Anyone understand why Johnson is so far ahead in the polls?

GG13enjoy the gym. I’m just off to monitor some of the soon to be educated masses doing final assignments.?

Mollygo unfortunately that is what many on GN think. (off to the gym will catch-up later)

You should tell the truth about what you see. You can even explain, ad infinitum, how you know it is true, in the hope that others will be persuaded.
IMO, telling someone they are stupid/uneducated because they don’t see what you see as the truth, is unnecessary and rude and often has the opposite effect from what you are trying to achieve.
Posters on GN seem to have a wealth of qualifications, knowledge and experience. Are all those who don’t agree, part of the ‘uneducated masses’?
Did Brexit happen because an insufficient number of the ‘educated’ people didn’t turn out to vote remain?

So now we come to Brexit.

I have outlined many of the reasons why the Teeside voters had begun to abandon Labour and were attracted to UKIP. Low paid unskilled jobs, the loss of the culture that went with their previous employment where pride, stability and reasonable income had gone. To add to the misery the freedom of movement meant that many people from poor areas in the EU were more than willing to take these low paid unskilled jobs without question. So add anti- immigration into the mix and it’s bed fellow nationalism, and I think it was absolutely ripe for the area to be exploited by the far right in the form of UKIP .

Brexit was a shoe-in

Oops sorry

PippaZ I have faith in humanity, I do not feel the need to sneer/deride others for their choices, as it is just that their choices

Dinahmo

Whitewavemark2

maizie yes and I think in order to understand why Johnson is popular in Teeside you can’t do so without first understanding what caused the working class to vote for Brexit in such large numbers in Teeside - 70%

So the working class experience during the past 40 years in Teeside is embedded in low wages, the privatisation of and cuts to welfare services, the deregulation of the economy - unions hit hard - growing inequality etc. All as a result of neo-liberal politics and economics. The workers cultural and social experience of strong unions represented in parliament by a Labour MP no longer existed as a result of these economic policies. There was no longer a connection to the industrial base.

Sorry this is a bit bitty but I’m cooking as well as other stuff.

Most of the problems you have mentioned are a result of Tory policies, not Labour so I still don't understand the shift to the Tories.

The Tories promised Brexit. Brexit was (and is) seen as a solution to all of those problems. Which party caused the problems became largely irrelevant. Many blamed the cuts on local Labour councils anyway. So in fact you had a two edged sword, get Brexit done and teach the local LP a lesson. Vote Conservative.

PippaZ I have more faith in humanity, Imdo not feel the need to snee

GrannyGravy13 I wrote it to show my contempt - congratulations for recognising that. It is what I think about many of those who wanted Brexit, and will probably go on thinking only of themselves.

Those who believe they have lost something or are in danger of losing something they never actually had so will vote for the empty promises of those who say they will give this "thing" they long for - even though they know the people they vote for only want it for themselves.

We do see rather a lot of it on here and I do find it contemptible. Don't you ever tell the truth about what you see?

So we begin to have a perfect storm, a class of people who within a generation had seen their economic, cultural and social position destroyed.

The traditional political connection this class had with the Labour Party had been broken, both by the restructuring of the economy and abandonment of the connection by the Blair government.

However I think undoubtedly there was no attraction to vote conservative at this stage, rather the promise of giving the Westminster elite a good kicking by UKIP drew the vote.

I also suspect that the idea that there was no alternative to the form of capitalism the working class was experiencing was accepted as fact, and they could only see things getting worse.

GrannyGravy13

Mollygo I totally agree with you, I would never sneer or tell someone they were uneducated because they vote a certain way.

UK is a free country, we all have the right to vote and think how we see fit.

But that MP is correct. Should he just not mention it to prevent from upsetting the masses?

www.theweek.co.uk/89378/fact-check-did-uk-s-better-educated-vote-remain

because Keir Starmer

Mollygo I totally agree with you, I would never sneer or tell someone they were uneducated because they vote a certain way.

UK is a free country, we all have the right to vote and think how we see fit.

Me either

GrannyGravy13

Sorry PippaZ your last post sums up why the Conservatives are in power, it’s not nice to sneer or goad at those who have differing opinions.

People hate being constantly told their choices are stupid and that someone else knows better.
Everyone is entitled to an opinion. You may disagree with it but you don’t have to go on and on about how wrong they are.

I think it disappeared, Whitewave, because many know they have had some of the wealth distribution in their direction in a way their ancestors would not have expected - and they worry it is going to be taken away from them. Remember the builder who shouted that he couldn't be in the top 10% on £80,000+ a year.

This may be because he thinks his life isn't that easy or because the top 1% so outstrip the top 10% but he is not going to let go of what he "has worked for" never mind that the change of culture has helped. He wants to hang on to every penny of it so the "scroungers" do get "something for nothing" and I have no idea how you open minds like that.

Sorry PippaZ your last post sums up why the Conservatives are in power, it’s not nice to sneer or goad at those who have differing opinions.

I don't think Johnson and his buddies (although some of his none-buddies in the party are "good people") want to understand what people want.

They just want them to want the Tory party.

Before the next election, he will send out a Domonic Cummings think-alike to find out what is the "precious" of that moment so that all the Gollum's, driven mad by the thought that someone has done something to them personally will join in shouting

We wants it, we needs it. Must have the precious. They stole it from us.

Just as they did about Brexit.

Principles have long left the UK Tory party.

One if the big attraction that brought Labour the working class vote during the 20 century was the promise of a fairer redistribution of wealth, public ownership and I think that this idea seem to disappear at the beginning of the current century, when Labour appeared to accept the neoliberal model that there was no alternative to out and out capitalism, which meant it seemed to have abandoned its link with the working class and their needs.

During the Blair years millions of working class no longer fully supported the Labour Party. We know from looking at the data that voter turnout dropped drastically throughout this period.

PippaZ

^If a leader has the heart of the electorate he/she will become PM.^

So these days a leader has to act like a pop star? Ah well, now I know this country will go to the dogs.

Who said a leader had to act like a pop star ?

To simplify my post by gaining the heart of the electorate a leader must install trust (yes I know the current PM is pushing the limits on this) the electorate want a PM they can relate to, who they think understands their plight, who does not come across as aloof (in my opinion KS appears extremely aloof) . I have just read a quite from a Labour MP educated people voted remain things like this (and there are many more from various Labour MP’s on Twitter and other social media) are not going to help the LP engage with the man /woman on the street, no one likes to be sneered at.

It is all well and good for those who sit in front of PMQ’s week in week out, who vociferously hoover up every single political article and dissect them to pontificate on others reasons for voting.

It would be good to realise that all the electorate have neither the time or the inclination to do those things, they vote for what /who they think will be best for them and their families.

Really, really, we need to stop crediting Johnson for the work Bingham did. Valance told him to appoint her, Hancock made the money available for the procurement. Johnson visited a local warehouse or school or something, who cares, he stayed out of the way and let her get on with it.

And also, its not the procurement. Its the whole shooting match from start to finish. Procurement was one step. Its the fact that she knew that it was about more than procurement that means she and her team succeeded. There were no vaccines, she created a plan for fostering the development and manufacture of them and made sure that we spread our bets in that as well as getting the procurement right.

It's quite interesting to see that Biden always to talks to the working and middle class earners.

It might help if those who want to understand what happened actually credited Corbyn with the results of both the elections he contested. In 2017 the LP won the largest number of seats in parliament since 2001. In 2019 it lost its core support. What happened in those two years? Blaming Corbyn may make his critics feel better but it doesn't answer that question, or answer why, if it was all Corbyn's fault, a year later Starmer isn't gaining anywhere.
There was a small event called Brexit involved and Starmer was always an anti-Brexit man.

Whitewavemark2

maizie yes and I think in order to understand why Johnson is popular in Teeside you can’t do so without first understanding what caused the working class to vote for Brexit in such large numbers in Teeside - 70%

So the working class experience during the past 40 years in Teeside is embedded in low wages, the privatisation of and cuts to welfare services, the deregulation of the economy - unions hit hard - growing inequality etc. All as a result of neo-liberal politics and economics. The workers cultural and social experience of strong unions represented in parliament by a Labour MP no longer existed as a result of these economic policies. There was no longer a connection to the industrial base.

Sorry this is a bit bitty but I’m cooking as well as other stuff.

Most of the problems you have mentioned are a result of Tory policies, not Labour so I still don't understand the shift to the Tories.

All as a result of neo-liberal politics and lower wages from immigration WW. Eastern Europeans especially happily accepted lower wages (or cash in hand), changing their wages from sterling into euros to send home. Those were boom times for them, the Polish builders for example. I have knowledge of this it was real, not anecdotal. So the average UK blue collar worker in our factories and building sites watched their wages stagnate. Differentials were eroded. The cost of living over here is expensive. No wonder the red wall switched their voting allegiance! Who could blame them? Labour wasn’t for Brexit (neither was most of the HoC). Remember all those stupid ‘indicative votes’? Brexit once voted for was becoming pretty flaky.

Until Boris stepped up! Hurrah!

He got it done. Which pleased us working class voters (and some others).

Then. ‘Ta-dah’ the icing on the proverbial. He commissioned Kate Bingham to procure our Covid vaccines.

No wonder he is riding high!

??

So what replaced the traditional Labour support in the middle of the 2010s was an anti establishment and nationalist party that focused on immigration linking it to poorly paid and temporary jobs. UKIP.

Farage was popular in Teeside placing himself between Westminster elite and the EU parliament. His aim to leave the EU became popular.

A popular phrase was used by the politicians during their period “the left behinds” which I’m my opinion backfired spectacularly as it simply reinforced the neoliberal argument that there was no alternative to the deregulation, and cuts to the welfare state etc.

It simply only served to focus attention on the failure that the Teeside workers were experiencing.

At the same time if you look at Labour during this period, it seemingly has no economic policies that answered Teeside needs.