Tory and New Labour psychology
Today I would like to take a look at Conservative and New labour psychology. These features of life in the UK are fairly alien to any thinking Scots, so as someone with both in my family, and a great deal of extremist at both poles, I will take it upon myself to draw you a sketch of the personalities of the people we seek to persuade to get a real life and possibly also a conscience.
Conservatives
Conservative voters do not like thinking for themselves, and if they do, it invariably involves self-interest and their limited ideas about free market economics. They have very limited experience of events outwith their control, and simply cannot imagine ever having problems that they cannot either surmount or throw money at. Problems such as these happen to other people, therefore they either do not matter, or do not exist. Any question of being personally affected is outwith the realms of reality.
The reason for this, is that conservatives believe strongly in approval. A peculiar kind of approval, from people they admire for reasons of class, good taste or money. If someone of a different persuasion displays better taste, a disregard for money, and compassion towards others, they are to be dismissed as insane, ‘out of step’ or simply weird. Ideally such challenges to their version of reality should suffer, so that they can display their superior values.
The worst conservatives are the ones that came from a working class or impoverished background. These people will actually experience hardship at some point, and beat themselves up because any problem is obviously their fault. If they are successful in climbing out of difficulties, then any question that anybody else is unable to do so is dismissed, and entire council estates will be used as examples of demotivation, rather than places with scope for development or investment.
The most dangerous conservatives of all are the under-educated liars, such as Jeffrey Archer or Iain Duncan Smith. These people have something to hide, therefore they take on the most hated roles in the party. The party elite then give them more and more punishing jobs to carry out, as a sort of sniggering public school system of fagging.
My neighbour, who formerly seemed a reasonable person, cannot stand the sight of a wind turbine, but despite living in an architectural treasure approves of fracking BECAUSE HE CANNOT SEE IT. He believes this to be OK because the Conservatives told him so, and he expresses great hatred for any one from the SNP BECAUSE HIS POSH FRIENDS LIKE IT. Here you can see an example of the head-in-the-sand, I-am-OK -so-you-don’t-matter, approval seeking behaviour typical of the Tory. Disabled and poor people do not exist, because he personally does not have to deal with them. Therefore they do not matter.
New Labour
These people are fairly similar to the above, although they like to be seen to think more carefully, so they become snobbish and reserved due to their superior thinking skills. The desperate seeking of approval is still there, but it takes a more domineering form. As corporatist fabians, they believe strongly in copying conservative and American economic policies, because they do not particularly like numbers, so it is far easier to attempt to talk as if they understand the problems, but not do anything about them. Therefore your objections to funding their essential schemes for, say, creating quangos which employ men in suits that do not actually do anything at all. are examples of your inferiority. These people are even less trustworthy than conservatives, because you cannot even point out the error of their ways. It is noteworthy that the electorate do not actually vote them in until the conservatives have actually put some money into the UK so that New Labour can then squander it on pretentious and largely useless policies that do not help anybody.
As you can see, a thinking person would not vote for either of these parties, nor would they seek to place themselves into a position where they delegate the responsibility for their country to self-serving, ignorant and role-playing powermongers who do not really do very much. Conservatives like to fill their pockets, and those of their friends by contract. New Labour do much the same thing by creating official bodies that employ their friends to sit and talk about it. Neither actually does anybody any good.
On a personal note, having said all of this, I am seeing a few ‘ice-cream’ policies from the SNP that I really do not like. I think it would be a good idea to tread very carefully with some of the softer strategies, as we should all be aware that compromises will have to be made if we are to build a strong fortress for the future.