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Politics Today

angelic upstart

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So what'll happen first?

Russia invading Ukraine, China invading Taiwan or a new US President in the White House?
Haven't Russia already invaded the Ukraine, and took a load of it back?
 

Suzi & The Banned Cheese

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Mar 19, 2021
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Not being funny here. But the conservative party, traditionally stand for the middle and upper classes. It stands to reason they'll sneer and the working classes. They always mock an accent. Dennis Skinner always was openly mocked by the conservatives.

Somehow what's happened is that clumps of the working classes, feel that the conservatives are a better option than the traditional working class party of Labour. I genuinely think this is ultimately down to two reasons. We've adopted a culture that implies, that the ordinary person can "make it big" which is largely nonsense, but people buy into the theory and the slow death of the unions and the way in which they regularly moan about pointless stuff annoys many that just want to keep their head down and do a day's work. How it's done to this is something labour need to address and fairly urgently if they ever want to govern again.
Agreed, although I think many leant the Tories their vote to get Brexit done. Now that Brexit is finished & Boris being such a liability means that many of those still motivated to vote will switch back to Labour.
 

arthur

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There have always been working class conservatives. Back in the sixties, when we still had a large industrial working class, a third of the working class voted Tory and this constituted half the total Tory vote. If you look at the demographics of the country, the Conservatives could never have formed a government without significant working class support
 

angelic upstart

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Agreed, although I think many leant the Tories their vote to get Brexit done. Now that Brexit is finished & Boris being such a liability means that many of those still motivated to vote will switch back to Labour.
Only time will tell on that. If their lives have improved, and the levelling up agenda is working. They can easily stay voting conservative.
 

angelic upstart

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Let them. Fire up the Culture Wars again!
Since then we've had a Conservative MP bring up in parliament the question of why don't we play the national anthem on the BBC any more.
Subsequently, we've had no 10 apologising to the queen for disrespecting her dead husband.

I think this shows the culture war, and the faux patriotism that many people show. For what it is. Simple hot air.
 

angelic upstart

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There have always been working class conservatives. Back in the sixties, when we still had a large industrial working class, a third of the working class voted Tory and this constituted half the total Tory vote. If you look at the demographics of the country, the Conservatives could never have formed a government without significant working class support
Of course, many people want to move up from their social class. The difference now, is that, there's a lot of upper working/middle class labour voters and a lot of "white van men" supporting conservatives.
 

tavyred

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Those that would want a Labour Government, tend to obsess about why other people vote Tory for some reason. IMO Labour has had nothing significant to say to certain demographics since the Blair era, other than to say you’d be truly stupid to vote Tory of course. How many times do posters on here use the word “duped” to explain recent Tory electoral success. If it’s incredibly unwise for a working class voter to vote Tory, don’t tell them they’ve been duped, give them a compelling alternative instead.
SKS has intimated he’s going to get radical with his plans for the country and has even invoked memories of Attlee and 1945 to suggest how radical he wants to be.
It’s in Labour’s gift to rise above the culture wars they can never win and speak directly to an electorate that is in my opinion tired of the old politics and open to wholesale constitutional reform. There are things like scrapping the House of Lords or cleaning up politics (lobbying etc.) that the Tories simply cannot do. There’s evidence that people in England now quite like power being devolved down to them via mayors and city regions, SKS can again steal a march on the Tories by being radical in that regard. There’s talk of SKS offering the jocks a vote on full fiscal autonomy, that would open the door to the U.K. being federalist entity for the first time, that would have ramifications for the rest of the U.K. if it happened and maybe capture the zeitgeist as to how people want to be governed.
It’s been a feature of U.K. politics for the last 30/40 years to give a particular party a 10 to 15 period to govern and then vote in a new broom to take over, but that new broom as with Thatcher and Blair needs to capture the imagination of the public, to do that Labour has to be radical.
Same old, same old, doesn’t get Labour into power.
 

Oldsmobile-88

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In RaWZ we trust....Amen.
There have always been working class conservatives. Back in the sixties, when we still had a large industrial working class, a third of the working class voted Tory and this constituted half the total Tory vote. If you look at the demographics of the country, the Conservatives could never have formed a government without significant working class support
After a very turbulent 70s for the country,the ‘Right to Buy’ local authority houses shored up that vote in the 1980s.
 

tavyred

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A bit of a coughing and spluttering riposte by Starmer I thought to Sophie Raworth when she asked him to explain the ‘get-together’ in a constituency office in Hartlepool last year. Apparently the food for everyone “just appeared”. 🤣
No comparison with the alleged wall to wall parties at number 10 of course.
 

angelic upstart

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After a very turbulent 70s for the country,the ‘Right to Buy’ local authority houses shored up that vote in the 1980s.
And subsequently wrecked the UK housing market forever.
 
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