Quote Originally Posted by the other bob wilson View Post
It's always amused me how so many right wingers on here talk about how they voted Labour in their youth seemingly as a way of trying to deflect attention away from who they vote for now. In the last election just over forty per cent of the country who voted opted for the Tories with many of those in certain parts of the country who did so happy to shout it from the rooftops. However, there were also the "usual suspects", the thirty per cent, at least, who always vote Conservatives who are what is known as "quiet Conservatives" who do not make a point of telling people who they vote for - in fact, some of them probably tell themselves that they won't vote Tory this time, but once they get in that polling booth when push comes to shove, they always put their x in the Conservative box.

Actually, I'm wrong to say they always do it, because, as I mentioned above, some of them were left wing in their youth, but they soon "matured" and realised what life was really like. That being the case then, why are so many of them seemingly so keen to establish their left wing credentials from early in their lives? Surely it cannot be a sense of guilt and some embarrassment that they know their vote is now cast purely in self interest for the "what's in it for me" party can it?

The modern day Conservative party voter has to be prepared to "move on" from all sorts of cock ups, PR disasters and law breaking these days - how else could you justify voting for them if you stopped and looked back at all of the scandals the party and their leader have been involved in since December 2019?

You say there's no difference between the two parties, so why is that I feel morally superior to anyone who still supports the Conservative party and this Government in particular - it's reached the stage where it's becoming hard to even justify supporting them on the grounds of self interest unless you're one of a favoured few.
This doesn't read like a response to the points I was making really.

I have no idea why you feel morally superior to others, but thats not a good thing because you probably aren't and it's probably a sign to look for more evidence as to why people vote why they do. I'm sure part of the reason may be why many people voted Labour in 2017 and 2019 despite having grave reservations about Jeremy Corbyn. People aren't looking for perfection, they are trying to find the best of realistically two options.

I wasn't talking about this, but as it happens, I was very left-wing in my youth, as a paid up member of a far-left party. I regularly bought the Morning Star. I don't regret it, I learnt a lot. I'm open minded on who to vote for now and consider myself a centrist liberal - needless to say that includes criticising left-wing politics so you get characterised as far-right, but that kind of distortion of reality just reinforces that left-wing politics isn't for me anymore.

I also don't think the two parties are the same - I'm never someone who says "they are all the same", although as it happens, I think the reality of governance means a great many of the decisions made would be very similar as thats how the real world works.

No, what I said was that peoples reasoning for how they vote is broadly the same, in that they want whats best for themselves, their family, their community or the country. Characterising those who vote differently as having radically different motives or morals is not much different than characterising those of a different religion of being the same. There's patterns of difference, sure, but most people are just trying to get on in life and live in a successful country.