What have the Tories done to be so popular? Have they transformed the tax system, halted immigration, taken on the Russian navy, invested in the infrastructure, educational standards have shot up as a result of their reforms, NHS waiting lists are down as a result of increased recruitment? Or is it related to impending Brexit?
I live in a part of Canada that has dealt with this particular dilemma for a couple generations. The coal mines will never again be a big part of our economy, probably not any part. The fishing industry and fish plants will never be what they were (particularly after the cod stocks collapsed a couple decades back). The pulp and paper industry isn't going to be a driving force. We have a remarkable density of highly-regarded universities, but still cling to the hopes of being resource producers. Thus, the kids with lower educational levels leave because we haven't been able to provide anything for them beyond trying to prop up dying industries, and there's labour elsewhere. And the well-educated kids leave because we haven't been able to translate our universities into sufficiently good opportunities (our government got talked into call centres as "high tech" jobs at some point, and threw millions in subsidies at them...still do, but most closed up and moved to places with even greater subsidies); many of those that remain get pushed into underemployment, leaving the lesser-educated with even worse prospects. And yet we keep hoping that if we keep this mill or that fish plant open a couple more years it will be the salvation. I toured a coal mine several years back (sidenote: touring a coal mine if you're over 5'6" is not a lot of fun). The tour guide was a former miner, stooped and slow-moving from having spent so much time in claustrophobic mineshafts. He talked at great length about the disasters, the diseases, the physical hardship, how the community slowly died as the mines did. And when someone asked whether he'd go back if the mines -- all closed through a combination of safety hazards and unprofitability -- re-opened he lit up and said he'd be waiting outside to apply when it opened. It's a strange culture.
How the Democrats infiltrated the Catholic Church: http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2016/10/democrats-infiltrated-catholic-church/
Rejoice. They have halved UKIP to 6% and Labour are still in the twenties. London is a big place so they'll survive.
Is this in their thinking? It may well be true!!! But the Tories are still stuck in the 19th century. We need the Greens and Lib Dems parties with progressive ideas to present to the public but sadly the public don't want to embrace such policies.
I think it's not that they are popular but more the fact that Labour are in a mess at the moment and it seems will be for the foreseeable future. As someone not affiliated to any particular party it seems at the moment the Tories are the only choice if you don't lean left or right.
Well they need to get out of the bad habit of using terms such as "progressive" and "centrist" then because decades of hearing those terms drives voters away because they don't believe they are anything other than terms used to hide other agendas. I might be a Tory although I do agree that we need a new way of looking at things but the problem here is that the system is so entrenched it needs to be smashed apart to stop what is stated as a "trickle down" when in fact it is currently a "trickle up." It is pointless constantly talking of "under funded" stuff when the reality is that a fair amount of that money is being siphoned off to the top. Like I stated in my post where I speak of the Beeb2 program earlier this week. That just mirrored what I have said for a long time. You pay your tax and some is siphoned off to the top. More is then thrown at the bottom which then feeds people at the top via providing a government service or by those at the bottom buying "stuff" which immediatley hands 80% of the money to the top and the other 20% into the hands of the treasury which comes back round to the starting point. PFI, management consultancy, all the back scratching and jobs for my mates. taxpayers are paying their money to the rich and it is all above board and legal. Find a sane party that will tackle that and I'll vote for it. There isn't one though. The Tories are the closest to sanity and that is the problem. The other parties all have some crackpot element to them.
Liam Fox? Boris Johnson? There's another loony in Dorset!! Ken Clarke and Anna Soubry, and the one who challenged May for the leadership, a Welsh MP - they to my mind are sensible Tories. Another one is Heseltine!!!
You need to get away from the whole Brexit thing in terms of who is sane and who isn't and focus on this "globalisation" cover up. Domestic politics has a real problem at the moment where all the policies are about is throwing money at things without a care. All the talk is always about money and not what that money provides. There is no main party (including UKIP and Greens) that pay anything but lip service to weeding out all this legal corruption and Labour would just throw more money into the NHS and Council pits for more to be siphoned away. This is why people are "rebelling" against the elite. Not some hatred of people. It is all a result of the system working against them and hearing words after words of how much more will be spent on them yet they never see the results because the money doesn't do anything other than provide more avenues for the elite to siphon even more of your money away. I find it hard to understand that the very people that really pay taxes, those being the middle earners, fight the corner of the poor yet support politics that continually pushes policies that transfer money away from the very cause they are supposedly fighting the corner of. I can't understand how others don't see this problem and I have been on about this for a decade. Not something I picked up on from the Beeb suddenly finding their investigative skills now that centrist government is out of power. The whole Clinton hatred is the same thing as was the EU hatred. Lots of people that say to the bottom rung "we will help you, we are on your side" yet continually push policy that does nothing but hurt the poor and move the money to the top.
I'd argue that the Clinton hatred is indeed like the EU hatred in that respect, in that it isn't grounded in a rational evaluation of the positives and drawbacks, but rather raw and incoherent emotional response. I think that the people claiming that Clinton pushed policy that hurt the poor and moved money to the top would struggle mightily to point to any such policy that she pushed, but that doesn't matter.
I think that there does exist a vein of anti-Clinton resentment that feels she has not done enough to help the poor or even hurt them. But those people were/are Sanders supporters. And for sure a few of them are fed up and anti-Clinton/anti-establishment enough to have crossed over to Trump, but not very many. The Trump supporters are tossing the "Clinton hates the poor" argument out there just because they are tossing out everything no matter how nonsensical it is. But I don't think they really believe it or care. If Trump support was primarily based upon economic class arguments, then Trump supporters would have a lower income than non-Trump supporters. But they don't. And the reason for this is that poverty rates are much higher for blacks and hispanic/latinos than they are for whites. And those minority groups are strongly against Trump. Like at unprecedented levels.
But this is nothing new. Minorities in the UK voted for the centrist Labour in droves because of the message yet those Blairite centrist policies were the worst of all to work against those at the bottom. This is not just a tar someone thing. Trump may be a nightmare but his support is for something that is a real concern. His voters might not care about minorities but they most definitely care about their taxes being thrown away to the top boys.
His voters care very deeply about minorities. They care about keeping them out of their towns and cities even though there aren't any where they live. They care about that so much that they really don't even care about anything else, which is why Trump still has like 38% of the vote no matter what he says or does. Do they care about taxes? Sure. But no more than every tax payer in every country ever complains about their tax money being allegedly "wasted." Really. I'm not trying to invalidate your points about bad government, poor planning, or people getting screwed. But that's not what Trump support is about. Slice it up any way you want. Where is Trump drawing the strongest support from non-red states? States and regions with a high population of white people and a history of racial problems. What issue does he poll most strongly on? Immigration. When they do attitude surveys on likely Trump voters where do they stand out the most? The degree to which they feel strongly and agree with things like "I think Muslims are terrorists," and "Too many foreigners in this country is bad" or "Whites are the superior race." Here. Look at this: http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/08/25/5-facts-about-trump-supporters-views-of-immigration/ 70% of Clinton supporters feel the gap between the poor and the rich is a big issue. It's her biggest issue. Only 31% of Trump supporters care about that issue. What are their issues? Immigration, terrorism, "crime," and race.
Trump's biggest announced expenditure, by cost, is an extraordinarily large tax break aimed primarily at lowering the taxes of the wealthy. He throws in some economic populism, but they aren't really sweating the issue.
Yep. And his original tax plan was completely bonkers and favored the wealthy even more. It was the first thing he conceded after winning the primaries and making a half-ass attempt to go centrist. And it's also one he didn't immediately re-flip-flop on. Because it's not that important to his base.
@OwenJones84 Tories beginning to call for an early election before the bad Brexit deal they expect Britain will get. That tells us everything.
Interesting the spin on this. From a Tory viewpoint it makes sense to have a GE when they are likely to increase their majority substantially. From a Labour viewpoint it makes sense to play down this aspect and say they are running scared of the result of Brexit. The reality is that while the Tories might like the idea of a snap election it would look opportunistic and they would have to get laws changed to have a GE with the new fixed term law. The other reality is that May and the Tories will of course be aware that the result in 2020 will be very dependent on the outcome of the Brexit deal. It will be the difference between having 2/3 of the seats in parliament or being back in a coaltion. So while Owen Jones is picking up on a reality that it is true that isn't the reason the Tory backbenchers are talking of an early election. The current polls saying they are nearly at 50% is the real reason. Owen Jones can't say that though.
Having just arrived home from Milan, this seems the appropriate thread on which to point out just how much I have enjoyed being European as well as British. We have some very civilised and warm hearted neighbours on the continent. What a shame to turn our backs on all that.
