Tomorrow’s Shropshire bye election

Quotes from some voters…

“We need to forget about the past and move to the future and make some good decisions. I think Boris has made some good decisions.”

“We shouldn’t listen to the slander Boris gets from the other parties. I’ll be voting Tory.

“I’m sick of this campaign against the Tories, bringing up parties from a year ago, it’s completely irrelevant.”

And a fan of life under a dictatorship….

“I won’t be voting. I never vote. I just follow the rules and do as I’m told.”

Lovely.

 

F

Fek in ell deluded beyond belief,

 

Exactly. Surely one of the basic requirements of being allowed to vote is to have a functioning brain?

 

I would have some admiration if they just told the truth.”I am at heart a very selfish and self centred person who is very suspicious of change, the EU and foreigners, especially brown ones. Look, at the end of the day I I don’t want to pay into society and I’m happy for people to go hungry and suffer as long as it’s not me. I personally didn’t go to private school and university but I recognise that people are naturally either leaders or are destined to be led and whilst I would never consider myself to be one of those being led I am happy to vote for those more privileged then me to continue to rule.”

 

Interesting post. But do they understand a concept like the truth? Are they capable of understanding anything at all? I suspect their minds are just totally and utterly closed.

 

To be fair when it comes to politics my minds closed, I would never under any circumstance vote Tory

 

See what you're saying there. But when Thatcher came to power I seem to remember Michael Heseletine being in the frame. I always thought he was a decent sort of bloke, irrespective of party. Not saying I would have voted for him but at least back then, you had a choice of functioning human beings.

 

To be honest we've lurched so far to the right that most of the moderate Tories of that era look like people I'd happily trust to run the country compared with the current rabble. Howe, Major, Portillo, Ken Clarke, Heseltine. They wouldn't be my first choice, but at least they generally acted with integrity and put the country's interests first, even if I didn't particularly agree with a lot of their policies.

 

Unbelievable. Majority of folk in this country are plain thick if they continue to vote for this shower.

 

If Johnson announced that all people in Shropshire were to be hung, these people would still vote for him.

 

Labour and Lib Dems will secure a Tory victory by not being able to agree on which of them has the best chance to beat them, and split the non-Tory votes

 

I had a similar conversation to this with my mate a couple of months back, which stemmed from my 9 year old daughter asking "who was the best prime minister while you've been alive." I mused that John Major wasn't an awful long way from the top of the list, which brought into extremely sharp focus the race to the bottom that politics has become since that time.

I don't even think it's so much a 'lurch to the right' - though no doubt that's true - but any notion of honesty, decency and integrity has vanished over the last decade in particular. We're left with empty soundbites that follow party slogans in response to whatever the issue of the day might be- witness the Tory candidate for Shropshire today answering "do you think Boris Johnson can be trusted" with "world leading vaccine programme blah blah blah Get Boosted Now." Or for balance, Angela Rayner persistently trotting out "the joke isn't funny anymore" - it never f***ing was.

We're governed by morons without a shred of integrity - on all sides. When will a politician - ANY politician - actually stand up in parliament or in front of the press and just say what they bloody think, rather than playing games?

 

N Shropshire has had a Tory MP for 188 of the last 190 years.

Anything but a Tory hold (current majority of 23,000) would be a seismic shock and the alarm bells in the 1922 committee will ring loud.

 

Championed the cause of Liverpool in many a cabinet meeting - responsible for a few restoration projects. Think Albert Dock project was one of his triumphs

 

Interestingly, I had a similar conversation about Major with a friend of mine. I think that history will judge him more kindly than he was possibly judged when he was in office. Blair started well but will always be tainted by the stink of the Iraq war and his buddying up to Dubya. Blair had a fresh start and a huge majority to work with. Major on the other hand was following on from Thatcher, had to deal with double digit inflation at times, a lot of sleaze, and had a wafer thin majority. These days when I hear Major speak on a range of issues, I often find myself agreeing with him. Blair on the other hand makes me want to vomit, and I say this as a paid up member of the Labour Party. I get the impression that on a political level, John Major has far more integrity in his little finger than Tony Blair ever had.

 

There's a lot of truth to this in my opinion. I know you've seen my pretty left-wing opinions and my thoughts on neoliberalism/capitalism in general, but ideology and honesty are not the same thing. I completely disagree with John Major's core philosophy. However, I can tell that whilst he does believe in something I dislike, he at least actually believes in it. He's not just using it for a quick pay-off, and he wouldn't have deliberately thrown the entire country under the bus to meet his own ends. I still think he'd be harmful today, but I couldn't accuse him of the unprecedented levels of selfishness displayed by the current lot. He's what I see as a democratic opponent, rather than an opponent of basic humanity.

 

Lib Dems the party of the people as the only one of the main four parties against vaccine passports. The public have let it be known how they feel.

 

People of North Shropshire voted leave and have now voted in a Remain party. They swung 29,000 votes.
They had a corrupt MP, the Tories have institutionalised this practice. Oh and then there's the parties. Folk followed rules to help protect others, whilst Number 10 seem to have partied throughout.
Reckon vaccine passports were way down the list of considerations.

 

Sadly in the greater scheme of things ,the result will mean little.
Dissatisfied Tory voters register their displeasure by voting Lib Dem, history shows they have next to zero chance of winning a general election outright.
The outcome will likely be the Tories will use the kicking to make themselves more re electable when the time comes.