Coming Conservative Catastrophe.

It's pretty clear now that the Conservatives are quite a way away from planning that post-Brexit pissup in the local Brewery. A long, long way.

I've already said what I think are the failings of the Labour party, now it's time (in the spritit of fairness and balance) to have a pop at the Tories.

Straight away, there's theresa may, the leader. Not "A" leader, but "the" leader. Past experience with her in the Home Office and other jobs leads me to understand she's good at talking the talk, but not actually walking the walk. She fails on almost every key delivereable sent her way. She wouldn't last the first episode of the Apprentice. She's the most Shambolic of omnishambles, everything she touches turns to dust.

You get the idea.

So, you can imagine, I have a very little respect for the current Tory government.

The thing is, I have very little respect for their policies either. Time was, the Conservatives stood for hard work and high rewards. You worked hard, you got more money in the form of tax breaks. You went self employed, you got tax breaks again to help and reward you for taking the risk.

Now, what the fuck is all this "Gig Economy" shit? If you are self employed, you take the risk, have no employee rights, no paid holidays (you're self employed: you take your own holidays when you like and you pay for them).

Since Tony Blair's introduction of the IR35 rule, that classed certain self employed people as employed and started to sting them for full PAYE tax and the "employer" (actually the client) for employer's contributions

That the IR is doing this under a Tory government shows the government is not Conservative in the true sense. IR35 should have been abolished the day the Conservative government took office, to shake the self-employed sector up again, kill the politics of envy and start having self-employed independent contractors out there earning big wages as a result of taking big risks.

Instead, since the Tories got in, there has been mission creep by the Inland Revenue.  They are now going after workers in corporations and the public sector that by the normal definition would not be classed as employees but contractors instead.  i.e. risk having no employee rights for higher wages, lower taxes etc.

That's just one example. Back in Thatcher's day, there was another element to the social mobility strategy. Decent government-funded training schemes were launched in order to fill skills gaps. I know: I went on one of them. I learned I.T. skills and was paid £27 a week back in the early Eighties. I learned how to operate and program computers and as part of the course had placements in industry. With no qualifications, instead based on entrance exams to test aptitude, I got on the course.

That's the sort of thing missing today. The people at the bottom of the social ladder, disenfranchised and disqualified, stay at the bottom. There is no means for them to improve their life, earn more than they ever dreamed of and contribute to the economy.

From no qualifications, two decades after that course I was earning £70K as a self-employed I.T. contractor. Had IR35 not put an end to that, I would still be there, earning that money and contributing to society at a high level. the amount of money I paid in professional insurance, critical ilness cover and personal pension contributions, purchases of I.T. kit, etc. was almost as much as I'm earning now. All that gone.

Instead, I'm earning less that £20K in a low-risk job. Would I stick my neck out now? Not likely. I don't have the support of the Government, instead they want to keep me down. A Conservtive Government not providing social mobility and killing aspiration.... what a shame.

The Tories have just continued to determine that all your wages are theirs and want as much of it as they can get away with, just like Labour. Not that you control how you run your life and business: they know best and tell you how you run things.
And what to Tory voters do in the face of these "Red Tories"? i.e. the current mob with their socialist non-aspirational agenda? Do they abstain and let the Commie/Trot Labour party in?

Someone, somewhere deep in the Tory party needs to start sticking a rocket up the various MPs and higher-ups and start to bring the Tories back to what they were: a party for small-medium business, a party that rewards risk-takers, that is for aspiration irrespective of background, that understands that light regulation is necessary than no regulation or an overburden of it, that knows a light tax economy is a prosperous one, that recognises current house prices kills home ownership for the poor, and recognises that their early policies back in the eighties killed social housing and recognise that is a neccessity and strategic asset, not a dirty phrase to be ignored. It needs to be caring for those that need care, but tough on those that abuse the benefits system, not by setting arbitrary limits, but instead having fair rules that root out abusers.

Combine that lack of old-school Conservative firm-but fair compassion, a lack of aspiration and the impending Horlicks regarding Brexit, who the hell would vote for the Tories again?

I smell not just a single catastrophe ahead for the Tories, but Brexit is just the tip of mis-management iceberg. There will be more to follow after they deliver "Brexit-lite", the "almost-in/almost-out" fudge that no-one that voted in the referendum wanted.

No-one will vote for them for a very long time....