UK Politics Thread

This is interesting polling, only the over-70s being majority Conservative support? The triple lock certainly isn't going any time soon.

It's nice that my fellow Gen-Xers have decided to wake up.

I wonder if it’s that people are more left wing now or if it’s a pattern. Old people voting Tory because they are predominantly quite wealthy so a Tory vote is in their self interest and so because now the Tory’s have fucked up the country people are doing less well and require a left wing stereotypical high tax government, so it’s a trend routed in self interest.

I do wonder how much inheritance tax drives voting behaviour at those older ages. It’s not actually a particularly big money maker, but I wonder if Labour risk losing the left of the party if they drop it as a policy.

The fact that its even an issue is an embarrassment. Idiots and temporarily embarrassed millionaires flapping about because the Daily Mail has told them Labour are coming for their grandmas bungalow.

It's the misconceptions around IHT that are the issue. 4% of estates pay it and if you are the recipients from your parents, unless their assets are over £1m, you won't pay it. Even in the SE, the number of estates caught will be small. But the perception is that the limit is £375k. It's not.

I had no idea it was that high until I was dealing with my mum's estate.

On both sides. That’s what I’m saying. Labour push the perception of hitting the elites where it hurts (which it doesn’t) to appeal to the left of the party. In reality it’s not a big source of taxation, yet it puts a lot of voters off. 

As bad as the old people voting conservatives is, voting reform who, as far as I can tell, have the one policy of no more foreigners, suggests old people are just cunts.

Oh and they want to slash taxes. Good luck with that pension grandma. It’s good you don’t give a shit about your kids pensions in the future too.

I think it'd probably help if people just started talking about class in your traditional British way. Labour get very confused with poor/rich or using Marxist terms which don't help.

But the old school system very roughly goes:
- Traditional working class - actually poor, works in factories etc.
- Skilled working class - train drivers, plumbers, shop stewards etc.
- Lower Middle Class - educated but not necessarily paid enough to back it up (teachers or clerks are your classic examples)
- Upper Middle Class - educated, enough money to back it up, a certain amount of "connections". E.g. the pricks who go to private school, but like your local regional one not Eton. Family wealth starts to enter into it. (lawyers, doctors etc. who have a hope of being made a partner)
- The Elite (aristocrats + proper capitalists) - As above but times ten. Actually owns all of the shit.

Marxism basically you've got the Proletariat, The Petite-Bourgeoisie and the Bourgeoisie. Which does not map on to this at all well. Petite-Bourgeoisie is owners of small businesses / capitalists. So small scale landlords, shop keepers, literally if you're a plumber and you hire someone else. The Bourgeoisie are the capitalist who own the means of production. Which excludes 90% of the British middle class who just get a wage. Yet the cultural gap between the working class and middle class exist no matter how people try to theorise it out of existence.

Then there's the more modern one shaped by the tax system where income defines it. Which again isn't the way people behave. Plumbers or train drivers often earn more than a teacher, but bald angry men just read working class.

It has obviously changed a lot since Edwardian times, mostly through Government intervention. Most baby boomers regardless of class are going to own their home. So many more people go to Uni that they're going to be "middle class" in some sense. Everything is so much more expensive that your local upper middle class are squeezed out of it (local small town Doctors can no longer send their kids to expensive schools), though they still work in professions where there is cache in being a "partner" so owning some capital. It's still probably a more relatable system to talk about that people actually understand though.

Anyway we need to tax economic rent and wealth much more strongly and use some of that money to lower the tax burden on "working people" which includes 90% of people but it's both working and middle class people. But to do that you need to find some language to unite urban liberal middle class people that they're actually in the same boat as socially conservative working class people, mostly in towns. Everyone seems to be fucking shit at that right now though. Starmer is probably giving it a better going than anyone else recently (Milliband, Corbyn, any Tory or any Lib Dem)

One of the things I hate the most about Britain (I know it’s many other countries too) is the reverie for the ultra wealthy, especially when nearly all have got there through who their family is. Asking with that is the common persons love of them and hatred of those without much, which usually includes themselves.

I struggle to think of a single self made rich person, who at the very minimum didn’t have excellent family connections.

I was teaching Stuarts the other day and the divine right of Kings.

Not much has changed.

I’ve no issue with successful people, very few have done it without using a lot of other people along the way who haven’t had the reward.

I think Arnie gave a speech on why he hates being called a self-made man. When he was coming up other body builders helped him with his routine, people helped him get parts and all that.

But, yeah, meritocracy is a weird one in this country. We tell people it exists but maintain a strata of people at the top who are there by birth just to show we still all have our betters. You also find there is actually an inverse correlation to how hard someone works and how much they are paid. I do a lot less work than someone toiling in three jobs for minimum wage for less money than me. The social contract shattered a while ago. Its no wonder when the right wing media started trying to conscription going for some reason, everyone turned around and said 'fuck you'.