Why are Labour and the Conservatives neck and neck?

[wc98]

NicD said:

Tannedbaldhead said:

In my predicament a Labour government would suit my circumstances better than a Tory government.
I base this on pure ecomomics. Labour want to increase capital spending the Tories don't. Under Labour the construction industry will be more stimulated, wages will rise and the opportunities for my career progression will be better.

Regardless of the good of the country I will be better off. The PH mantra seems to be "look after youself mate" so why should I vote for a party that doesn't serve my own personal interests.

If that is the sum total of the proposed and envisaged policies on you, cannot argue. You have given your reasons, so again, cannot argue. I do wonder if the investment outweighs the higher taxes and debt you will face.

I have a problem when posters big up a party without giving reasons (or give spurious ones), or worse, hand bag one for the same.

i can argue, he obviously has not had a look in the ukip manifesto to see what they would do for the construction sector.

[anonymous-user]

wc98 said:

the bit i find perplexing is the constant reference to fiscal responsibility that will only come from voting tory, then ukip come out with the most fiscally responsible manifesto of all the parties while the tories in panic mode are flashing the cheque book in the direction of the nhs,yet still the same people want to vote tory. very strange indeed.

It's just dogma and ideology, these are the 25% who would vote for their party probably regardless of policy or who the leader was.

[chris watton]

I would imagine they are neck and neck, despite Labour being a disaster for the country, because of the huge public sector, many of which would, I assume, prefer a Labour government. As the public sector gets larger (usually under Labour administrations), the private sector gets smaller, and in turn the country's financial health deteriorates - putting up taxes for the real money earners is always a good ploy for the left, until the company's go elsewhere, so the governments borrow more money to help keep its voters happy.

Quite a sad situation when I think about it...

[Tannedbaldhead]

chris watton said:

I would imagine they are neck and neck, despite Labour being a disaster for the country, because of the huge public sector, many of which would, I assume, prefer a Labour government. As the public sector gets larger (usually under Labour administrations), the private sector gets smaller, and in turn the country's financial health deteriorates - putting up taxes for the real money earners is always a good ploy for the left, until the company's go elsewhere, so the governments borrow more money to help keep its voters happy.

Quite a sad situation when I think about it...

Again, do you blame them for being so self serving?

Imagine you are in your early forties and live in rural Perthshire. You have worked for Grampian Police from leaving school as a civilian support radio dispatcher. Then imagine being made redundant when Grampian Police are disbanded to make way for Police Scotland and to save costs much of the backroom work is taken on in centralised locations in Glasgow and Edinburgh. You discover benifits are far for the all day watching Jeremy Kyle on a huge flatscreened TV utopia as seems to be the concensus of opinion here but mere subsistance whilst being pressured to take any job, anything anywhere. You end up working in a call centre 30 miles away on minimum wage, minimum holiday entitlement and no pension. With a 300 miles a week to finance you'll struggle to pay a coucil flat rent and feed yourself. If your old banger of a Corsa breaks you'll be dismissed. If you're sacked as opposed to made redundant you get no benefit. To rub salt in the wounds you discover your employer makes huge profits most of which manages to avoid (as opposed to evade) taxation.

It's one day at a time with people in this boat and if tomorrow (and I mean tomorrow in its most literal sense) is better under Labour do you blame people for voting that way?

[chris watton]

Tannedbaldhead said:

Again, do you blame them for being so self serving?

I wasn't writing about blame, I was writing about possible reasons why Tories and Labour are apparently neck and neck.

Anyway, Labour acolytes love to tell whoever will listen that they're not self-serving, but deeply caring for the welfare of others - Say it ain't so!

[jammy_basturd]

Tannedbaldhead said:

What use is a strong economy if you are not benifitting? I live in a medium sized town where the largest employer is, by far, the HQ of a large international pensions company. Over the last few years the admin staff and call handlers, customer service staff and the call handlers in the building's various contact centres have all been let go then taken on by outsourcing companies. They have lost generous pensions, holiday and sick pay entitlement, bonuses, profit share and staff share issues. In return they have to cope with greatly increased workloads after being set near impossible targets (fail to meet them and you're managed out the door)and in return for all this your wages have dropped from £24k to £16k per annum.

The management say these sacrifices are necessary to save the business and yet award themselves huge wage rises and bonuses (what's more they paid themselves those bonuses even as financial service providers were making huge losses after the crash).

So the economy is picking up, the bosses are making a killing, the city is making a killing, the workers are still £6k per anum down along with a pile of benifits. What's in it for them?

Large corporations have been outsourcing for the last 10-15 years, regardless of government, recession or boom economies!

[anonymous-user]

turbobloke said:

La Liga said:

skyrover said:

As per the title...

Labour gave us a broken economy.

The Conservatives have turned it around into the strongest in Europe with record employment, low inflation and stable interest rates.

Not sure it's stronger than Germany's economy.

It depends on what interpretation is put on 'stronger' as there's mention of employment and inflation as well as GDP alone. However sticking with GDP...

From The Guardian 'General Election 2015 Reality Check':

"George Osborne can correctly say that the economy grew faster than any other advanced economy"

The above was in response to the open letter from 103 business leaders pointing out the bleedin' obvious that Labour would be a disaster for Britain.

A lot of weasel words followed - not surprising given the source. For example IMF figures showed that the UK grew faster “though it is forecast to fall behind the US this year". Like everyone else, The Guardian's lefty hacks will need to wait and see. Maybe if we were fracking like the USA was then we'd be even further ahead and staying there, The Guardian is keen on fracking

No doubt we have grown well (we had further to grow to get back to normal / "regress to the mean"?), but he said, "strongest in Europe", as in a now, a snapshot in time. I'm not sure that's the case.

I don't want to suggest we can't reasonably speculate if the Conservatives would have done a better job of making us more resilient between 1997 - 2010, but a lot of people think / make-out as if the global economic disaster was avoidable if the Conservatives were in power. It wasn't. Had Labour been in power since 2010, then they'd things would got better in-line with the rest of the developed world regardless of their policies or tinkering and they'd have been able to claim credit for something that was largely out of their hands, just like the Conservatives are doing.

The problem comes when actually trying to figure out if the other party would have done a worse / better job in reverse roles. Now that isn't easy.

[confused_buyer]

Tannedbaldhead said:

Imagine you are in your early forties and live in rural Perthshire. You have worked for Grampian Police from leaving school as a civilian support radio dispatcher. Then imagine being made redundant when Grampian Police are disbanded to make way for Police Scotland and to save costs much of the backroom work is taken on in centralised locations in Glasgow and Edinburgh.

In this case, according to the polls, it seems you vote for the very party which disbanded Grampian Police in favour of Police Scotland and have centralised many things so they and a small clique of people who all eat in the same restaurants and kids all go to the same schools have complete control over Scotland.

[Tannedbaldhead]

confused_buyer said:

Tannedbaldhead said:

Imagine you are in your early forties and live in rural Perthshire. You have worked for Grampian Police from leaving school as a civilian support radio dispatcher. Then imagine being made redundant when Grampian Police are disbanded to make way for Police Scotland and to save costs much of the backroom work is taken on in centralised locations in Glasgow and Edinburgh.

In this case, according to the polls, it seems you vote for the very party which disbanded Grampian Police in favour of Police Scotland and have centralised many things so they and a small clique of people who all eat in the same restaurants and kids all go to the same schools have complete control over Scotland.

That's actually a very good point. It was indeed the SNP that brought about that cost cutting exercise.

It's an odd thing. Many of the workers' woes are more attributable to the past Labour govt than the current Conservative government. Believe it or not Blair/Brown in many ways pursued policies and held attitudes way to the right of Thatcher. This is also the case with Obama who makes Nixon and Regan look like neo Communists.

Yet still the beleaguered will cling to the Labour party.

[deadslow]

wc98 said:

Flip Martian said:

Political threads on here are virtually pointless. Anyone who doesn't vote tory is a mouth breather, according to most of you. Perhaps these threads are just to remind yourselves how superior you are. Most peculiar.

the bit i find perplexing is the constant reference to fiscal responsibility that will only come from voting tory, then ukip come out with the most fiscally responsible manifesto of all the parties while the tories in panic mode are flashing the cheque book in the direction of the nhs,yet still the same people want to vote tory. very strange indeed.

They all conveniently forget it was the tory-boys in the city of london who crashed the economy. Actually you're not allowed to say that on here.

[turbobloke]

La Liga said:

...a lot of people think / make-out as if the global economic disaster was avoidable if the Conservatives were in power...

That's not quite right from what I've read, and posted.

As the saying goes, Labour chose not to fix the roof when the sun was shining, and it rained cats and dogs soon after. It was inevitable with Brown believing he had abolished boom and bust.

With Conservatives in office the crunch would still have happened. Clinton would still have had his long-lasting fit of egalitarian delusion, HUD and Achtenberg would still have mandated lots of non-recourse ninja mortgages for those who would never be able to repay them, Brown's tripartite regulatory system would still have been inadequate, ratings agencies would still have made some bad calls and some people in some banks would still have bought repackaged toxic debt arising from Clinton's silliness.

However, without the 2001-2007 Labour spendfest we would have been in a better position to weather the storm. It's not as though the economy shot ahead as a result.

[sidicks]

deadslow said:

They all conveniently forget it was the tory-boys in the city of london who crashed the economy. Actually you're not allowed to say that on here.

Sounds like you don't understand what drove the growth between 1997 and 2007 and what the Labour government did with all the money raised during that period...!

[hunton69]

A couple of months ago I was in the audience of question time and I got talking to a labour voter who told me that the amount of money that the country owes does not matter. A question came up about the NHS and it's lack of money and he asked me if I wouldn't mind paying another 2% in income tax so that could be spent on the NHS. My reply was why would I want to pay another 2% tax when the country can just borrow that money after all you just told me half an hour ago that it doesn't matter how much the country owes.

[Randy Winkman]

skyrover said:

As per the title...

Labour gave us a broken economy.

The Conservatives have turned it around into the strongest in Europe with record employment, low inflation and stable interest rates.

So why are the poll's so close?

BBC economics editor is pondering the same thing

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-32347960

Having just tuned in to PH for the first time in a few days, so I've not read any other replies to this .... can I just say that it's because we live in a real world where people have lots of different backgrounds/jobs/experiences and not everything is like the "Blue-KIP" world on PH. (I'm so glad someone made up that term because it's so right for this website.)

[johnxjsc1985]

I was reading about John Major's election win when the polls suggested otherwise.
It was deemed that there was such a thing as the "shy Conservative" and that these people didnt respond well to Polls.
I guess we will find out soon enough

[barryrs]

I think it's because Labor very cleverly created a nation of private sector workers who became dependant on the state.

Working tax credit, child tax credit and housing benefit can boost an average £24k salary to circa £32k per year.

[eatcustard]

johnxjsc1985 said:

I was reading about John Major's election win when the polls suggested otherwise.
It was deemed that there was such a thing as the "shy Conservative" and that these people didnt respond well to Polls.
I guess we will find out soon enough

More like UKip this time, taking the Tory vote

[johnxjsc1985]

eatcustard said:

More like UKip this time, taking the Tory vote

As long as the Labour vote collapses when people realise that their mortgages will go up ,Petrol will go up ,Car tax will go up Fags.booze and anything else they can tax will go up and then add on to that rising inflation and a lot of people will be cursing the day they voted Labour

[turbobloke]

johnxjsc1985 said:

I was reading about John Major's election win when the polls suggested otherwise.
It was deemed that there was such a thing as the "shy Conservative" and that these people didnt respond well to Polls.
I guess we will find out soon enough

It's possible. As a 1931 repeat is out of the question, a return of The Kinnock Effect might not be. A walk on the beach with Mrs Wallace and headline writers at The Sun could sort it

[johnxjsc1985]

turbobloke said:

It's possible. As a 1931 repeat is out of the question, a return of The Kinnock Effect might not be. A walk on the beach with Mrs Wallace and headline writers at The Sun could sort it

So do you want to entice Ed down to the beach or what.Some how with nearly 3 weeks left I have confidence he will not be needing our intervention.