4 ms·

The Tories are appealing to their voters or future ones. They realise that there's a bunch of new voters, or who they want to vote for them, are renters. I ima

The Tories are appealing to their voters or future ones. They realise that there's a bunch of new voters, or who they want to vote for them, are renters. I imagine some of the more radical changes will be watered down in favour of some of the weaker but popular ones such as allowing pets. I forget the term for it, but it's a kind of poaching from Labour. The Conservatives are promoting themselves as "for the working people" as in people who actually work where Labour used to be for the "working class". In both parties we see them shedding past core beliefs, Labour have chosen the middle class and view the working class as vulnerable people with no agency and the Tories have dumped prioritising the rich landlords and big money as they know they are going to be loyal anyhow and are choosing more crowd pleasing things. I think the time of core values have passed, its all slippery chameleon politics in my view.

tialaramex 3y ago
The current Labour party is starting to think old Labour policies looked good too. In particular Nationalisation. Once upon a time Labour's principles said you should Nationalise industries. The Tories are a "Free Market" party, and over the past decade plus have a lot of policies which can be summarised as "The Free Market didn't work, so we tried the Free Market and that didn't work, then we tried the Free Market and that didn't work, and then we tried the Free Market again and it still didn't work". The trains are an especially dismal example. Trains are necessary, heavily regulated, and benefit from very long term investment, so periodically when another short term for-profit train franchise collapses, the Government is obliged to run those trains (typically the franchises run trains for some portion of the railway network e.g. the West Coast Mainline), this goes pretty well because governments can do this sort of thing, then (because Free Market) a new franchise is brought in, that's a total shit show, wash and repeat. The Tory party can't philosophically learn this lesson, it's necessary to the fundamental ethos of their party that the observable facts aren't true, the Free Market must work. So they're never going to fix this, and Labour can just nationalise the railways and tada - things get better. The Tories will say it's worse of course, that's politics - but, if they've any sense, if they get back into power they would decide to maybe run a "consultation" or something in which they never quite get around to undoing the nationalisation and so the much better system continues.
- dukeyukey 3y ago
  I'd argue the Tories aren't really a free-market party anymore either. They've done badly enough over the last decade or so that the business faction has been inching towards (post-Corbyn) Labour, and the current big-issue of housebuilding might just tip the scales.

tialaramex 3y ago

The current Labour party is starting to think old Labour policies looked good too. In particular Nationalisation. Once upon a time Labour's principles said you should Nationalise industries. The Tories are a "Free Market" party, and over the past decade plus have a lot of policies which can be summarised as "The Free Market didn't work, so we tried the Free Market and that didn't work, then we tried the Free Market and that didn't work, and then we tried the Free Market again and it still didn't work". The trains are an especially dismal example. Trains are necessary, heavily regulated, and benefit from very long term investment, so periodically when another short term for-profit train franchise collapses, the Government is obliged to run those trains (typically the franchises run trains for some portion of the railway network e.g. the West Coast Mainline), this goes pretty well because governments can do this sort of thing, then (because Free Market) a new franchise is brought in, that's a total shit show, wash and repeat. The Tory party can't philosophically learn this lesson, it's necessary to the fundamental ethos of their party that the observable facts aren't true, the Free Market must work. So they're never going to fix this, and Labour can just nationalise the railways and tada - things get better. The Tories will say it's worse of course, that's politics - but, if they've any sense, if they get back into power they would decide to maybe run a "consultation" or something in which they never quite get around to undoing the nationalisation and so the much better system continues.

dukeyukey 3y ago
I'd argue the Tories aren't really a free-market party anymore either. They've done badly enough over the last decade or so that the business faction has been inching towards (post-Corbyn) Labour, and the current big-issue of housebuilding might just tip the scales.