UK: Who will you vote for?
Out of context: Reply #37
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- kingkong0
Why write load of words when the Times kind of summed up where I am this morning:
"...which is a problem, when it comes to analysing this election. Because I think the key to Thursday’s outcome — the difference between the Tories falling short of an overall majority and winning comfortably — lies with people struggling with a deep, tribal, inherited, often class-based loyalty.
You may remember those posters: “I’ve never voted Tory before, but.” The Conservatives put those up because they realised that, among undecided voters, an extraordinary number said that while they were thoroughly disillusioned with Labour, they had never voted Conservative before. Now, they said, they were on the brink of backing David Cameron. And then, again and again, they added this: “My grandad would roll in his grave.”
Many pollsters assume — and adjust their polls accordingly — that a disproportionate number of these undecided voters will return to their past voting behaviour rather than following the trend. This has helped to make polls more accurate in the past. The result largely depends on whether that assumption holds good this time.
So, annoyingly, this election will be determined by people fighting a tribal urge that I’ve never felt and can’t completely relate to. The best I can offer is this: once I considered myself on the centre Left, and I don’t any more. And once I, too, had “never voted Tory”, but in the end I didn’t find it very difficult at all.
Being on the centre Left was very comfortable. I thought Margaret Thatcher’s rhetoric jarring, I found the Tory triumphalism of the 1980s distasteful (sometimes wrongly — I used to think that all those flags and Land of Hope and Glory were sinister, but when I finally attended a Tory conference it was more like Seaside Special), it made life a great deal easier at dinner parties. The centre Left, too, seemed the right place for a social liberal. Naturally on guard for the merest hint of racism, I also believed that gay rights was among the most important issues for my generation.
Beyond this, I found the certainty of the Tories off-putting. I have always recoiled from people whose eyes shine with ideological fervour. My parents’ experience, imprisoned by fascists and communists, made me an instinctive moderate, suspicious of grand schemes and those who think they have found the key to the happiness of mankind. It’s true that such certainty could be found on the Left too, and I didn’t like that either. But it seemed to suffuse the Conservative Party at that time.
But there was a problem. One I found more and more difficult to ignore. It just seemed that again and again, the Right was more, well, right. The economic policies coming out of the Left ranged from the disastrous to the silly. The unions, basically a destructive force, were accorded too much respect and given too much power. The Left seemed incapable of understanding the need for a strong defence policy. So in 1992 I became a Conservative.
Some of this Tony Blair could see and put right. I liked his social liberalism, I thought him often moderate and reasonable, I shared his Atlanticism, and (I duck for cover here) I found him rather charismatic, and still do. But I am not at all surprised that his new Labour project is ending in failure. Because while he changed much about Labour, there are things he couldn’t change.
Like every Labour government, this one has spent too much. On every single occasion — honestly, every time — the party has been in office for more than nine months, there has been a huge economic crisis, made worse by its public spending. Underpinning this mistake are two wrong-headed ideas that are deeply (indeed, almost unconsciously) held on the Left.
The first (understandable but incorrect) is that it is cruel to say no to requests for spending and to interest groups. The second is that for every problem there must be a government response. I am a pragmatic person. I don’t have some abstract, ideological aversion to ever spending taxpayers’ money. But surely Labour has now tested this approach to destruction."
- The Time is owned by Murdoch .. he's desperate for the Tories to get in - his 40% of the media has proved this.********
- *times********
- Isn't it funny how that article didn't even mention the Liberals?? Murdoch has done nothing to woo them .. he didn't even send reporters to their conference.********
- send and reporters to their conference. If the Liberals get in, he's fucked.********
- The Time is owned by Murdoch .. he's desperate for the Tories to get in - his 40% of the media has proved this.