One of the biggest problems the Tories will have in future years is that having shafted the young so comprehensively for decades they're going to end up unelectable as their traditional final salary pensioned, blue rinsed, golf club swinging demographic dies off. A generation of people still paying off their university loans, unable to afford a house, concerned about the destruction of the planet, fed up of working 60 hour weeks on zero hours contracts for low pay, who have witnessed the destruction of the core services of the state from education to health to roads to libraries is not going to vote for the party that created this mess. They're not stupid and they won't forget...
I also think that we're witnessing a reappraisal of the Thatcher legacy. I think for a time there were many across all classes who had her on a pedestal for "reinventing and reinvigorating" Britain. Unfortunately the consequences of what she did are now coming home to roost. Privatisation of the utilities such as water, gas, electricity, buses and trains has been shown to have utterly disasterous consequences. Those private monopolies have trousered vast profits while asset stripping and failing to invest in the infrastructure they were responsible for safeguarding. Does anybody seriously believe that we would have the sewage and drainage problems we now have if the water boards were still Gov't owned? Does anybody think that selling off council houses was a good idea (which now sees local authorities paying exhorbitant rents to private landlords to house the needy). Can anybody seriously suggest that the massively expensive train fares we now have to pay weren't far cheaper under British Rail? What she actually did is sell off the family silver for a song and thus created the biggest transfer of wealth from the state (owned by all of us) to the wealthy capitalists (the few) in living memory. In 1992 I used to buy a return ticket from University in Birmingham to Liverpool for £6.49 on my student railcard. The British Rail Inter-City train was fast, comfortable and reliable. Since then inflation has risen around 300%. Try buying a ticket on the same route for about £20 today (allowing for that inflation) and you'll be sorely disappointed!!!
I had a GP friend around for dinner last week. They bemoaned the privatisation of key elements of the NHS and cited just one example - hospital cleaning which has (of course!) been privatised. They said that whereas the old NHS employees cost little and did a superb job (because they were proud to work for the NHS, had fair terms and conditions and a good pension). Now sadly the external cleaning companies (doubtless owned by Tory voters!) charge a flipping fortune and employ staff on lousy zero hours contracts who are demotivated and simply don't do a good job. Hospitals are overpaying for bad service and the only person who benefits is the geezer who ownes the cleaning company...
In the past week or so I was pondering why it is that as a middle income earner I am being taxed into oblivion and yet receiving so little in return. I discovered an ex city trader with a lot of interesting stuff to say about what has and is happening in Britain and I would strongly recommend checking out his channel:
https://www.youtube.com/@garyseconomics
One final thing to say. As a 40% tax payer who earns a decent but unimpressive five figure salary it sticks in my craw that my multi-millionaire Brother in law is probably paying a marginal rate of tax under 10% thanks to his clever accountants and "wealth management" services. We need a tax on wealth, not income because buggers like him with his £22m house in London, his £10m villa in Majorca and his £2m Princess yacht can't possibly hide those assets as well as they can hide their income. And no I don't think he will necessarily bugger off somewhere else if that happened - all his clients are here, his kids are settled in superb private schools here and he loves the life he has here. England is a great place to live if you're stinking rich!! We need collective action by the EU, UK and USA on this. There's a whole strata of society (the Sunak's, Reece-Mogg's etc) who simply aren't paying their dues and it's about time they did...
So yes I will vote Labour, as will many others this year. It will be a landslide, but I'm not convinced that Labour will be much more than Tory-lite under Starmer. Labour will have no money to seriously do much to improve matters, they're scared of announcing a wealth tax and too timid to take utilities back under state ownership. The country's decline will continue, just slower. Britain is finished as a good place to live for the many because (as in America) the unions are too weak and the capitalists have too much power and wealth. I'm not feeling optimistic.
Birdseed007