Tuesday 1 August 2017

Preparing for a week in the company of Tory voters

I'm mentally preparing myself for a week with family, who we can be pretty sure voted conservative in the general election.

It's difficult. I feel very very strongly that they are helping to perpetuate misery for the most vulnerable in society. I don't want to think that they don't care about the poor, the disabled, the young...but if they did vote conservative, these would be logical assumptions to make. I'll be staying in their house for a week, eating their food, probably getting a night out with my wife while they look after our little boy and anyway, they're family and I don't want to end up arguing with them. But we haven't been in the same room since the election and I'm sure it will come up in conversation.

One way I hope to handle it is to calmly offer just a few key reasons why I think Labour was a better choice:

1) The Tories say because of their policies there are record numbers of people in work. My question about that is why, then, is there not enough tax revenue being generated to wipe out austerity and pay off the debt? We still have austerity and the debt is still rising. Where has our money gone?

2) Conservative voters might point to a few Labour policies they don't agree with. First, ask why they don't agree and if it's on affordability, point out tax cuts for the rich and for corporations, over £1bn for the DUP deal, point out that the debt is still rising so austerity isn't working.

3) Ask whether they agree with taking money from disabled people, working people using foodbanks, rising unemployment, untrained teachers, the dementia tax, frozen pay for nurses, doctors, police officers, firefighters which has actually resulted in around a 12% pay cut since 2010? Ask whether they're happy with all of the u-turns which have made lies of most of their manifesto. The Tories have done this after each of the last three elections: why give them another chance and another, and another? Why is it that we have to take the government to court to overturn their cruel policies?

I can't keep quiet but I'm dreading talking about it because I find it hard to stay calm when we're talking about people's lives and real hardship...

No comments:

Post a Comment