Stockholm syndrome -the tories

Every British MP in the last forty years bar Blair and very briefly Brown has been a Tory. Some of us naively expected different from a Labour PM.

I know it isn’t in the gift of the electorate that’s why I said so. The only place they can protest is at the ballot box which a previous poster suggested was not the place to do so.

I know the Tories backed the government but I would imagine that Labour voters vehemently opposed to the war wouldn’t see Tory support as justification for a Labour government joining the Bush government and going ahead with a war with or without Security Council support.

Opposition’s support government bills on lots of ideas like having referendums on leaving the European Union. People still have the right to think these ideas are a bag of ***** even though the opposition supported it.

As you say the yanks would have gone in anyway. They didn’t need us to send our own service people to many needless deaths they were quite capable of making a complete clusterfck of it all by themselves.
 
Jimstewart said:
Every British MP in the last forty years bar Blair and very briefly Brown has been a Tory. Some of us naively expected different from a Labour PM.

I know it isn’t in the gift of the electorate that’s why I said so. The only place they can protest is at the ballot box which a previous poster suggested was not the place to do so.

I know the Tories backed the government but I would imagine that Labour voters vehemently opposed to the war wouldn’t see Tory support as justification for a Labour government joining the Bush government and going ahead with a war with or without Security Council support.

Opposition’s support government bills on lots of ideas like having referendums on leaving the European Union. People still have the right to think these ideas are a bag of ***** even though the opposition supported it.

As you say the yanks would have gone in anyway. They didn’t need us to send our own service people to many needless deaths they were quite capable of making a complete clusterfck of it all by themselves.
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I really need to learn how to hit the reply button properly
 
Jimstewart said:
Every British MP in the last forty years bar Blair and very briefly Brown has been a Tory. Some of us naively expected different from a Labour PM.
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You can't see the difference between Blair and what we have today??? The mean, median and mode household saw significant increases in their income during Blair's years, the last decade of Tories saw a drop for all but the very richest, who saw massive shifts upwards while everyone else went downwards. Thatcher and Major saw some increases in the middle classes, but the vast majority of households were on their knees. It's a lazy conclusion to claim Blairite was just Tory light.

Hugely different. He may have been a centrist / moderate left, but he introduced a minimum wage to pull the very poorest out of exploited work, and increased workers rights to make it more difficult to be sacked. Schools, education and healthcare all improved under him and declined under the Tories either side of him. He might not have been a radical, but that the proof is in the pudding, he was successful by almost any criteria that 80% of people care about. This of course made him a target for right wing propoganda as we still see today.
 
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Jimstewart said:
As you say the yanks would have gone in anyway. They didn’t need us to send our own service people to many needless deaths they were quite capable of making a complete clusterfck of it all by themselves.
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Maybe not, but he clearly saw sadam as an evil that needed removing from power, and I think most people would agree with that, they might not have agreed with the war, but most people stilla greed he was a dangerous psychopath that wasn't going away and would continue to abuse and kill. So I'm not sure how people could expect him to go away without an intervention. Really I blame Thatcher and Bush Snr, they should have done the job properly first time and they would have saved millions of lives over the next 30 years.

By the way, the right to defend the armed forces lives as sacrosanct is your prerogative, and I respect that. But, lets be honest, Tory governments have waged more conflicts and war, and have proven how little they care for the armed forces just this week by cutting numbers to dangerous levels.
 
BoroMart said:
You can't see teh difference between Blair and what we have today??? The mean, median and mode household saw significant increases in their income during Blair's years, the last decade of Tories saw a drop for all but the very richest. Thatcher and Major saw some increases in the middle classes, but the vast majority were on their knees.

Hugely different. He may have been a centrist / moderate left, but he introduced a minimum wage to pull the very poorest out of exploited work, and increased workers rights to make it more difficult to be sacked. Schools, education and healthcare all improved under him and declined under the Tories either side of him. He might not have been a radical, but that the proof is in the pudding, he was successful by almost any criteria that 80% of people care about. This of course made him a target for right wing propoganda as we still see today.
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Err yeah I can see the difference that’s why we agreed above that their hasn’t been a better time in my lifetime domestically.
When Iraq was brought into this thread (not by me I hasten to add) it was suggested that that the remedy to protest against the decision to enter into that disastrous war was in a court of law and not at the ballot box. I disagree the only option to the ***ed off Labour voter was at the ballot box . Where else is there?
 
Jimstewart said:
I disagree the only option to the p****d off Labour voter was at the ballot box
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The p*****d off labour voter probably should have looked at the bigger picture, Brown might have been dour but he was competent and it wasn't his decision to go to war.

nose cut off to severely spite face.
 
Laughing said:
Economically Blair was a very good pm and I was dead against the Iraq war but facts are facts.
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I'd go so far as to say socially he was very good too. The left have fallen for the argument of looking for the perfect set of policies rather than accepting a better set then improving it, this has resulted in a fragmented party and continued Tory cruelty.
 
BoroMart said:
I'd go so far as to say socially he was very good too. The left have fallen for the argument of looking for the perfect set of policies rather than accepting a better set then improving it, this has resulted in a fragmented party and continued Tory cruelty.
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If agree with that too BM
 
Can’t believe we are still talking about Iraq.

Blair stood down in 2007, you would have to be about 30 years old to even remember the Iraq conflict regardless of its rights and wrongs.

Cameron and Osborne managed to get Labour out in 2010 by blaming Labour for the banking crash.

That’s how badly informed some of our electorate are.
 
The right wing media have such a grip on this country it’s sickening and that’s the reason this continues to get worse. Genuinely saddens me to see arguments for topics like cutting benefits or free school meals. Imagine how brainwashed these people are that argue against that. So many will see a headline and take it as fact without questioning anything. When the billionaires are telling you the person wrongly claiming £600 a month in benefits is the cause of your problems, you surely need to question this.
 
The Conservatives, this very right wing Conservative Party are fully adopting Steve Bannon and friends Culture War strategy. These bloody Union Jacks, the anti immigrant stuff, the anti EU rhetoric, creating external enemies and internal ones.

My opinion, if they want a culture war, by all means keep the powder dry for now, but then I hope Labour take the gloves off and damn well give these privileged lying incompetent corrupt toffs a full on culture war. They may just regret their arrogant overreach.
 
Lefty said:
The Conservatives, this very right wing Conservative Party are fully adopting Steve Bannon and friends Culture War strategy. These bloody Union Jacks, the anti immigrant stuff, the anti EU rhetoric, creating external enemies and internal ones.

My opinion, if they want a culture war, by all means keep the powder dry for now, but then I hope Labour take the gloves off and damn well give these privileged lying incompetent corrupt toffs a full on culture war. They may just regret their arrogant overreach.
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The culture being fascistic or non-fascistic
 
HolgateCorner said:
Can’t believe we are still talking about Iraq.
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I won the bet with myself that if I mentioned the Blair years were generally very good in comparison to what came before and after, then someone very quickly would mention Iraq. It's a predictable, simplistic and lazy answer and ignores the realty that the Tories would have done exactly the same with Iraq but would have starved our own working classes of hope and opportunity as well.
 
festa5 said:
This part of the problem for me. A lot of people dislike the Tories, but also can't bring themselves to vote Labour or the lib dems even if they see them as the lesser of 2 (or 3) evils. Obviously people quite rightly can vote for whoever they like of course.

But abstaining or voting for a candidate who has no chance favours the Tories and keeps them in power. It's not as bad as voting for them, but it's also not really voting against them.

As a general principle I don't think it's healthy for one party to be in power for too long or have a significant majority, particularly with FPTP. They stop listening to the population as a whole (if they ever did) and are able to pander more and more to their sponsors and genuine supporters (who usually make up far less than 50% of the electorate).

I've probably cast as many votes just to try and remove a governing party (including labour) as I have because I actually genuinely backed the alternative. Sometimes it does them all good to get the message from voters "no, not good enough". The Tories aren't getting this message, in fact increasingly from the public they seem to be hearing that they're doing brilliantly. The facts clearly show this not to be the case though.

Food for thought maybe for anyone who is against this government but are convincing themselves they can't vote for any alternatives with a genuine chance to stop them.
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I do understand what you're saying. I have never abstained and I have, like you, voted tactically in the past. I generally vote Labour, and have voted Lib Dem previously, never voted Conservative.

However, there is simply no way that I can vote for the main parties after this year. I have never seen parliament in such a sorry state (apart from a few MPs, at least on Covid). This is the most feeble opposition party I have seen. Nodding dogs. Listening to Jon Ashworth witter on about "track and trace" ........It was the middle of an epidemic Jon, its pointless (as Chris Whitty has explained in public lectures and to select committee). Instead of rambling on why don't you ask if it is a reasonable use of money/resources? They just don't question anything. They'll probably vote for the extension tomorrow....... If they voted against enough Tories would and it would get thrown out and then there could be a sensible debate about could be put in its place in the short term.

Labour are a big part of the problem at the moment.

I would add I have moved into an area with a super safe Labour seat. The incumbent MP at least replies to my emails.
 
Muttley said:
Fair enough, how long do you plan on protesting? The Iraq War ended something like ten years ago.
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I wonder how many of these people that apparently voted labour out at the ballot box and voted Hameron in (he voted 4 times in favour of supporting action against Iraq and never against it) due to the Iraq War I also wonder how many returned to Labour under Corbyn, you know the ardent anti-Iraq War MP, who voted 6 times against the Iraq War...or is this all just nonsense and it's personality politics and Blairite politicians were vilified, then Corbyn was vilified by the press 🤷‍♂️ I'd guess the numbers that made that Blair-->Cameron-->Corbyn journey are fairly small.
 
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