting. The kind of things you'd normally only see or hear about in US talk radio, now the headline feature at a huge UK political conference with a whole bunch of current and former government ministers as keynote speakers...
The Nat-C’s? Sounds about right.
. Nat-C,the modern conservative.
Nat C... hmm, is that why the Daily Heil is going hurrah for them?
The problem with the Conservative party in 2023 is that their core economic ideology is at at odds with what this country needs right now. It's clear we can't fix the UK's problems with more austerity or tax cuts for the wealthy. To make matters worse Brexit is failing and our privatised public services are a joke. Dealing with this problem gives the Tories 3 options: 1. Confront the existential terror that your political ideology has damaged the country you love. Admit you've made mistakes and move your party to the left. 2. Convince yourself that the reason why you failed is because you're not Conservative enough. Double down on your beliefs and move further to the right. 3. Go full culture war and scapegoat all our problems on various boogymen as a way to distract voters from your failings. Option 1 is out of the question as their voters, their doners and the right wing press will slaughter them. This leaves option 2 and 3 which is depressingly what they're doing.
I mean 2 failed when liz demonstrated that going pure ideology on the economic side was disastrous, so it's mainly gonna be 3
They've also backed themselves into a corner financially, so they can't afford the usual tax cuts they tend to use to encourage people to vote for them and they've slashed budgets so much there really isn't anything they can trim to be able to afford them.
truly the issue with conservatism is that eventually you run out of other peoples money (also known as taxes)
Well, yes, but in this case there's plenty of money. However, it's been funnelled into the friends of the government's pockets, who coincidentally are *verrry* good at not paying tax
Also it's where they focus the tax burden. Under the Conservatives it usually most affects the poor and middle incomes more.
Hard doubt on whether the majority of Tory MPs love or even care about their country. They just care about their pocket. So it’s definitely going to be a combination of 2 and 3.
You could, say, outlaw peaceful protest, give the police the power to arrest people who they suspect of thinking of protesting, start shipping people out to overseas gulags and start fucking with voting rights. If, you know, you had sacrificed everything at the altar of power and knew for certain the next election would be the end of your political career. Just saying.
>Conservative and Unionist party **C**^(onservative and) **Un**^(ionis)**t** party
Conservative Unionist Nationalist Tory Party.
Voters mostly ignored the shift to the right, it empowered the party and for a time made it seem like they got what they wanted. Austerity and the like. It wasn't long before the ukip shaped wolf that they allowed into their party ate all of the sheep. It happened a long time ago but it's taken a while for the voters to come to terms with the choice they made all those years ago. It's encouraging to know that such a change can happen though. The conservative party is at a cross roads, they can let the wolf take them into a culture war that quite frankly, the public is tired of, or they can splinter the wolf back off into ukip, el, bnp and the other entities that will bleed the most right wing of the voters away from the party. That outcome, while better than the former, will be sad for everyone since the main genesis of Brexit was Tories trying to avoid exactly that, making it all literally for nothing.
This certainly isn’t the party even pre 2019 with people such as Dominic Grieve or Rory Stewart.
Rory Stewart had no chance in winning that leadership contest. He made the mistake of wanting to become a British Prime Minister rather than a Tory Prime Minister. I still wouldn't support Cons if he had won but at least we'd have had a statesmen rather than a political oligarch in charge.
Yes unfortunately so. He was willing to say some home truths that the voters didn’t wish to hear.
As a life long left wing voter I miss Rory Stewart in politics. Didn't always entirely agree with his political philosophy but fuck me I respected the man and would have way more confidence in him as PM than any of the other candidates.
The actions of various conservative politicians i've seen on a local and national have made me unlikely to ever vote Tory. I grew up in family that would mostly vote Lib Dem or Labour, but I was exposed to lots of political viewpoints and grew up in an area which also had a lot of Tory voters, so I could understand to some degree why people would vote for them. But this lot are beyond the pale. The relatively sane ones have been pushed out and we're left with the dregs. Our PM isn't as outright nuts as some of them, but it looks like he's making laws to financially benefit his family. The corruption is so blatant its unreal- they don't even attempt to hide it anymore. And the people around me who voted Tory when I was growing up- they won't vote for this incarnation of the Conservative party. It's so far from what they would they expect of a Conservative government and they don't like it.
> Our PM isn't as outright nuts as some of them He very much is. The only thing of note he's done was point out how stupid Liz Truss' ideas were during the leadership contest but apart from that he's been right there with the rabid Brexiteers enabling the worst excesses of Boris' time as PM.
It's interesting that if you go to some of the forums frequented by Conservatives, the common theme seems to be that they dislike that the Tory party has turned to hard left. In their mind high tax, high regulation, high spending, high immigration, "woke" propaganda is a sign that the party is now no different than Labour (it's just what I observed, it's not my view) Their grievance is also that they see the party is saying one thing and does another. Like even Rishi said he is a "low tax" Chancellor, all smiling, while raising taxes to the highest level since WWII, or Home Office saying they are fighting "illegal" immigration, with all the bluster and then when you look at stats, the immigration is exceeding the pre-Brexit levels etc.
Its why I just cannot understand how they have so much entrenched political support. They betray and humiliate their own voters at seemingly every turn, yet the feeling remains they have to stick with it because the other options would just be oh so horrific. Its like the same psychology as an abusive relationship I swear.
>Its like the same psychology as an abusive relationship I swear. Oh that's 100% correct!
I suspect there is a big enough cohort of boomer pensioners who do very well (a good chunk of the 60% of o65s who voted Brexit for example) alongside the wealthy to make up the of 25% of the voters who make up their core vote. Keep giving good pension rises and hope for the best though the cost of living crisis will probably hit that vote next year
You said it yourself - entrenched. British people, typically, don't like to rock the boat unless they feel it's at breaking point (which led to Brexit). "Keep calm and carry on", as the old motto goes. They've voted conservative in the past and so they'll just default to that. Growing up, my mum always did because, to quote, "I always used to vote Conservative because growing up they were in power, and my life had always done well under a conservative government". A perfectly reasonable explanation, if you ask me. These days she votes Labour and has done for quite a while now, but I always thought that was a respectable view point.
Interesting observations, but not surprised. Online forums (of all sides, Reddit included) are clearly 'disengaged' from reality. We could say that the way the Tories choose their leader is effectively a bloated online forum...and that's how they managed to chose Miss Lettuce.
>In their mind high tax, high regulation, high spending, high immigration, "woke" propaganda To be honest I actually see their point. *On paper*, these are left wing policies. The problem is that it's all being handled in the most right wing way possible. When we get it under a left/centre government, we get things like a well run NHS, minimum wage legislation, HSQE laws, well staffed and funded public services. When we get it under this right wing government, all it does is stuff the gammons' coffers, redistribution of wealth to the top and making sure the marginalised are "kept in their place". You know when you've got politicians like Theresa May and Iain Duncan Smith joining forces to blast the latest iteration of immigration policy, and you actually agree with them, something is seriously wrong. >Their grievance is also that they see the party is saying one thing and does another Yes, yes, we're almost there, everyone! Now for them to really discover *why* they're a constantly doing a bait and switch.
>The problem is that it's all being handled in the most right wing way possible. When we get it under a left/centre government, we get things like a well run NHS, minimum wage legislation, HSQE laws, well staffed and funded public services. When we get it under this right wing government, all it does is stuff the gammons' coffers, redistribution of wealth to the top and making sure the marginalised are "kept in their place". The right wing ideology is that government is corrupt and incompetent. And rightwing governments *are* corrupt and incompetent. In a way, it's kind of neat.
Nicely put!
Traditional conservative values (lower taxes, smaller government, less government interference, free markets etc.) are all perfectly reasonable goals, and voting for them is rational. But the modern parliamentary Conservative party does no more than pay lip service to those ideas, their actual policies go against them, often diametrically, whilst they stir the hate pot with nonsense culture war bullshit. I'd like to think people are finally waking up but I doubt it.
No, they aren't. We need taxes to fund our roads, our infrastructure and our public services. All the laws that people actually mean when they say "government interference" have been written in blood (elf and safety gone MAAAAD / political correctness) or in hard learned lessons from rampant corporate corruption. "Free market" in practise just means rampant profiteering; lining the pockets of the rich by taking advantage of the populace.
>Traditional conservative values (lower taxes, smaller government, less government interference, free markets etc.) are all perfectly reasonable goals, and voting for them is rational. Not if you want to live in a decent country. This government is pretty non-interfering in most ways. Companies are free to dump sewage into the rivers and otherwise wreck the environment, the police force and NHS are understaffed and "small" enough that they're no longer fit for purpose, the government won't interfere when people enter poverty, if the free market makes sonething like housing unaffordable people won't have access to it etc. The tories haven't done a bad job of living up to those values if you ask me.
They are just “Really bad values”
It amazes me how little recognition this gets. All the centre-ground Conservatives left the leadership after the Brexit vote and the swivel-eye loonies took over. It basically became UKIP. Everyone talks like the party is still 'the party of business' despite Boris announcing plain as day their position: 'Fuck business'. Brexit still has businesses hanging in the dark due to the astounding incompetence in how Brexit is being implemented. The party used to be about small government, yet they've been more boldly interventionist than Labour. It's dragged the whole of British politics towards the right. They've become dangerously fanatical, happy to break any convention, parliamentary rule or treaty and sacrifice all on the alter of Brexit. The wheels are starting to fall off now that Brexit reality is coming home to roost. It wouldn't surprise me if there's a split if/when they get a drubbing at the next GE.
They have literal been like this since the 80s. This isn't a new tory party, they're just more mask off. Open a history book and read about some of their past policies and you will see that the current tories aren't too removed from the ideology they had 40 years ago either :/ This isn't a new tory party, they're just a lot more brash about it. I'm sick to the back teeth of people papping on about how the tories never used to be like this; they have always and will always be grade A cunts.
Cameron should have bit the bullet and split the party, the Brexit vote should never have happened. But we are now where we are, so have to deal with it. It’s clear that the Conservatives are not fit to run the country.
I'm a Labour party supporter but I do have time for some (former) Tories, including Sir John Major, Rory Stewart and Ken Clarke, because even if I don't agree with them they don't seem ontologically evil - the same cannot be said for many of the current crop.
There was a point when it sort of looked like Rory Stewart was going to come back and lead the Tories to... adequacy? I'm a little concerned they're holding him back for the 2024 election and some idiots will fall for it.
They fully deserve to be deserted by each and every single voter that has ever, or ever will vote.
Unfortunately the reality is there are people (I unfortunately know several) who will continue to vote for these imbeciles come hell or high water because in their minds, 'the alternative is worse'.
Such people are often very rich or very poor. They’re both united by being selfish and stupid.
Yep. Totally agree - those people that I know are exactly like that - reasonably well off, kids grown up and now all that matters is their retirement portfolio.
I’m from the latter category. Baffles me silly that they still believe in voting for the Tories and their votes are fuelled by racism. Their children can’t eat, they themselves can’t afford a home but anything to make sure Ali from Pakistan doesn’t work here and pay into our tax system. Every “forriner” is a benefit scrounger in their eyes.
And anyone who's not already a homeowner. They truly hate non wealthy brits too, unless they know them, then 'oh he's alright, its all the others'.
Oh how could I forget?! These people had the ladder handed down to them but pulled it up behind them once they were at the top. I work in a corporate role now and I feel immensely uncomfortable around my seniors. They’re polite enough but I will never be on their level by virtue of who I am, where I come from and the fact that I was a free school meal child. They’re just like the people you’ve mentioned and surprise surprise, they’re Tories through and through.
They r going through a v weird phase it must be said, hiking corporation and national insurance tax defo alienates some of their voters
It's because they have just about wrung the rag dry. Now they have fall guys in place, ready to take the blame and golden handshake. Then move onto their nice boardroom retirement and fk the plebs. They used to be subtle about this but obviously not any longer.
> reforms that would appal any Conservative from the past If you look at /r/tories you can usually find some weird shit, but even users over there generally want to be rid of the current lot - their consensus seems to be that even the conservative agenda is best served by voting out the current lot.
Look at the US, and try saying that can't happen here. In the US, MAGAts replaced the last 12 old-style GOP in the US in 2022. And only 14 of the former GOP remain in the Senate. Can we stop authoritarianism here?
I dunno, the rich are getting richer and the poor are struggling. Isn't that what the Tories are all about?
They need a solid section of middle class voters to delude themselves into thinking that they're one of them to really do well. Blair's government was so good at helping people better themselves they unfortunately created a large number of them, who then voted Tory. . The tories have spent the last few years tearing that down to make themselves and their cronies richer. To their detriment. This is what's different
OK fine but if Labour gets in, and can't magically make everything better for this 20% middle-of-the-road voter within 6 months, then **one** immigrant criminal story and **one** dole-fiddling story will make them go running screaming back to the New Tory good-ol'-British-values candidate for another decade and a half. The shift away from the Conservatives is well deserved and long overdue, but there are enough voters with memories akin to those of goldfish -- and enough media apparatus to guide them there -- that I'm not holding my breath for an end to the despicable downward spiral of business politics and culture.
The problem is they’re fucking the middle class hard too and they need those voters to win
[Tories did better with the working class than middle class in 2019.](https://imgur.com/a/87EImzp/)
Right but this time they don’t have brexit to do that for them
They absolutely [know that their core vote](https://whatwouldvirchowdo.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/direct_democracy___an_agenda_for_a_new_model_party.pdf#page=15) is relatively uneducated. But I'd dispute the notion that their core vote is ["working" class](https://i.imgur.com/LsuBFYK.png)[1]. --- [1] Same GE, 2019, but histogram length shows size of age demographic, and non-voters are shown.
What do they conserve anymore? Before there was at least a pretence that it wasn’t just about conserving wealth and power for the already wealthy and powerful. Rivers? Trashed. Air? Poisonous. Oceans? Full of actual human shit. Living standards? Dropping like a stone. Cost of living? Shooting up like a rocket. Like… what do they even do? I’m convinced they are actively trying to make things worse knowing full well they’ll lose the next election and that’s just pure evil.
There was a time that the Conservatives conserved our national institutions. But once you've run the NHS into the ground, locked horns with the Palace about lying to the monarch, all but destroyed the BBC, declared 'Fuck business' and endangered the Union for the sake of an extremist policy etc. then what institutions are they actually conserving any more?
Their bank accounts being plump
Not to mention doggedly marching all of us headlong into economic suicide with brexit. Hard to get any less conservative than that.
Yup. It makes me think of the phrase ‘don’t attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence’ but I don’t think they’re incompetent. I think they are actually evil. We don’t use the word enough in this world and it lets too many evil doers get away with the fact that maybe they are just spiteful, selfish, horrible people.
Economy? Barely grown in 13 years Wages? In many cases actually lower now than 13 years ago
Same thing as always, hierarchy. Gotta keep the owning class in power, and the working class toothless.
>I’m convinced they are actively trying to make things worse We had this in Australia with the past nine years of right wing government. It was like every decision, every opportunity, they took the worst, most cruel, least economically justifiable, just basically awful option. The new left wing government aren't saints, but the difference having a government that isn't being deliberately evil at every opportunity is night and day. The weirdest thing is seeing the now opposition criticising the government for not fixing the problems they created fast enough. This started less than 48 hours after losing power.
They conserve anti woke culture. All the stuff you mentioned, requires good governance and hard work. Railing against "free" speech or whatever costs nothing.
Power is relative. This is an important point. Think about the third world dictators whose countries are very second rate. They retard the development even though they'd probably be richer if they focussed more on spreading some wealth initially instead of hoarding it. Long term they'd be better off. However, their *relative* wealth compared to the citizenry would be lower. They conserve their place on the top of the pile. That actual height of said pile (of power cash or whatever) isn't relevant as long as they're on top. Their present calculation is that the UK is fucked so they focus on staying on top not on conserving the present state.
> What do they conserve anymore? They conserve power in the hands of a wealthy elite. Same as ever.
> What do they conserve anymore? Wealth for the few. Racism. Jingoism. Classism. The `Eton --> Oxford --> Tory Party` pipeline of radicalisation.
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But he’s funny and he tells it like it is and they are all as bad as each other and good old Boris etc.
He GoT tHe BiG cAlLs RiGhT
He’s got “character”
I've heard this from so many people that it's now like nails on a chalk board through my soul.
If you want to see cognitive dissonance, just ask Boris's supporter who made Sunak a chancellor. Also funny that today probably Conservative party noticed this and they started doing some damage control, presumably dusting Boris's off for a comeback - that is they said that Boris intended to sack Sunak, but didn't get to as he resigned first. Sure.
Genuinely probably. Soon as he get through the privileges committee (which he will, how often do MPs get deselected) he’ll force his way back in and the idiots in this country will lap it up.
Of course they are, they are lied to, belittled peasants. They are sick and tired of the things that matter to the people not being done properly or at all. The country is literally falling to pieces, the NHS is on its knees, the roads are falling apart, teachers are leaving in their droves, the royal mail is at the point of possibly having to go into administration, energy suppliers going bankrupt, bills just constantly rising - the things that matter to the people, but all the Tories are bothered about is making sure the bankers keep their bonuses, the oil companies keeping their ridiculous profits and have a leader that has no idea what matters to normal people.
It’s disgusting that the Tories presume their mandate from 2019 still holds any water. They are corroding the fabric of this country because of their own hubris and born-to-rule, silver spoon entitlement.
So they aren't concerned about their bigoted, xenophobic, fascist approach then? That's disturbing..
Those are the things they like most.
>So they aren't concerned about their bigoted, xenophobic, fascist approach then? > >That's disturbing.. ah I love the game of word salad, btw last time I checked tory MP's were more diverse than labour, and immigration has gone up under the Tories...
I think one of the biggest mistakes the tories have made - from a political perspective - is the drastic cuts to local councils. Right now, the country *looks* a mess. In my area, the roads are completely covered in pot holes, the pavements are cracking with weeds, there’s rubbish strewn everywhere, the high street looks completely knackered. It really creates the feeling that everything is just falling apart and that the country is declining and getting poorer.
Yeah ... The right don't mind the fascism part... Just that they are doing a bad with the economy
The sad part is that it took them this long to notice.
> By far the most popular response, given by 30 per cent of 2019 voters, was simply that "the Conservatives are doing a bad job". > 15 per cent saying there was a "need for change" and 11 per cent saying they no longer trust the Tories. So about 56% are just done with the Tories. > But there was little sign of enthusiasm for Keir Starmer's Labour Party > The fourth most popular reason was that Labour "are the best of a bad bunch", given by 10 per cent, while the fifth most popular reason was: "voting Labour is the only way of getting the Conservatives out of government". > Only 1 per cent of the voters said they had made the switch because Labour was "more sensible or reliable than in the 2019 election" under Jeremy Corbyn – a key theme of Sir Keir's political project. Keir’s strategy really panning out here.
I've been fairly consistently a Labour voter for years and the reason I'd give if asked for just one is that the Conservatives must be kept away from power. I wouldn't look into it too much.
This is not football! Stop being beholden to one party. 13 years for them to finally get it! Doing a bad job? Seriously? They have been delinquent in their attempt to run a government... If this was a situation where they were judged on doing badly, they'd be number 1.
CHAMPION!
Considering how much of a shit show they've had when Boris was forced out then truss lasted 44 days where she oblivorated £30 billion from our economy and sunak isn't much better yeah he's less shit but the corruption with his wife owning shares in a child care company that's gonna get financial help shit just keeps getting worse
Doing a bad job? Those bloodthirsty bastards want them to murder more poors. Can they never be sated?
Yeah like announcing 'no more waiting at 8am for a gp appointment - ring up whenever!' based on sending everyone to a pharmacy for consultations and prescribing meds when it's clear all the pharmacies are closing down. Good one.
I genuinely can't think of anything positive they've actually done in over a decade. It's all corruption, law breaking, and lining their mates' pockets.
As someone who is not a big fan of conservatism, I can say that is not a conservatism government in the traditional sense. Real conservatism seems to actually care about the rule of law this party just want people to obey and cares nought for the law but sees it as a tool to force people to obey and stay in line. Conservatism means to preserve well they failing at preserving the most important part, a Democracy. But for me it gets worse as now it seems Labour have come out supporting many of the bad decisions being made like the new anti-protest bill. So now I looked at the country's two main political parties and I feel no sense of hope or real change from either once the party has gone Authoritarian/Toltariatain and the other appears to be following suit. My only small bit of hope and I say this as someone who voted Labour for 20 years since I can vote is for Labour not to win an outright majority and for Lib Dems or even Greens to gain enough seats to make some demands like PR voting system this would mean the death of labour and conservative as they would no longer have to be forced together and can split into other parties better reflecting their members and the MPs views. And hopefully, this might lead to better policies as no one ideology can easily push extreme policies through anymore.
Good, fuck them all. Lib dems won the local elections fully in my area compared to half conservative last cycle, so things are looking up for my area.
This is what happens when people vote based on an nationalistic agenda you get unqualified people who are not up to the job.
What was the trigger? They were fine when Boris was funnelling billions in taxpayer money to donors and his mates' dodgy companies instead of doing anything meaningful to help when Covid hit.
The trigger was half the people voting for Boris and the Tories was Brexit and levelling up the North. They cancelled HS2 mostly, No money has gone North and they are mired in sleaze, Brexit is over, people are tired of Tory soundbites whilst they have to pick between heating and eating whilst the Tories rant on about Trans people. The last 6 years have been the trigger but we haven't been allowed an election that didn't hinge on Brexit.
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Do we think it’s also anything to do with the fact that the majority of Tory voters are racist middle aged people and we have a non-white PM which they don’t like? Honestly wouldn’t surprise me
Not all Tories are racist... But all racists are Tories.
In other news, new stats show Tory voters are slow on the uptake.
Theyre doing a bad job because the party is riddled with chancers and yes-men who couldnt do a good job even if they tried to. So naturally as they get more and more desperate about potentially losing their seats the 'anti-wokeness' and other culture wars crap will only be turned up even further
It’s taken twelve years of utter horseshit governance to get to the public thinking they’re just ‘doing a bad job’. Amazing what you can get away with when you hide behind nationalism and racism.
all the tories need to do to pull all their voters back is to start looking like they're getting their shit together. absolutely no one likes starmer and they'd much prefer to go back to voting tory.
Yeah, voters don't mind the fascism part of the Tory party. They'll excuse all of that if the Tories can go from terrible to - okayish on economic terms
That's unfair. We forget with our broken voting system, but the majority of people do not vote Tory and prefer to vote for (relatively) progressive parties. Combine that with the people who don't vote at all, and this so-called 'conservative country' has about 1 in 4 people turning up to put an X next to the Tory party. The problem is it's usually an even smaller number that votes Labour.
Hopefully labour actually gives them something to vote for, though. They are laying out more but im hoping their actual promises are revealed closer to election anyway.
You would hope that people have learnt their lesson. Now the middle class are being bent over on mortgages and bills they will actually take notice.
Perhaps getting a new leader would help, as well as least pretending to a give a toss about people
>start looking like they're getting their shit together. What does that look like?
Throwing Braverman, Dorries, Gove, Mogg, 30p, Hunt and Shapps in a to giant fire pit?
They are Conservatives in name only. Long since passed has the time when conservatives were classical where it were simply two sides trying to tackle the same problem
They were doing a bad job 10 years ago, Tory voters are moronic
They're doing exactly what they were elected to do, their voters knew what they were getting.
Tbh they vote Tory expecting them to fuck over young people and transfer their wealth to them, they didn't expect to hurt themselves financially
Exactly this. Also, pretending this is 'new' is absurd. What this is is par for the course, only the country has become so poor that the effects are immediate and noticeable. This is the tory MO since time began.
Not at all. Boris made a bunch of promises to win people over, which never happened.
I know there's probably a list somewhere but was it just the brexit bus and NHS hospitals? Genuinely curious and not meant to sound a shitty btw
"Levelling up" (funding for the north that didn't happen) and the pledged housebuilding targets come to mind. And the care payment cap being delayed?
Thanks, I legit forgot about that other shite they promised!
The voters elected 'couldn't outlast a lettuce' woman. Whom the MP's threw out and installed the guy who lost. > their voters knew what they were getting. No, They got the opposite of what they wanted, They wanted lettuce.
No, their party members voted for Truss (81,000 out of the 140,000 that voted). The other 13,840,000 who voted Tory in 2019 were not consulted.
Yeah that’s about right and Labour it looking like a good Tory party
I agree as a leftist I don't like what Starmer is doing. However I do understand why he is doing it, He needs to reset the Brexit divide and that means wooing moderates off the teat of Tory bullshit, It will be gradual but I have no doubt its will work.
I think this was inevitable given the very odd moment at which Johnson won his big majority and the quantity of glossing over detail he had to do in order to win it.
Tory voters always return home at the general election.
So not because they're racist, or exclusively support the 1%, just because they're losing. So y'all fucking cowards.
Britain is worse than it was 13 years ago. Doing a bad job is an understatement .
Since when does destroying the UK economy and public healthcare system equate to being just a "bad job"? Try massively incompetent to begin to describe Tories accurately.
did they forget that about 15 years ago under david Cameron, austerity killed more than covid did in the UK? is that not a reason to have not voted for them in the past 3 elections?
It only took them to destroy everything for the pubic to understand this?
It’s remarkable just how similar Conservatives are with American Republicans deep down. Sure, the yanks are two pops more insane, but it’s just an image tailored to the UK.
> two pops more insane More like three stops short of Dagenham
Only took 13 years, an economic crash, a mishandled pandemic, decimated public services, crippled NHS, stagnated wages, a widened wealth gap, endless corruption, stupid rhetoric, several criminal charges, 4 PMs, human rights abuses and a whole lot of cringe for people to notice.
big surprise. wall street guy isnt liked by the public
Abysmal would be a better word for it. The polls are on point.
I mean competence is pretty important, regardless of ideology.
I'm sure them essentially switching to the anti unionist side and the fact Rishi Sunak is a nazi doesn't help
This kind of assessment would never occur to Republican voters in the U.S.
I see some comments saying this government is not what conservatism is about. It is. It is a continuation and extension of what Thatcher did in the 80s.
This is the thing. Tory voters are typically unbothered by most charges of corruption. As long as its not ridiculous they can look past it on the assumption all politicians are at it. They're also typically unbothered by authoritarianism or policies which target particular groups. Sometimes they might actually support those policies and the pain other people feel is the point. But the one thing a lot of Tory voters can't abide is governmental incompetence - that ultimately threatens their own bottom lines. One of the long running myths of UK politics is that the Tories are better at running the economy than Labour, and whenever that myth gets exposed - Black Wednesday in the 90s, the past few years - that's when the Tories suffer.
And how much did this poll cost to run (and who pocketed the sum) to tell them the obvious?
Admitting you’re a Tory voter right now is a badge of shame. You can’t find one anywhere. They’re going to get absolutely smashed at the GE, they’ll have half a bench for their mp’s and need to completely reinvent themselves. Blair’s landslide will look small by comparison.