Why are the UK Labour party so obsessed with working people?

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I've always voted Lib Dem or Labour whenever I've been working as I don't mind my tax money being spent on the less well off and NHS here in a civilised country rather than me getting a flashy new car or nice holiday in the Seychelles and living in an uncaring s**thole like most countries in the world.

Last edited by Rossall on 02 Jun 2023, 9:38 am, edited 1 time in total.

I think as well as the fact that Labour means Work and the party was set up in the 20th century by workers who felt unrepresented by the Tory or Whig parties, Labour keeps talking about 'working people' and 'working families' because there is such a stigma in Britain about unemployed or long term sick/disabled people.

The Tories and media have been whipping people up for decades to turn them against 'scroungers taking our benefits' and now it's 'illegal immigrants/refugees taking our benefits.' So Labour does not want to be seen siding with anyone 'taking our benefits'.

The irony is, as people have said, a lot of working people and working families ARE on benefits because their jobs don't pay enough.

And political parties can't just ignore the unemployed and long term sick/disabled people. They aren't invisible!

^^I would be very happy with that too.

Why Nick Clegg (Liberal Democrat leader) got into bed with the Tories to form a coalition with them, I will never know. Well, money and power I suppose but FFS.

https://libdems.secure.force.com/Libera ... gistration

Just joined for £6

Ooh!

The tories in the Cameron era did a good of demonising people on benefits as part of their Austerity measures. Unfortunately, a lot of the electorate still have attitudes against people on benefits. Perhaps as a tactic, Labour has to tone down talks about benefits even if the party as a whole is in support of benefits. I agree with you, though, it is frustrating.

You’d think things would be better regarding benefits because during the pandemic people who’d never been on benefits suddenly were. So you’d think support for benefits would have increased across the nation but this seems to not have happened.

https://www.disabilitynewsservice.com/labour-conference-anger-at-starmers-divisive-pledge-to-back-working-people/

Others have picked up on the same thing as the OP

I’m sorry, Blabby, but there’s no way I’d support Labour, or any other political party, since, as far as I’m concerned, the only people they support are the politicos.

If you remember, I worked for DoD as a contractor employee for almost 10 years. I’ve never seen a bunch of self-serving SOBs like I saw when I worked at NRaD RDT&E Warminister, as well as the Pentagon. Personally they were all bootlickers to Conned-gress. Yes, I know, SOP was CYA, but CYA was used against me so badly, it was easier to quit and not get unemployment.

Of course, You know the old story about Pennsylvania: 2 large cities that hate each other on either end of the state, divided in the middle by the Amish and Mennonites. It also didn’t help that I got no support by my mother, brothers and relatives. I got told, shut your mouth, and get yer fat ass to work anyhow!

It also doesn’t help that Central PA is MAGA country. You don’t want to know my opinion of Former Governor Wolf, current Governor Shapiro, or Senator Fetterman.

It has gotten so bad, since I’m on SSDI, Medicare, Medicaid, and SNAP, due to diabetes by type Ii, PTSD, ASD level 1, Bipolar I, chronic Kicney disease stage 3a, and cataracts, I seldom leave my subsidized apartment, save to go to the doctor, take out my trash, get my mail, and go to church. I’m so tired of the vile social bullsh!t, I stay in bed and watch cartoons all day, since they’re the only thing that makes any kind of sense.

The point of politics is to get your policies implemented.

Being in coalition with the Tories meant that lots of Lib Dem policies could be implemented. For example, the funding formula for schools was changed so that schools with more poor pupils would receive more money. Taxes on low-wage people were cut by raising the personal allowance. Gay marriage, green investment, shared parental leave, MP recall... all things that the Lib Dems were able to achieve due to being in government.

Labour made a much less enthusiastic offer to the Lib Dems than the Tories did. For example, the Tories offered a referendum on the Alternative Vote, but Labour said that they couldn't even offer that despite putting it in their manifesto. In general, the Labour Party was tired from 13 years of government and were willing to let the Tories have a go.

In 2010, as now, there were 650 MPs. 6 were non-voting (5 Sinn Fein plus the Speaker - technically Deputy speakers also do not vote but they are conventionally counted in their party's total). That means there were 644 voting MPs, and so 323 votes were required to form a working government that year. Labour + Lib Dem was only 305. You could add the SNP (305+6=311), Plaid Cymru (311+3= 314), the SDLP (314+3=317), as well as the single Green, Alliance, and independent MPs, for a total of 320. Still short, despite having seven parties taking part. You would need the DUP, the most conservative party in the Parliament. You'd then need almost total discipline on all your key votes. It would be very difficult to get anything done, and a lot needed to be done.

The other option would be to call another General Election... but the Tories are the richest party, and the others had used up their warchests in the election. They thought the result would be an outright Tory majority with no Lib Dem influence. And, well, we've seen in the last eight years how much worse that is...

I don't think they are obsessed with them. They seem to be a bit meh with middle class, skilled workers.

I find them somewhat anti-capitalist to the point where it could cause problems but I think secretly they know this.

They overly fixate on the working classes too much when a broader approach will be better.

thanks, that information was very interesting. I cut it because I didn't want to have such a long post

I wish it had been a Labour/Lib Dem coalition. That would have been much better, but as you say, it didn't work out. Fingers crossed we get that at the next election!

I wish the point of politics was to actually help people instead of implement their pet policies which aren't always in the best interest of the public. But as we've seen recently, power-crazed people in government don't give a toss about us, they just want to enforce crazy policies on us.

i'm sorry you have to go through all that. i am fortunate that the population density where i live is relatively thin so 90% of the time i don't have to see another person or their pesky animals. i had to stick to a job that almost killed me, gave me adrenal exhaustion and premature body wear to where i was having to use two canes just to ambulate until i found a miracle cure courtesy a local inventor [dan dial's molecular enhancer]. if it weren't for that, i can guaran-damn-tee you i would not be here now, i'd have taken a long walk off a short pier long ago.

Well I think most people think their "pet policies" will actually help people. I think if you got in a conversation with Nick Clegg, or even David Cameron, they'd say that their policies helped people. (Clegg at least would probably also admit that he got things wrong)

Even someone like Liz Truss, who I don't have much regard for, I think genuinely thought that her pet tax cuts were going to make the UK a better place to live.

You can't help people without policies. And the point of voting is to decide which policies you think will help you (or the country) the most.

I really don't agree, sorry. Or maybe government ministers think their pet policies will make the UK better FOR THEMSELVES. The current government ones certainly do.

We need a new government which actually helps the public, then I'll start believing politicians actually care about us.

I will always vote though, especially as I'm a woman! I won't be disenfranchised and neither will my family. We made sure to get our daughter a photo ID so she can vote when she's 18. What a palaver! But we got the ID in the end, despite the constant refusals of the photo for being unclear

amuuuurica's version of the labour party did get much of the working class subsidized healthcare which is a world better than what our version of the conservative party [really fascist the way they're acting these days] would do for the working class whom they routinely sneer at if they deign to pay them any mind at all. what i don't get is why so many of our working class joe lunchbuckets are so often fooled by the horatio alger claptrap of the conservatives who tell them they can be rich too, in spite of abundant evidence that the whole system is rigged against them?