Ever since I became politically aware, as opposed to just voting for whoever my parents voted (always conservative), I’ve pondered why exactly, do working class people ever vote Tory.
I’m working class, I know almost entirely working class people, and none of them are as racist and thick as you’d imagine they need to be to vote Tory, and yet, we’ve been saddled with these venal fucks for 13 years so far.
I guess it all comes down to ‘knowing your place’, and the endless propaganda from the Sun and Mail, about how the Conservatives can be trusted to know what’s best for you, and most people just don’t care. Or they think that “they’re all the bloody same”, so just keep voting for what they know.
But when you examine Conservative governmental history, and the promises they make and break over and over again, there’s literally no good reason for anyone without any real capital to vote for them. Their stance on the environment will kill us all, they don’t actually want us to have access to free (at the point of use) healthcare, they don’t care that every single one of the formerly publicly owned services now cost us significantly more to use, and they don’t give a shit that the cost of, well, everything is skyrocketing. They say they care, but their record shows otherwise. Every time.
I try to talk politics with my dad and my mother-in-law, but ultimately it comes down to “well, Labour wouldn’t be any better”, and then they shut down. Then they go away and vote Tory again.
And I honestly can’t work it out.
The Tory line is usually about excluding “the other” who are the scapegoat for all the ills of society.
If you’re working class and vote Conservative, you’re wanting someone excluded from society who isn’t you.
You believe that through sheer hard work you can climb the ranks of society occupied by other Conservative voters. Each person on their own merit. “The other” is some part lazy, corrupt, or unable to do things “the right way” and will make everything so much harder.
The proof of this is the very fact that you seem to be spinning your wheels and not getting anywhere in climbing the ranks of society, and “the other” is in plain sight. See?! See! It must be “the other” who is at fault!
What you fail or refuse to see is that from the point of view of societal ranks above your own, you’re part of “the other”. Nothing will change your mind about this, nor theirs.
Now, not to be completely partisan here, it’s true that non-Tories have their own “the other”.
When we’re being nice, we call them Tories.
(Last part lapsing into silliness of course. There are plenty of non-Tories who have questionable prejudices of their own. Brexit going the way it did would appear to contain some proof of this.)
Not to dismiss the points you’ve made, but I think it’s worth remembering that the voting system is biased to give us conservative governments even when most people don’t vote for them. Last election they got 44% of the vote but 56% of the MPs
It doesn’t help that they own the media and propaganda as you say
In the last election with Johnson, it was about getting Brexit done and giving the establisment a kicking. If you are poor and struggling, a vote for the status quo is not very attractive. Johnson promised populist change.
have the tories always been this way? american republicans used to care about deficits and would actually look to raise taxes to pay for spending to avoid them. They had much more of what you would think of as an individual being conservative in their finances. Then reagan hit and its just been lower taxes on wealthy ever since with a side of crazy that keeps getting bigger such that its practically the whole plate now.
My gut instinct is to say no, that the level of fuckery we’re seeing now was seeded by Thatcher. But I was born in ‘80, just as she came to power, so can’t really speak for a time before then.
I was lucky and born in the early 70’s so was able to just barely able to experience some normalcy.
The working class are basically dumb people. That’s your answer.
Liverpool seems to buck that trend
I wonder if this is less Sunak and more ‘yeah we lent you our vote in 2019 to get this Brexit thing over the line but there’s no way I’m giving it to you twice’?
Obviously Sunak is polling terribly, but I’m not sure he’s done anything so egregious that he’d lose support so quickly, especially compared to Truss and BoJo before.
No one ever supported Sunak, he was never voted in.
His riding voted him in. To parliament anyway.
From what I’ve seen it’s incredibly obvious and well publicised how rich Rishi’s family is, which makes him very hard to relate to, and in turn it’s very hard to see how he can relate to us.
Not saying that other PMs aren’t well off, just that his wealth is far more obvious.
Or at least that’s my thought on the matter.
I don’t he comes from enormous wealth. His father was a GP in Southampton, his mother owned a pharmacy up the road. Clearly they had enough to send him to Winchester college, and from then on his connections took him to his current place. But I think much of his wealth now comes from his wife.
I can relate to that.
I genuinely believe that it has nothing to do with the Tories being bad for the working class and everything to do with him not being white. Britain has a serious problem with racism.
Don’t get me wrong I don’t like the Tories and want them gone, but I would prefer that it was because of their abhorrent policies, rather than their leaders skin colour.
Other action Starmer’s party could take would be around restoring a basic sense of fairness after events such as Partygate, according to the report, Roadmap to Hope: how to bring hope back to working-class voters in an age of insecurity.
Which labour MPs were involved in Partygate again?
So, it seems the best way to restore a “sense of fairness” is to take the Tories out of power seeing as they’re the ones who’ve removed it.
Or maybe we’ll see Angela Rainer dancing with Nick Griffin at the labour party conference? I won’t hold my breath.
Bring back Boris and Tories will win with a landslide!
Dumbsterfire
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Working-class people who were a key part of the coalition of voters that delivered the Conservatives’ 2019 general election win have been deserting the party in droves under Rishi Sunak’s leadership, polling has found.
Only 44% of working-class voters who voted for the Tories in 2019 say they will back the party next time, according to research by YouGov released as Keir Starmer prepares to make what will probably be his last pitch for support at a Labour conference before a general election.
A report released by the centre-left thinktank Progressive Policy Institute, which commissioned the findings, said Labour’s lead was much narrower with working-class voters than the wider electorate and urged Starmer’s party to redouble its efforts to woo them.
This would include placing a “relentless focus” on raising wages for those on low to middle incomes and opening up housing to younger people, according to the report authored by Claire Ainsley, a former policy director to Starmer.
However, as net zero becomes increasingly central as a battleground, other findings around attitudes towards the climate crisis showed there was an awareness of it across all social groups, with more working-class voters saying the government is not doing or spending enough to try to reduce carbon emissions (34%).
In findings that may hearten Labour – which has sought to remind the public of Sunak’s wealth – 74% of those polled describe the party he leads as not close to working-class people, strongly associating them with wealthy individuals and big business.
The original article contains 753 words, the summary contains 250 words. Saved 67%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
