UK view - I grew up in quite an affluent part of the country with parents who I think always lean right when there's an election on the way. I've heard them being scathing about Labour and their "big pot of money from the sky" and moaning about how 'woke' everything is these days. They're not bad people, far from it - they're just, despite being fundamentally intelligent people, not clued up politically and believe what they read in the (right wing) Daily Mail. Probably, in my younger days, I might have too. Because I didn't know better.
For that reason, although I very much consider myself firmly on the left as an adult, I don't really have any ill will towards people who vote Tory. Why would I? Not everybody is genuinely interested in politics, I wasn't until my twenties. And if you don't have your finger on the pulse on current affairs why wouldn't you believe the right wing media? Nowadays it's all presented as being about culture wars, the fight against woke, all of that, and the reason why you're struggling to make ends meet is because of immigrants coming in and stealing the money that you should be getting, rather than years of austerity, or the utter failure of brexit. I know that's bollocks, not everyone does.
I got interested in politics in my early 20s because 1. I met my wife, who's very strongly involved and staunchly left, with relatives who were badly affected by Thatcher's closing the mines in the North East, and 2. I began working as an A-Level teacher and began to cover it. And that gave me a level of interest I just didn't have previously and kinda changed my views on most things. So if those two things hadn't happened, I'd probably still, growing up in rural Berkshire/Gloucestershire and with Daily Mail reading parents who dislike Labour out of principle, hold those beliefs myself.
Where I struggle, specifically with my parents but also with people who still stand by Brexit etc, is that people maybe should know better. My parents might have been Southerners who considered themselves well educated etc, but we certainly didn't grow up with loads of money. We lived on a council estate in Hungerford and drove round in a rusty Nissan Micra. My brother is profoundly deaf and has a learning disability and has lived in supported accommodation all his life, and the deterioration in his care over the last 14 years has been really notable and concerning, yet still....
Bottom line, I try not to judge people on how they vote because there's so much mainstream influence pushing people towards the right. But I'm glad I know my own mind these days.
angrywhitemen.org
