Party support, why should it be for life?

Tone1979

Tone1979

Tone1979

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One thing that has come out of this election is that I have many friends who support a party because their parents do or because they like their policies.

This morning one of my closest friends really attacked me for my choice and it made me think. Is it expected that you follow a party for life? She brought up loads of stuff from the 70s and 80s which I don't think is relevent to today.

I mean, personally I have changed my alliance twice in my lifetime due to what was going on and what I felt was the right way to go at the time but I think this is rare.

How many of you have changed your allegiance over the years?

after Tony Blair I changed my mind, is that wrong?

Simply, and not meaning to sound like a **** but I follow what makes sense at the time and what works for the country.

Genuine question.
Tone
 
personally i don't follow a party for life, my parents have no bearing on the political opinions i choose nor should they.

i beleive in following the party who is the most compatible with my personal beliefs at any given time, be it labour, lib dem or conservative.

of late i feel the conservatives do not represent my will as a person, and i will do all i can do to oppose them, limited as my choices may be.
 
The thing that separates us from machines is that we can see the Big Picture.

There is absolutely no formula for most things in life. We each decide what is important. We each make decisions in different ways, based on different criteria. We reason things out differently.

I don't think logic is absolute. Some people don't use any kind of logic, true. But one man's logic is another's madness.

I personally don't think the 70s and 80s are particularly relevant to the last GE. Parties morph and change; the socio-economic picture of the country changes, policies change.

But sometimes history repeats itself, so far be it from me to say "ignore history". And sometimes things don't really change except on the outside.

You friend is "wrong" if you can yourself reason out a contrary position, and use supporting evidence to make a counter-argument. But only wrong in your eyes and according to your values, internal logic, and perception of reality.

If the above is pure ****, it's because I'm tired and off to bed :p I always post crap before I retire. Helps me sleep.
 
Was only born in 70's but from what I can make out people could be very toxic toward politics in some areas. Deep seated stereotypes of 'we are the working class' and 'they are the privileged class' were pretty rampant. Comes from centuries of tribalism, Only way to control the people was to have a ruling Royal class, otherwise would have just been one big savage class of people, think Braveheart.

I think the two Great Wars opened a lot of things up, then came the rebellious baby boomers and swinging 60's. So in the 70's and 80's people were starting to think for themselves. You had a huge group of people who only knew generation after generation of manual work, doing the same manual jobs from family to family. Globalisation really starting to kick in after WW2 and hence we had to compete financially on a global scale(can't bypass the rules of money etc). Thatcher had to shut the heavy industries as they were hemorrhaging money(Gov was heavily subsidising them). This left a lot of people out of work and unable to readjust to the thought of doing any other work, partically non manual jobs, or jobs that needed creativity or ingenuity. Still all locked in a heavy mindset of, 'we are the working class, we do manual jobs and your the toffs'.

The Labour party was the only party that really cared about them, hence the people were ultra loyal toward the Labour party as they feared they would be left behind within the new world that was developing. Well in came New Labour with Blair & co and they pretty much tried to smash the class system mindset and did a very sophisticated job in doing so by encouraging and financing more people to go to university to think for themselves. They deregulated the banks even more and opened up the financial services sector even more, for which Thatcher had already laid the foundationss for. By the mid 2000's the class system mindset was starting to fade into obscurity, people were more confident in their own abilities to think for themselves and interact with people from different backgrounds.And then came the internet, this obliviously opened up a massive amount of information and communication to all. So overall the divide between the left and right has been largely eradicated. The likes of May and Trump grew up with the old system and to some degree are trying to install some of the values of it. But things are too mixed up now, generation of '**********' coming through who only know mobile phones and the internet and expect everything on a plate(well maybe that's a bit harsh). But it's a new world now with very blurred lines in this country between the left and right wings. So generally you can swap between parties without such huge differnces nowadays whereas in days past the consequences could have been more severe and as I said people were a lot more attached to the party that the belived served their interests a lot more so than nowadays.

And then we all lived happily ever after. The end. Not.
 
I don't have any allegiance to any of the parties, just as they have none to me. I have been eligible to vote 3 times, and I have voted for 3 different parties.
 
I have voted for all main 3 parties. Totally nothing wrong in that. I go with what appeals to my views at the time based on the political climate at the time.
Caseh said:
I don't have any allegiance to any of the parties, just as they have none to me. I have been eligible to vote 3 times, and I have voted for 3 different parties.
Click to expand...

I think it's been 4 times for me and voted different each time. First party I voted for in 2005 was Liberal Dems - back when Charles Kennedy was leader. Rip. :(
 
I've noticed over the years how entrenched many of my grandparents generation have been in supporting one party largely seems to stem out of a certain amount of now largely out-dated social class association.

Personally I have no attachment to any party I've a few aspects I consider very important and absolutely can't support any party that doesn't have reasonable policies on those aspects - unfortunately my views tend to span the political spectrum so its hard to find one party that matches.
 
Supporting the same party for life simplifies things by removing the need to know anything or think.

The adversarial de facto two party political system we have in the UK strongly encourages taking sides.

Social media and Google act to encourage it by trying to feed people only stuff that matches up with their point of view. The more data they gather on a person, the more effective they become at it.

So voting for a party for life probably won't go away unless the political system in the UK changes a lot.
 
Football teams are for life, political parties are not.

I think that you should be free to choose whichever party/candidate you feel best represents your interests at the time but equally aware that you (and others) will have to live with the effects of your choices so preferably you will have tried to choose in an informed way. And I'm not entirely serious about football teams either.
 
Party politics will always be this way and due to the fact barely any government has stuck to their promises over the years most people will vote as they always have done as they see their party being the lesser of the evils.
 
Tone1979 said:
One thing that has come out of this election is that I have many friends who support a party because their parents do or because they like their policies.

This morning one of my closest friends really attacked me for my choice and it made me think. Is it expected that you follow a party for life? She brought up loads of stuff from the 70s and 80s which I don't think is relevent to today.

I mean, personally I have changed my alliance twice in my lifetime due to what was going on and what I felt was the right way to go at the time but I think this is rare.

How many of you have changed your allegiance over the years?

after Tony Blair I changed my mind, is that wrong?

Simply, and not meaning to sound like a **** but I follow what makes sense at the time and what works for the country.

Genuine question.
Tone
Click to expand...

I have no allegiance to any party. My parents do, or I think they do. They seem like the type anyway. But personally, no, I'm not a 'Tory man, or 'Labour man' or any such nonsense. I've voted for both in the past, local and national.

I used to have opinions on the lazy types that stick with one party but then I stopped caring. It's probably a selfish view but it does not affect me one way or the other.
 
Around here is Labour, people vote Labour because their family have always voted Labour because the Conservatives closed all the pits (has been proven to be slightly inaccurate but doesn't matter to them), I however can see the bigger picture and will vote for whichever party fulfills the most of my wishes which in the past has been all 3 of the major parties.

I have no idea what my Dad voted but my mum voted Labour this time as she wanted to keep her triple lock pension and winter fuel allowance (she admitted she has previously voted Cons).
 
What's important to you can Also change.

But yeah I went from tory to green.
I care about the future and the environment and freedom

May obviously didn't care about the environment at all. That combined with her military spending and Internet lock down has pushed me away.


Why would I vote for her?
Neither myself or the party are same as last time
 
I didn't really develop empathy in any significant way until my mid to late 20s, so I voted Tory in my first 3 GEs.

After that I switched to the socially progressive LDs, before this election where I was pleased corbyn had taken the party leftwards, and impressed enough with their manifesto to give them my vote. Wouldn't have considered labour previously
 
I have been a conservative all my life. However it was very clear May was not a good leader for the country, now clearly proven by joining up with a terrorist affiliated party that only received 300k votes (to gain 10 seats) and has no public mandate.

On that basis I am very glad I supported Corbyn through this campaign and voted appropriately not Tory.
 
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