[Politics] Are the Tories committing political suicide?

the right footed denilson · Feb 19, 2018

larus said:
Yes he did. No matter how many ones you say he didn’t he did. He said they would abolish fees and clear debts. I remember some interviews with students at a concert and they were saying they were voting Labour because of the policy to abolish fees.

Then Corbyn AFTER the election admits it was only an intention to LOOK at it.

He’s just another liar and if choose not to believe that, then you’re deluded.

Why does it even matter?
It's amazing how desperate Tories are to jump on the one or two bits of dirt they have on Corbyn when their party is literally full of psychopaths, sociopaths, racists, bigots and pedophiles.
If you can't see how desperately unfit for purpose 90% of the Tory party are, if you can't see how utterly desperate this country has become as a result of their policies and if you don't think the young will come out and vote for Labour with or without a promise of scrapped tuition fees then I'm afraid it's you who is deluded.

I actually cannot believe how in denial people are about this country and your own lives. Our government is a joke. Literally the joke of the world. And what do we do? Attack one of the only decent politicians we have.
This isn't about party politics- it's about being a decent human being and wanting the best for you, your family, your neighbours and your country.

Pavilionaire · Feb 19, 2018

larus said:
Wow, back to the same level before Brexit. Only a fool could possibly think that the current level of interest rates in the Western counties is indicative of a healthy state for these economies. Interest rates need to rise to a slightly higher level and back to some form of normality for the financial system.

Interest rates rises are a sign of a healthy economy returning, not one still on life support trying to recover from the **** to of the last Labour government.

There's nothing healthy about being on a hefty mortgage and seeing your monthly payments rising. High rents, student loan repayments - this starts to impact on the parents of the young too. Where is the next Tory majority going to come from?

larus · Feb 19, 2018

Pavilionaire said:
There's nothing healthy about being on a hefty mortgage and seeing your monthly payments rising. High rents, student loan repayments - this starts to impact on the parents of the young too. Where is the next Tory majority going to come from?

Again, more emotional clap-trap. Interest rates are currently unchanged (apart from when Mark ‘Anti-Brexit’ Carney reduced them and then had to raise them back to the same level) for about 10 years.

Now, the state of house building in this country is a joke. That is more of an issue than an interest rate rise of 1/4 point when it comes. The planning process is a joke (and I speak from 1st hand experience here). We need to build more homes, as the problem is a supply side issue. This is the biggest issue, but we are left with too many nimbys (and greens) blocking developments.

I know you want to lump all the blame on the Tories, but WTF did Labour do in their time in office (apart from spend on the never-never - PFI) and then have the economy tank on us. Failed in their oversight IMO

seagulls4ever · Feb 19, 2018

larus said:
Yes he did. No matter how many ones you say he didn’t he did. He said they would abolish fees and clear debts. I remember some interviews with students at a concert and they were saying they were voting Labour because of the policy to abolish fees.

Then Corbyn AFTER the election admits it was only an intention to LOOK at it.

He’s just another liar and if choose not to believe that, then you’re deluded.

I expected that to be your response - but I'm afraid you are misinformed. I have already posted about this in the past on NSC, so I'll simply dig up my old posts:

Just so you know, deliberately misrepresenting JC/Labour's position only serves to further motivate those who want to see JC/Labour in power to fight harder. As JC has said, smear tactics actually benefited his campaign.

Or maybe you have just been misinformed, by others, including the media, who have misrepresented the position on tuition fees.

I assume you are talking about the false allegation that Labour backtracked on wiping student debt completely for all new, existing and past students. This is completely incorrect. Labour never had a policy to wipe pre-existing student debt.

Indeed, here's a post I made BEFORE the GE (2nd June) in response to someone who at the time was misrepresenting Labour's position:

wellquickwoody said:
So writing off debt from 10 years ago will help your grandchildrens future? Cos that is what Jezza is promising. Feel free to regret at your leisure.

seagullls4ever said:
Incorrect, he isn't writing off debt for those who already owe tuition fees.

Your original post on tuition fees was factually incorrect as well. It isn't a quarter of the budget, which is obviously a great deal more substantial than 4x10bn. It'a 700bn+

It's interesting how we are told individual debt is bad and should be avoided, yet we're willing to start people off in life with 50k of debt, that they start paying massive amounts of interest on from their first year at university.

Further, the government has to pay for it anyway. They've just fiddled the books so it's owed to the Student Loans Company so it appears our deficit is less than it actually is.

Neither Labour nor Corbyn EVER promised to write off pre-existing debt. Indeed it wasn't in the manifesto, because it wasn't a policy.

I think the original source of this misinformation came from Corbyn's NME interview just before the GE, where his statements were misrepresented. Unfortunately, subsequent media outlets have decided not to fact check their information by going direct to the original source, instead relying on incorrect reports that followed the misrepresentation.

“First of all, we want to get rid of student fees altogether,” Corbyn told NME. “We’ll do it as soon as we get in, and we’ll then introduce legislation to ensure that any student going from the 2017-18 academic year will not pay fees. They will pay them, but we’ll rebate them when we’ve got the legislation through – that’s fundamentally the principle behind it. Yes, there is a block of those that currently have a massive debt, and I’m looking at ways that we could reduce that, ameliorate that, lengthen the period of paying it off, or some other means of reducing that debt burden.”

“I don’t have the simple answer for it at this stage – I don’t think anybody would expect me to, because this election was called unexpectedly; we had two weeks to prepare all of this – but I’m very well aware of that problem,” said Corbyn. “And I don’t see why those that had the historical misfortune to be at university during the £9,000 period should be burdened excessively compared to those that went before or those that come after. I will deal with it.”

http://www.nme.com/news/jeremy-corbyn-will-deal-already-burdened-student-debt-2082478

Corbyn stated he was looking at ways of reducing the burden of debt that people had already racked up, but at no point was it ever a policy to write off pre-existing student debt. Shortly after this interview, the shadow justice minister Imran Hussain said, "JC has this morning said every existing student will have their debts written off", but he was clearly incorrect. What he states that JC said - he never actually said. Either he hadn't read the article and has simply heard the false information second hand from someone else, or he actually read the article and is inept. There are loads of examples of politicians getting policy details wrong, on all sides. Boris is quite good at it.

It's easy to see why opponents of JC/Labour misrepresented what he actually said. They will obviously be keen to pounce on a mistake by a shadow minister claiming that JC said something which he didn't actually say, rather than quoting from the original source where JC never said what he was reported to have said. Even Andrew Marr got this wrong, by claiming Labour announced a policy just before the GE to wipe pre-existing student debt in a post-election interview with McDonnell.

Channel 4 even did a FactCheck which pretty much backs up everything I have said, and even details how the interview with the shadow justice minister was misrepresented:

First is a video of shadow justice minister Imran Hussain, filmed during the election campaign. In it, he comments on the fact that Jeremy Corbyn had announced that “every existing student will have all their debt wiped off”.

Some have claimed that Hussain’s comment appears “at odds with Jeremy Corbyn’s insistence that the party never made that specific pledge”.

But it’s a bit more complicated than that.

The key phrase here is “every existing student“. But it seems that some critics have conflated this with all existing student debt, which would include that held by thousands of graduates. Clearly, however, these are two very different things.

The actual policy announcement Hussain was referring to appears to have been pretty close to what he said it was – a promise to scrap debts for existing students only, rather than historic debts held by graduates.

And this was not a secret pledge consigned to a single YouTube video. It was a major policy announcement that was widely reported in the press.

Labour’s press release explained the proposal in full:

“To discourage students who are planning to start university this September from deferring until after tuition fees are removed, we will guarantee to immediately write off their first year of fees.

“Students part way through their degree will not have to pay fees for the remainder of their course. Part-time students will be covered for the cost of their first undergraduate degree.”

Regarding the debts of people who have already graduated, Labour did not promise to write these off. Echoing Corbyn’s comments, the party simply said they would consider ways to improve the situation for those concerned.

The only aspect of the policy that Hussain appears to have exaggerated or misunderstood concerns debt already racked up by existing students. The official pledge was to only wipe the debt “for the remainder of their course”, whereas Hussain said existing students would have “all their debt wiped off”.

This was clearly wrong and misleading. But Hussain made no comment about the far more costly issue of wiping all debt for all graduates.

https://www.channel4.com/news/factcheck/no-corbyn-did-not-pledge-to-abolish-student-debt

Everyone who has said Labour has had or has a policy to wipe pre-existing student debt is wrong. They are either lying or they are misinformed.

It is still a policy to abolish tuition fees. That hasn't changed.

Gwylan · Feb 19, 2018

larus said:
Yes he did. No matter how many ones you say he didn’t he did. He said they would abolish fees and clear debts. I remember some interviews with students at a concert and they were saying they were voting Labour because of the policy to abolish fees.

Then Corbyn AFTER the election admits it was only an intention to LOOK at it.

He’s just another liar and if choose not to believe that, then you’re deluded.

Completely not true.

He did say that he was going to abolish tuition fees (and it's still Labour policy) but he didn't say he was going to clear student debt so he couldn't backtrack on a pledge he hadn't made. The full facts of what he said (and didn't say) can be found here

Pavilionaire · Feb 19, 2018

larus said:
Again, more emotional clap-trap. Interest rates are currently unchanged (apart from when Mark ‘Anti-Brexit’ Carney reduced them and then had to raise them back to the same level) for about 10 years.

Now, the state of house building in this country is a joke. That is more of an issue than an interest rate rise of 1/4 point when it comes. The planning process is a joke (and I speak from 1st hand experience here). We need to build more homes, as the problem is a supply side issue. This is the biggest issue, but we are left with too many nimbys (and greens) blocking developments.

I know you want to lump all the blame on the Tories, but WTF did Labour do in their time in office (apart from spend on the never-never - PFI) and then have the economy tank on us. Failed in their oversight IMO

You're missing my point, and I'm not a Labour supporter. This is about alienating large parts of the electorate and the effect it might have on the Tory Party longterm.

Tokyohands · Feb 20, 2018

Watching it from afar, you lot appear to be living under the worst government for quite some time. I certainly ain't motivated to up sticks here and bring my wife and kids over any time soon.

neilbard · Feb 20, 2018

Guardian article from June 2016, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jun/04/tuition-fees-germany-higher-education

midnight_rendezvous · Feb 20, 2018

Pavilionaire said:
As the OP I don't understand why you find the title of the thread tiresome. Politically, May took a comfortable majority and made it disappear. Things get harder for the young year or year - interest rates have risen, no real clarity or progress on Brexit. She took a lot for granted in the GE and got burnt, she doesn't seem to be reaching out to anyone other than Tories / Brexiteers and Mogg seems to be pulling her strings.

I reiterate, although I completely agree that May is making a fine mess of things, we have in front of us a government that has increased child poverty through their austerity agenda. That alone IMO should be enough to make the masses kick them out of government... an act of ‘political suicide’ if you will, but apart from a few angry voices nothing really changed apart from IDS redefining what poverty meant. They have overseen the longest fall in wages since records began, they’ve defunded local government, their economic targets have been spectacularly missed. One thing after another they have failed on or made things worse for the average Joe all policies that could be seen as political suicide and yet they still get voted for. Hopefully a disenfranchised youth will turf them to the curb where they belong at the next election but it baffles me that after plunging millions into poverty through policy it could be this decision that would be considered political suicide.

Wrong-Direction · Feb 20, 2018

Blame the youngsters for your mistakes!

Sent from my SM-A310F using Tapatalk

alfredmizen · Feb 20, 2018

Simster said:
This thread is talking about the TORIES and whether or not they're committing suicide by further alienating young voters.

What are you talking about?

For what it's worth, I'm not sure that's true. For sure, I don't fancy paying obscenely high taxes, but then I don't much like the fact that the country is currently at the mercy of 35 fairly unintelligent zealots who are hell bent on a ludicrous form of Brexit. In the long run, I think that is going to cause FAR more damage than 5 years of Corbyn. At least some of his ridiculously high personal income taxation would be used to fund sensible stuff.

Fund what ? Semtex for the f*cking IRA , i literally cannot take anyone seriously who decides to overlook this aspect of corbyn/mcdonnell and abbott as well , voting for someone who has dk e what corby has done ? it beggars belief.

darkwolf666 · Feb 20, 2018

Plooks said:
To be fair if fees are abolished you HAVE to clear existing debt and pay people back. Otherwise all the has happened is that some people have just been fined for being born in a certain period of time.

Isn't that what has already happened? Those that attended university prior to 1998 weren't charged, so you could say when attending university since then has been fined for being born at the wrong time already!

essbee1 · Feb 20, 2018

midnight_rendezvous said:
I reiterate, although I completely agree that May is making a fine mess of things, we have in front of us a government that has increased child poverty through their austerity agenda. That alone IMO should be enough to make the masses kick them out of government... an act of ‘political suicide’ if you will, but apart from a few angry voices nothing really changed apart from IDS redefining what poverty meant. They have overseen the longest fall in wages since records began, they’ve defunded local government, their economic targets have been spectacularly missed. One thing after another they have failed on or made things worse for the average Joe all policies that could be seen as political suicide and yet they still get voted for. Hopefully a disenfranchised youth will turf them to the curb where they belong at the next election but it baffles me that after plunging millions into poverty through policy it could be this decision that would be considered political suicide.

I think that we have moved over the past 30 years from politicians who actually cared about what they did to politicians who don't really give a fig and are in it
for whatever they can get out of it. There are only a handful of exceptions and sadly they are not in Govt. and probably never will be.

Hamilton · Feb 20, 2018

midnight_rendezvous said:
I reiterate, although I completely agree that May is making a fine mess of things, we have in front of us a government that has increased child poverty through their austerity agenda. That alone IMO should be enough to make the masses kick them out of government... an act of ‘political suicide’ if you will, but apart from a few angry voices nothing really changed apart from IDS redefining what poverty meant. They have overseen the longest fall in wages since records began, they’ve defunded local government, their economic targets have been spectacularly missed. One thing after another they have failed on or made things worse for the average Joe all policies that could be seen as political suicide and yet they still get voted for. Hopefully a disenfranchised youth will turf them to the curb where they belong at the next election but it baffles me that after plunging millions into poverty through policy it could be this decision that would be considered political suicide.

I think people are waiting for the straw that breaks the camel's back. In this case, the camel has been a lack of meaningful opposition. Before I get shot down for saying that, by meaningful, I mean a space when the majority that occupy the middle ground can go. I think there is a significant majority that care about getting young people into work and into housing; that same majority cares about the economy and wants the best trade deals with Europe; they want to invest in a healthcare system that is accessible for all and leaves nobody behind; they believe that our education system is being let down and are unhappy in the disparity in pay and between the haves and the have nots.

Unfortunately, I don't think they see their future with Corbyn or McDonnell anymore than they have any believe in the ideologically charged Tory leadership. They are waiting for political leadership that is just not forthcoming. That's why this place feels like it is sailing towards the rocks no matter who is in charge.

I think May could show leadership and take on the element in her party that is putting the country at risk. That might result in a Leadership contest, but she needs to decide whether she wants to put her country first or her party first. To date, she (and Cameron before her) has put her party first. That's not a government that cares about the national interest.

seagully · Feb 20, 2018

If things carry on the way they are I am really going to struggle to find a party to vote for in the next general election. The Tories are hell bent on cutting services to the bone, and I am no fan of the current Labour party's swing to the far left. The Lib Dems are an irrelevance and there is no way I would ever vote for the loony right wing parties. This country is crying out for a new Macron style centrist party but sadly I can't see it happening in our current electoral system

Tricky Dicky · Feb 20, 2018

Pavilionaire said:
Given Labour have said they'll abolish tuition fees

Did they actually say that ? I know it was implied before the election when they said they'd "sort out" the fees, but I thought they back-tracked after the election saying that they'd never promised to abolish them.

beorhthelm · Feb 20, 2018

midnight_rendezvous said:
I reiterate, although I completely agree that May is making a fine mess of things, we have in front of us a government that has increased child poverty through their austerity agenda.

except that absolute poverty has continued to reduce and relative poverty ticked up 1% largely due to the way its measured (average earning rise), not austerity.

Deleted member 22389 · Feb 20, 2018

seagully said:
If things carry on the way they are I am really going to struggle to find a party to vote for in the next general election. The Tories are hell bent on cutting services to the bone, and I am no fan of the current Labour party's swing to the far left. The Lib Dems are an irrelevance and there is no way I would ever vote for the loony right wing parties. This country is crying out for a new Macron style centrist party but sadly I can't see it happening in our current electoral system

There is a new party
https://www.ukveteransandpeoplesparty.org/

nicko31 · Feb 20, 2018

seagully said:
If things carry on the way they are I am really going to struggle to find a party to vote for in the next general election. The Tories are hell bent on cutting services to the bone, and I am no fan of the current Labour party's swing to the far left. The Lib Dems are an irrelevance and there is no way I would ever vote for the loony right wing parties. This country is crying out for a new Macron style centrist party but sadly I can't see it happening in our current electoral system

"The Lib Dems are an irrelevance" - just a clique i'm afraid. IMO they are the best hope to bring the extremists into the centre

Live by the sea · Feb 20, 2018

Pavilionaire said:
I see Theresa May's university review will not scrap tuition fees and she's pledged to keep the £9,250 cap.

Given Labour have said they'll abolish tuition fees, given the young were overruled on Brexit and it is now almost impossible for them to get on the housing ladder aren't the Tories not just in danger of losing the young voters but in creating enough bad feeling to lose their votes for a generation?

I don’t agree. Everyone knows that Commie Corbyn would yet again change his mind if he ever got into power. Commie Corbyn will say anything to get votes. Even if enough very silly people voted for Commie Corbyn , I’m not convinced the security services would give him clearance to become PM given his track record with spies and terrorist groups. Micky mouse has a better understanding of how to run an economy than commie Corbyn and his yobbo momentum and trade union mates

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