The Tories can’t change this country to make it work for the many not the few because they themselves haven’t changed.
The Tories can’t change this country to make it work for the many not the few because they themselves haven’t changed
Despite the economic recovery, polls show the Tories are still struggling to attract more than a third of voters.
As parliament begins its Christmas recess, it’s worth taking a moment to consider why this is. Clearly the rise of UKIP has hampered their electoral prospects, but much of the damage has been self-inflicted.
Back in 2006, amid scenes of huskies and hoodies, David Cameron launched his modernisation project.
‘Compassionate Conservatism’ was an attempt to de-toxify the Tories and shake off perceptions that they were out of touch – a party for the rich, ignorant of and indifferent to the concerns of ordinary people.
However, since taking power, the Tories have regularly vacated the centre ground, adopting more extreme stances on immigration and welfare in a bid to counter the UKIP threat and placate many of their own back-benchers.
The notorious ‘Go Home or Face Arrest’ vans, and (father of four) Iain Duncan Smith’s latest idea – that child benefit should be limited to two children to encourage ‘behavioural change’, spring to mind.
The Tories could have used their time in government to broaden their appeal by challenging their toxic brand. Instead, they seem to have done everything possible to reinforce it.
In the past few weeks alone we’ve seen a judge rule that former chief whip Andrew Mitchell probably did call police officers ‘plebs’, welfare reform Minister Lord Freud suggest that disabled people are ‘not worth’ the minimum wage, and Tory peer Baroness Jenkin argue that ‘poor people don’t know how to cook’when trying to account for rising food poverty.
While some voters will be willing to overlook these flaws in character if they believe the Tories’ ability to take ‘tough decisions’ is what matters most, this only holds if they are perceived to be competent. And this government’s competence has been called into question with alarming regularity over the last four years.
Take their record on the economy. Despite making it their defining mission in government, the Tories have failed to eradicate the deficit and are nowhere near to balancing the books. As a result, chancellor George Osborne has borrowed in this parliament a staggering £219bn more than he planned in 2010.
And while the economy is finally growing, many are yet to feel the benefits; we are certainly not, as the chancellor would have us believe, ‘all in this together’.
On Cameron’s watch living standards have collapsed. Wages have stagnated, and food banks and zero hour contracts have seemingly become permanent features of our economic landscape.
But it’s not only on the economy that the government has failed to meet its own targets. Cameron pledged to get net migration down to the ‘tens of thousands’ – a target he now admits can’t be met.
And 600 pages rather than the 600 words contained here would be required to do justice to the extent of the chaos that has occurred at the Department for Work and Pensions under Iain Duncan Smith. The amount wasted on IT systems for Universal Credit – incredibly, a project that still hasn’t even been signed off by the Treasury – is now being counted in the hundreds of millions.
Meanwhile, because of the lack of action on the root causes of welfare spending (low pay and high housing costs), the housing benefit bill is rising despite the government’s attempts to bring it down.
The Tories can’t change this country to make it work for the many not the few because they themselves haven’t changed. They are still the same old nasty party.
Their lack of compassion and common decency has been matched only by their incompetence in government. For those of us who care about fairness, social justice and the future of our country, the election can’t come soon enough.
Matthew Whittley is a recent graduate and Labour party member and works as a researcher for a Midlands-based housing association
To reach hundreds of thousands of new readers and to make the biggest impact we can in the next general election, we need to grow our donor base substantially.
That's why in 2024, we are seeking to generate 150 additional regular donors to support Left Foot Forward's work.
We still need another 124 people to donate to hit the target. You can help. Donate today.
56 Responses to “Why the Tories won’t win a majority at the election”
AlanGiles
Do you really think the Blairite PLP – like Tristram Hunt, the friend of Mandelson who was parachuted (like so many other Progress arse-lickers) into a safe seat, Jonathan Reynolds, Chuka Umanna, Caroline Flint et al would ALLOW Miliband to reintroduce socialism ito Labour even if he had the will and backbone to do it?
Today’s Labour party is full of indentikit career politicians with little real genuine difference from their former student colleagues who choose to wear blue or orange rosettes.
Of course, they will SAY anything because they are so desperate for power
swat
Just been thinking that we’ve had the crappiest of Defence Secretaries for the past 50 years. The last good one was old Dennis Healey; after that I think we had John Knott, and briefly Toffy Carrington and creeps like Portillo; and there were also weeds like Des Browne and Hoon and now we’re lumbered with nerds like Hammond and Fallon.
So when are we going to get a Defence Secretary who looks like a Defence Secretary and talks like a Defence Secretary and not like a civil servant pen pusher taking a sabbatical?
God help us if we get Croaker next
littleoddsandpieces
Both the Tories and Labour are calling a surplus the unpaid out state pension since 2013, so beginning the denial of 7 years pension payout to a couple.
So this full and ring fenced National Insurance Fund is not only
not granting our own money to us since 2013, leaving it sitting pretty in the NI Fund
that has not needed a top up from tax for decades,
but is still charging half of the over 60s within the working poor
the compulsory deductions of 12 per cent from wages per year,
and burdening their boss with his compulsory share of the NI contribution for employing them.
Neither Labour nor Tories will repeal the Pension Bills 2010-2014
now that the economy is said to be getting better, and
so the new claimants after 2016
suffer the biggest con in UK history
of the flat rate pension
that is not more but less state pension (lots of small print)
and for a substantial number of these
women born from 1953 and men born from 1951
offers NIL STATE PENSION FOR LIFE
that is sole food and fuel money for a great many in old age
https://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/state-pension-at-60-now
The pundits say that the Scottish National Party will wipe out all but themselves in Scotland in 2015.
In England and Wales, the election pundits predict both Tories and Labour will get an equal amount of seats and so be in a hung parliament that could be 4 way coalition, so become entirely paralysed and the Tories still ruling.
The Tories are aristocracy coming from the public school system that trains into an aristocratic mindset.
The Tories did the workhouse and the New Poor Law and the Irish Potato Famine, that killed from starvation huge numbers in the not so distant history of the UK.
England never had the French revolution and so the mindset remains of our ruling elite.
The real dismay is The Greens, again inside that elite mindset even with their green credentials, because the policies on their website that would have given them a majority government in England and Wales of 303 seats (Labour and Lib Dems’ predicted 2015 seats), is not in The Greens 2015 manifesto.
The Greens show by this the same lack of care of the sick, disabled, poor, and old of all parties by ignoring those policies. If they had put those unique and new policies into their 2015 manifesto pledges, The Greens would have Greece’s SY.RIZ.A moment and more, that everyone in the world believes that if there is a snap election in the next few weeks into 2015, that they will form a majority government in Greece.
And a true socialist party would rule England and Wales, and Scotland and Ulster through the UK governance.
Thus preventing the coming social unrest when the right wing mindset gives us a 1930s state spending, before the 1945 welfare state.
Because we are not poor because we are feckless, incompetents with a social problem, like politicians and our elite have believed for a thousand years.
We are exactly the same people as everyone else, just poorer.
And the poor pay a 90 per cent tax rate, from the 75 per cent of all tax that comes from stealth taxes and VAT. So there is no such thing as someone being economically worthless and not contributing to the tax pool.
Ms Natalie Bennett is not being courageous enough to bring The Greens into a majority government in 2015 and finish the downward trend giving less than 30 per cent voter turnout.
The pundits say that the 2015 general election will be the closest to call since 1945.
In fact it will be the lowest voter turnout in UK history, because the mass of the population have no political representation in Westminster.
Guest
So, you begin with a rant against education. Then talk about your magical nose.
Then you ignore other parties, and attack democracy. Right.
As you push a party of austerity-loving neoliberals.
Leon Wolfeson
They’re moving right, not left, in their rhetoric. So it’s a moot point anyway.