Look at the graph above and it shows you how Labour’s Gordon Brown hammered the striving working man, the person grafting to provide for themselves and their family. Even when the economy was booming Brown increased the burden on the poorest workers. Then when George Osborne got the job we have a completely different story. Despite the trashed economy he inherited from Brown he still looked after the working man first, every year reducing the tax burden on the lowest paid. His aim, quite simply, was to make the minimum wage tax free. A praiseworthy target of looking after the worst off even in the worst economic circumstances.
At the same time Osborne hammered the rich, as I explained in this article. In fact if you net off benefits against tax it is fewer than half of UK households who pay any at all! According to the Centre For Policy Studies “In 2013/14, 51.5 percent of households received more from the state in cash benefits and benefits in-kind than they paid in taxes”. This is a massive redistribution of wealth from the successful people, who generate the wealth, to the rest of society.
Then there is employment. Nothing improves the circumstances for a person and their family like having a job does. Even if it is at the bottom of the ladder, at least they are on the ladder. So it is one of the greatest successes ever in British politics that the Conservatives created more than two million new jobs. Despite difficult economic times and an economy trashed by Labour. This is what the working man wants. A job. And it is the Conservatives who deliver these jobs.
Now let’s look at who is running Britain, who are the people in the cabinet. As I explained in an earlier article the Labour shadow cabinet are mainly rich career politicians who have never had a proper job. Now let’s look at a few of the Conservative cabinet:
Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, President of the Board of Trade: Sajid Javid, a council hose boy. Went to  Downend School, a state comprehensive school near Bristol.
Minister of State for Employment:Â Priti Patel, parents fled Uganda to open a shop in London, went to Watford Grammar School for Girls.
Secretary of State for Transport: Patrick McLoughlin, the son and grandson of coal miners. From 1974 he worked for five years as a farm worker and after 1979 worked underground at the Littleton Colliery in Cannock. He was a member of the National Union of Mineworkers.
Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs: Liz Truss. Brought up in a left wing household, went to Roundhay School, a comprehensive school in north-east Leeds.
Secretary of State for Wales: Stephen Crabb, with his two brothers was raised by a single mother in council housing in Pembrokeshire.
Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government: Greg Clark, father and grandfather were milkmen, his mother worked at Sainsbury’s.
Minister without Portfolio: Robert Halfon, disabled with spastic diplegia he is a member of the Prospect trade union.
Leader of the House of Lords: Baroness Stowell of Beeston, father was a self-employed painter and decorator, and her mother worked in the local Plessey factory.
And so it goes on. A cabinet full of highly competent people who got there on merit, not on who their parents were or which school they went to.
Lefties like to point out that David Cameron went to Eton, as if this were a bad thing. Yet Eton is an egalitarian school and instills a very high level of social conscience in its students. Alongside academic excellence. It is no wonder that it produces so many prime ministers. We are lucky to have such a well educated person running the country.
So there you have it, the proof is irrefutable. The Conservative party is the best for EVERYONE in Britain, but for the ordinary working man trying to look after their family and to build a life the Conservatives are especially good.
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Just curious. Does that include people on zero hour contracts?
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Jack,
Zero hours = brilliant: https://www.bruceonpolitics.com/2015/02/09/zero-hours-brilliant/
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Ah yes, the same working man that is facing difficulties like these because of the Conservative Party:
– A 3 million strong NHS waiting list, thanks to Hunt especially (Daily Mail reports 3.4 million, Telegraph reports 2.9 million), which is the worst that these figures have been in five years. And what tragic event happened roughly five years ago..? Oh, the Tories coming to power! What a coincidence.
– “Just 7% of the UK public attended private school, which compares to 71% of senior judges, 62% of senior armed forces officers, 55% of Whitehall permanent secretaries and 50% of members of the House of Lords”- the Guardian writes. This is hardly ‘best’ for the working man, if the vast majority of Britons are very under-represented in the powerful governing bodies of the country.
– 370,000 disabled people were almost robbed of £3,500 a year in vital disability benefits by George Osborne and other Tory ministers. The only reason that this did not come to pass was the huge uproar and protest in response- not the moral compass of any of those involved, which really is concerning to say the least.
One does not have to look far to find the awful difficulties that the disabled population has faced under the Tories; recently the story of Mark Wood, who was found ‘fit for work’ under new Tory assessment but had a number of long-standing complex mental health conditions. His sickness and health benefits were stopped, leaving him to live on just £40 a month. Five months later he died of malnutrition weighing 35kg, which his doctor said was ‘a BMI not compatible with life’.
– A literal attempt at abolishing of the Human Rights Act. Not even America has tried that one yet.
– Roughly 5 million workers are currently earning below the living wage, mainly young and/or female workers. Multiple sources sites have reported this, including the BBC and notable major ESRC research project Poverty and Social Exclusion in the UK (PSE: UK), and yet it seems to have gained little of the outrage it deserves. I am unsure if debt is really ‘best’ for anyone, even the working man.
– “The majority of zero-hours workers are on minimum wages, have next to no rights, nor any control over their working hours, while often being saddled with exclusivity clauses that stops them seeking work elsewhere.”- the Guardian. The ‘flexibility’ aspect of them is exclusive to the boss.
Yours sincerely, another reasonable person who hopes that their sensible commentary will be considered.
P.S Even if I don’t exactly agree with you, thank you for taking the time to express your views and opinions, and exercising our right to free speech- I do like a bit of a debate and feel that it is important to consider as many viewpoints as possible when reaching a consensus about anything.
This could have been longer, but you have been spared by the time constraints of my revision break, worry not! Thank you again.