Here in the US a few years ago there were surveys showing that something like 50% of young people honestly expected to end up in the top 5% of earners. The wealthy and their pet political party have seized on that fantasy and have carefully nurtured it since to ensure that a large fraction of the populace now votes for things demonstrably not in their own economic interest. Not now, and statistically speaking, not ever.
Widespread voting by the working classes for things that are directly counter to economic mobility for their own children is pretty obviously the result of bad thinking and/or bad information. I’m not somebody who believes the working classes are stupid. My bet’s on bad information carefully crafted and fed to them all day every day.
Agree that “attacking” the rich is doing it wrong. That’s different from saying, as we do on this side of the pond, that anything not in the interests of the 0.1% is necessarily harmful to the 99.9%.
Is it just me or is there a certain … inconsistency in someone saying “I’m religiously outraged; nobody in our religion would ever touch alcohol. Nobody. Besides, my extended family are a bunch of drunks.”
IMO she’d do better to make one argument or the other; together they’re not so good.
You’ve got to be careful here. I’m expecting a large number of tactical votes - mine will be one - by Unionists. People won’t necessarily be voting for the Tories but voting for the Union. Some of those votes will go to the Tories, some to Labour, and others to the Lib Dems. I will be voting for the party most likely to defeat the SNP. That will be either Labour or the Tories. I voted Labour last time - Dame Anne Begg was a very good local MP - but it seems the Tories are on the rise here and if they’re the best means of defeating the SNP, I’ll vote for them in their Unionist guise.
It is a lot of money. Labour is advocating a realignment after 9 years of ever-increasing austerity. It does start to address social care but doesn’t even reach as far as benefits.
The scale of what George Osborn did is extraordinary. FFS, even Theresa May couldn’t countenance it.
As of 2015 when the SNP swept Scotland, Labour can no longer depend on Scotland to form governments. If the Tories were to establish themselves as the second party in Scotland that makes it harder for Labour to make a come back (probably) but the real threat to Labour in Scotland is the SNP, not the Tories.
Tory success in Scotland is built largely on Unionism, not Conservatism. So their success will mirror demand for a second referendum rather than being a driver of that demand. Over time, you might get a consistency effect as people who have made the (for some) difficult choice to vote Tory commit to their Unionism in order to maintain consistency, but it won’t be huge.
And Labour HQ are being idiots. Here in Aberdeen Labour are forming an anti-SNP Unionist coalition, and Labour HQ are threatening to suspend them. Completely fucking stupid.
Yeah, it looks a bit weird. But it’s not really inconsistent - she’s not saying no one would ever touch alcohol, she’s saying it’s the prohibition is an important part of their religion. I mean, I’m pretty sure that some Catholics have pre-marital sex, but I wouldn’t crack wise about it in front of the congregation. The more so if I guessed that some people there might be or know single parents.
Not entirely. Labour have endured (and to some extents are still enduring) a severe electoral kicking because they were painted as being in bed with the Tories. Allowing your councillors to form any kind of pact with a Tory group does rather play in to that narrative.
