There is literally no reason to vote Tory in the upcoming European Parliament elections (you know the elections that Theresa May previously swore that the UK wouldn't be participating in).
No matter what kind of political perspective you have, there's now clearly a better choice for you:
Orthodox neoliberal + Brexit sceptic
If you're a traditional pro-privatisation, pro-austerity, orthodox neoliberal who used to consider the Tory party home, but you're sceptical about quitting the EU then you can vote for CUK or the Liberal Democrats.
CUK have clearly indicated their pro-austerity stance by handing their economics spokesperson role to Chris Leslie (one of the core architects of Labour's disastrously uninspiring pro-austerity agenda at the 2015 General Election).
They've also indicated their pro-privatisation credentials by appointing Angela Smith as their transport, energy, and environment spokesperson (she's a lobbyist for the privatised water industry).
The Lib-Dems spent five years in coalition with the Tories enforcing the ruinous austerity policies that trashed our living standards and caused the wave of public anger that carried the Leave vote narrowly over the winning line in 2016.
They also helped the Tories introduce all kinds of bonkers hard-right privatisation scams including flogging off the Royal Mail property portfolio at a fraction of its real value, the shambolic privatisation of the probation service, the Eurostar sell-off, the privatised forensic science service shambles, privatisation of thousands of taxpayer-funded schools, privatised prisons chaos, flogging off the aviation fuel supply network and then renting it back for 10 years at three times the sale price, the sale of every fire engine in London for two pounds ...
If you love austerity and privatisation but have your doubts about Brexit, there are much better choices than voting Tory.
Orthodox neoliberal + Brexit supporter
If you adore the pro-privatisation, pro-austerity, anti-worker, neoliberal ideology and want a hard-right Brexit at any cost, then the Brexit Party definitely seem to fit the bill.
Nigel Farage is a Thatcher-worshipping, pro-privatisation, right-winger who has a track record of openly fantasising about the full privatisation of the NHS.
If you want to see Brexit used as a Trojan Horse to trash workers' rights, abolish our environmental laws and food standards, and to privatise what's left of our public land and public services, why would you vote Tory when you can support Farage and the Brexit Party?
Fan of far-right extremism
A significant proportion of Tory MPs have been deliberately trying to attract the extreme-right ultranationalist demographic. From Zac Goldsmith's vile BNP-style London Mayoral campaign in 2016, through Theresa May's unlawful racist "Hostile Environment" abuse of black British citizens, to the likes of Jacob Rees-Mogg and Steve Baker publicly promoting the German extreme-right and cheering on the sinister activities of an imported far-right youth radicalisation programme from the US, Tories have been working hard to attract extreme-right bigots into the Tory fold.
But if you're an extreme-right bigot why vote Tory when you can vote for a much more brazen far-right operation that continually peddles anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim bigotry, and even supports their candidates when they make "jokes" about raping their female political opponents!
If you want far-right filth, despite the concerted Tory efforts to ramp up the hate, UKIP are now in a totally different league.
Anti-austerity + Brexit-sceptic
Maybe you're a former Tory voter who has recently woken up to the fact that austerity was always a con job designed to transfer as much wealth as possible from the majority of people to the mega-rich elitist class (you know, the economic class who completely bankroll the Tory party).
And maybe you're also dismayed at the Tories for abandoning the European Union and the Single Market that they helped to create in the first place?
Well if you're after an anti-austerity Brexit-sceptic party, then look no further than the Greens (or the SNP in Scotland/Plaid Cymru in Wales).
Anti-austerity + soft Brexit
If you're a Tory voter who has eventually come to realise that David Cameron and George Osborne's austerity agenda was always just a scam to make the poor and ordinary pay the cost of the bankers' insolvency crisis while the Tories showered the mega-rich with tax cuts and handouts, and you think that Brexit should go ahead but in the least damaging form possible, then Labour are offering what you're looking for.
Labour would reverse austerity and begin actually investing in our country and building our future economic potential, rather than doing precisely the opposite. And Labour's policy is to develop a close negotiated relationship with the EU that doesn't involve driving the UK economy off a "no deal" cliff edge or trashing our manufacturing industry with customs checks and causing absolute chaos over the border in Northern Ireland.
Conclusion
Whatever your stance on several of the most important issues of our era (Brexit, Austerity, the rise of the far-right) there's always a better option than voting Tory in the European Parliament elections.
And when it comes to the local elections, why on earth would anyone ever consider voting Tory when they're the ones who have absolutely trashed local government funding since 2010, meaning councils up and down the country are charging much higher Council Tax rates in return for reduced, scrapped, over-stretched, and downright failing local services?
Another Angry Voice is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.
As the May 2nd local elections approach many of us will have the uncomfortable experience of Tory canvassers knocking on our doors to pretend to be our friends.
In this article I'm going to provide 12 questions you can use to blast them off their feet.
1. How much have your party cut the local government budget since 2010?
They will try to bluster and blunder their way around this question because they know the answer is not good for them at all. The Institute for government say that they've cut support for communities and local government by 67% since 2010.
These ideologically driven Tory cuts are the reason your Council Tax bill is going up, while your local services are worse than they've ever been before.
2. Do you think that there is a link between rising violent crime and the 20,000+ police jobs you Tories have scrapped?
There is obviously a link between the Tories slashing 20,000+ police jobs and the soaring rates of violent crime, but the Tories will try to deny it because to admit it would be extremely damaging.
So instead of admitting the truth they assume that the general public are so thick that we'd actually reject our own common sense understanding of cause and effect, and mindlessly believe the Tory fairy story that slashing the police force back to 1970s levels of per capita policing has had absolutely no effect whatever on rates of serious crime!
3. In 2010 you lot said you'd eliminate the deficit by 2015 but you failed, what is your projection now?
When the Lib-Dems enabled the Tories back into power in 2010 they endlessly promised that their hard-right austerity project would eliminate the budget deficit by 2015. They obviously missed that target by miles because it's mid-2018 and the deficit is still there.
Again the Tory canvasser at your doorstep is likely to try to bluff and bluster their way out of answering the question, because they either don't know, or they know that the answer is awful. Maybe allow them bluster away for a while before you burst their bubble by informing them that the latest projection is 2031, and asking them if they think it's acceptable to take 21 years to achieve what they promised to do in less than 5.
4. Are you aware that the Tory party has a problem with bigotry?
The Tory canvasser on your doorstep will almost certainly try to deflect onto Labour and the charges of anti-Semitism, but you can nip this kind of evasion in the bud by pointing out that YouGov surveys have found that rates of anti-Semitism are way higher in the Tory party than in the Labour Party, and asking why they're so keen to deflect away from the problem of anti-Semitism in their own ranks by criticising a party that has lower levels of anti-Semitism than their own.
Then you can ask them subsidiary questions about things like Theresa May's vile UKIP-pandering anti-immigrant legislation that has been used to dehumanise and discriminate against the Windrush Generation, Jacob Rees-Mogg promoting the German far-right on Twitter, the fact the Tories put up an extreme-right white-supremacist as a local election candidate in Watford, or the fact that they simply wait for the public fuss to die down and then let their racists and bigots slide back into the party later on.
5. Why did your party defeat Amendment 58?
The Tory probably won't even know what you're talking about because the mainstream media barely touched this incredibly important parliamentary vote, so you'll have to explain it to them.
When the Tories put their EU Withdrawal Bill before parliament in January 2018 the opposition parties all supported a Labour Party amendment to stop the government from using Brexit as a Trojan horse to scrap our workers' rights, environmental laws, food standards, consumer protections, and equality legislation.
The Tories (including CUK squatter hero Anna Soubry) and their sectarian DUP mates voted the amendment down, presumably because they wanted to reserve the right to trash our workers' rights, environmental laws, food standards, consumer protections, and equality legislation.
This absolute Tory refusal to build parliamentary consensus on Brexit in order to run the whole thing as a closed Tory shop is the main reason that Brexit has turned into such a humiliating deadline-missing farce under Theresa May's rule.
6. Which was the first local council to go insolvent?
The answer is that Tory run Northamptonshire was the first council to declare de facto insolvency in February 2018. This is incredible because the Tories have loaded all of their worst local government funding cuts onto non-Tory councils in northern England for the last nine years.
So despite having a massive artificial financial advantage over Labour run councils that have suffered much deeper austerity cuts, the Tories in Northamptonshire did such a woeful job that they were the first to break under the pressure.
7. How much are you Tories going to slash from the budget of my local school?
Since 2010 the Tories have implemented an unprecedented 8% per pupil funding cut to the schools budget, and they've also transferred ownership of literally thousands of schools to private profiteers who use bloated executive salaries and financial trickery to siphon as much cash as possible out of the education system into their own pockets.
Use this school cuts calculator to find out how much they're planning to slash from the budget of your local school (or the school your kids/grandchildren attend), make a note of it, then ask the question.
They won't know the answer so expect more bluff, bluster and misdirection tactics from them. Let them bluster away as much as they like, then tell them the figure and ask them whether they think it's acceptable that they're making children pay the cost of the 2007-08 bankers' crisis.
8. Are you proud of what you've done to our wages?
Ask the Tory canvasser if they're aware that since 2010 British workers have suffered the longest sustained collapse in the value of their wages since records began, and ask them if they're proud of having imposed this record breaking level of wage repression.
9. Why has housing become so unaffordable since 2010?
Ask the Tory canvasser whether they are aware that UK housing is more unaffordable than it's ever been before.
Then ask them whether they think that home ownership souring out of the reach of millions of ordinary people has anything to do with their wage repression policies, and the fact that between 2010 and 2017 the Tories oversaw the lowest levels of house building since the early 1920s.
10. How many more children are growing up in poverty since you lot came to power in 2010?
The answer is 400,000.
11. Why do you expect me to pay compensation for the consequences of your horrible policies?
The Tory government have announced a compensation scheme for the Windrush Brits who have been denied housing, employment, social security, pensions, and NHS treatment, and been made to live in fear of imprisonment and deportation as a result of Theresa May's brutal and unlawful "Hostile Environment" legislation.
What she hasn't been clear about is that the Windrush scandal came about because of her own vile UKIP-pandering anti-immigrant legislation in 2014.
So what she's actually saying by promising compensation is that she's going to completely evade responsibility for her own actions by not resigning, then compound matters by using public money to pay off the victims of her own malicious legislation.
See if you can get the Tory canvasser to admit that it's wrong for Theresa May to make the general public to pay the cost of her own horrible mistake, while she suffers no negative consequences at all.
12. Which political party has imposed the biggest armed forces cuts since the end of the Cold War?
The answer is the Tory party who have dramatically slashed the size of the armed forces since 2010.
They've reduced the army by over 20,000, the RAF by 8,500, and the navy by 5,500.
General advice
Don't be afraid to print this article off and leave it by your front door so you can use it as a guide (I absolutely don't give a damn about copyright issues). These Tory canvassers will be speaking from a script, so it's totally fair for you to refer to notes too.
Feel free to compile other questions you can stump them with too. If there's some local issue or controversy you can hit them with use that, or take a scroll through this list of 50 disgraceful Tory controversies to find other issues that you're particularly concerned with and make note of them.
Remember that the information in this article doesn't specifically have to be presented in the form of questions, it can also be used to rebut several of the set talking points the Tory canvasser will try to raise.
Also remember that the longer you can keep the Tory canvasser engaged in discussion, the less time they'll have to try to convince other less well-informed people into voting Tory through their bombardment of lies and deceptions. It's actually much better for you to keep them occupied by asking them questions like these and watching their absurd displays of mental gymnastics, than just angrily telling them to get off your doorstep.
Another Angry Voice is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.
On March 1st 2019 the independent media site Evolve Politics exposed an absolutely despicable Tory Facebook hate chamber full of bigotry, racism, anti-Muslim hate, and the kind of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories that would have sent the mainstream media into paroxysms of condemnation had they been found in a Labour group run by Labour Party councillors.
One of the most disturbing comments was posted by a woman called Dorinda Bailey where she agreed with someone calling for all mosques to be bombed, but criticised them for using a swear word in their comment!
When Ash Sarkar asked the Tory chairman Brandon Lewis about this despicable mosque-bombing comment he responded with a simple one sentence reply; "she is not a member of our Party".
The problem of course is that there's loads of evidence out there that Dorinda Bailey is an active member of the Tory party, or at least was one until very recently.
Here's a picture of her out on the campaign trail with the Tories during the 2018 local elections.
And here's evidence that she was actually one of the Tory party candidates in the Bradwell ward of Newcastle-under-Lyme, which means she was definitely a Tory party member within the last year, which makes Brandon Lewis's "not a member" comment extremely evasive and deceptive at the very least.
If Dorinda Bailey has been thrown out of the Tory party within the last year, Brandon Lewis clearly has an obligation to explain why.
Did the Tory party know about her bigoted tendencies. If so, why were two other Tory party councillors running the Facebook Tory hate-chamber with her?
Don't they have rules in place for preventing party members from co-operating with people who have been thrown out of the party?
But there's also the possibility that Brandon Lewis was outright lying that she's not a member since he provided absolutely no evidence to support his "not a member" claim.
It's pretty obvious that any political party that is serious about combating bigotry and racism in their ranks should be transparent about how they deal with proven bigots who stood as their official party candidates in elections less than a year previously.
It's pretty obvious that Brandon Lewis and the Tories have an obligation to explain why someone who was until very recently a party member (at the absolute best) was behaving in this despicable manner on a pro-Tory Facebook page run by other Tory Party members, and provide documentary evidence to back up Brandon Lewis's assertion that she's not a member of the party, and an explanation of why.
Will the mainstream media pick up on this and work to hold Brandon Lewis and the Tories accountable?
Will they pick up on the fact that Brandon Lewis has used the exact same "not a member" line to distance the party from a bigoted Tory party member who organised an extreme-right protest involving a hate group called the North East Infidels?
Will they pick up on the fact that stating "not a member" is absolutely insufficient when Tory party activists have been caught spreading bigotry and hatred in a pro-Tory Facebook propaganda page. At the very least the disciplinary processes used to remove them from the party should be detailed, and an apology should be made for the bigoted behaviour.
The likely answer is no. They won't pick up on this issue because it contradicts the whole narrative they're trying to construct, that it's the Labour left (who were actually amongst the tiny minority of just 18 anti-racist MPs to oppose Theresa May's unlawfully racist "Hostile Environment" legislation in 2014) who are the nasty racists.
But just imagine if this was the other way around and it had been a Labour Party candidate at the 2018 local elections who had agreed with a proposal to 'bomb all synagogues' using a picture of them grinning alongside a famous Labour Party figure as their profile picture as they made their despicable comments.
Do you honestly think the media would allow Jeremy Corbyn to get away with evasively claiming "not a member of our party" with no apology, and no details whatever of the disciplinary procedures used to remove that person from the party?
Of course they wouldn't. It'd be spun out into a days-long re-examination of the Labour anti-Semitism issue and used as personal ammunition against Jeremy Corbyn (and whoever was pictured alongside the racist bigot too).
This disparity in mainstream media coverage that's actually just as concerning as the rampant bigotry and racism in the Tory ranks, and Brandon Lewis's outright evasiveness in not apologising for it.
If they're working as hard as they can to portray one side as having a bigotry problem, whilst deliberately turning a blind eye to the much worse bigotry problem on the other side (and the other side's deceptive, evasive, and unapologetic responses to it) then they're not reporting the news, they're manufacturing it.
Another Angry Voice is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.
Even though the Tory party have been caught out fielding two absolutely despicable local election candidates, the mainstream media focus is still firmly on Labour when it comes to anti-Semitism.
George C. Stoakley
When Pete Wilson had Tory local election propaganda shoved through his door he decided to check out what the candidates were saying on Twitter. What he found was absolutely disgusting. One of the candidates describing himself as a "libertarian Conservative" had used the phrase "sweating like a Jew in an attic" (a reference to Anne Frank) as well as a load of other bigoted extreme-right rubbish including the use of homophobic slurs, a joke about AIDS being "weaponised semen", and a call for handguns to be legalised in Britain featuring the hashtag #ArmBritain.
After the comments were exposed Stoakley locked down his Twitter account to prevent anyone else from finding incriminating evidence of his anti-Semitism and bigotry, and the Tory party have simply decided to ignore the scandal in the hope that it goes away rather than immediately suspending him and issuing an apology that such an individual was ever selected as a Tory council candidate.
Darren Harrison
Just one week previously another Tory local election candidate was exposed as being a supporter of the extreme-right white supremacist Generation Identity movement who are so extreme that their leaders have been banned from entering the UK by the Tory government.
Generation Identity is an absolute hotbed of anti-Semitism and other forms of bigotry (especially Islamophobic abuse), yet the Tories saw fit to stand the active neo-Nazi fanatic and Generation Identity supporter Darren Harrison as a Conservative local election candidate in Watford.
Tory anti-Semitism
Research by the Campaign against anti-Semitism has found that anti-Semitic attitudes are far more prevalent amongst Tory supporters than Labour supporters. In fact YouGov polls have repeatedly demonstrated that anti-Semitic views are so commonplace amongst Tories that they're far more prevalent amongst Tory voters than in the general public!
Any coverage of the Labour anti-Semitism scandal should be framed in the context that Labour are actually doing something to root out anti-Semites in their ranks, while the Tories do nothing to confront anti-Semitism and bigotry in their party (other than temporarily suspending their bigots and then letting them sneak back in once the fuss dies down).
Theresa May's anti-Semitism
When Jeremy Corbyn confronted Theresa May about the devastating impact of Tory local government cuts in March 2018 Theresa May retorted with a classic whataboutery distraction focusing on the much publicised Labour anti-Semitism issue, but by stating that "there's no place in Labour for those who want to tackle anti-Semitism" she's clearly using a vile anti-Semitic trope to attack all Jewish members of the Labour Party as "self-hating Jews".
When the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom can resort to lobbing anti-Semitic tropes in order to evade responsibility for the dreadful consequences of their ruinous obsession with hard-right austerity dogma without a whisper of criticisms from the mainstream press, it suddenly becomes obvious that most of them don't give a damn about anti-Semitism, and just see the issue as a convenient stick to beat Jeremy Corbyn with.
The Tories' anti-Semitic friends
Let's not forget that the Tory party have fostered very close links with some of the most anti-Semitic governments on earth. Anti-Semitism is rife in Saudi Arabia, and the Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orbán just won another term in power via a profoundly anti-Semitic election campaign.
Do the Tories criticise either of these regimes?
No, they continually grovel before the Saudis begging for more arms contracts, and Boris Johnson sent Orbán a fawning congratulation Tweet on his election win saying "We look forward to working with our Hungarian friends to further develop our close partnership".
The mainstream media double standard
The Tories can field bigoted anti-Semites and neo-Nazis as their election candidates, they can grovel and fawn over some of the most anti-Semitic regimes on earth, their supporters can be found to be the most anti-Semitic of the lot on numerous occasions, and their leader can even be seen using the vile "self-hating Jew" trope in parliament, yet the mainstream media will never stand up and accuse them of anti-Semitism.
The reason is obvious. If mainstream media pundits really cared about anti-Semitism then they'd demand that Boris Johnson condemn Victor Orbán rather than cosying up to him. If they gave a damn they'd ask why the Tories keep standing anti-Semites and neo-Nazis as their election candidates. If they gave a damn they would highlight the fact that anti-Semitism is far more common amongst Tories than labour supporters, and they would have furiously condemned Theresa May for using an anti-Semitic trope in parliament.
Through their inaction they've proven conclusively that they don't actually care about anti-Semitism at all, they just see it as a convenient stick to attack Jeremy Corbyn with (despite the fact that anti-Semitic views amongst Labour supporters have fallen dramatically since he became Labour leader).
And the worst thing about this double standard?
It's the fact that when the mainstream media make a huge fuss about anti-Semitism in one political party whilst turning a total blind eye to it in another, they trivialise the fight against anti-Semitism, which remains a very serious issue in British society, alongside many other dangerous forms of bigotry such as anti-Muslim hate, racism, homophobia, misogyny, and extreme-right fanaticism - all of which are welcomed and tolerated within the Tory party.
Another Angry Voice is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.
Ultra-cynical Tories in Southampton are so desperate for power that they're blaming Labour for the consequences of their own party's actions in government.
The reason council tax bills are going up while services are worse than ever is that the austerity fixated Tories in government have cut the local government budget by a whopping 67% since 2010.
In Southampton the result of this hard-right ideologically driven Tory madness is a £485 per household cut to the council's budget.
It's not just Southampton either, these brutal hard-right Tory cuts have left councils up and down the country with no choice but to ruthlessly slash back local services (bin collections, libraries, leisure centres, social care, highways maintenance, children's services, planning departments, street cleaning ...) to save money, whilst raising Council Tax as much as they can get away with in order to plug the gaps in the most critical services (domestic abuse shelters, children's services, care services for the elderly and infirm) in order to prevent the most damaging outcomes (domestic abuse, child abuse, deaths).
And make no mistake, these Tory cuts weren't driven by necessity, they were driven by the Tory desperation to ensure the upwards redistribution of wealth via massive tax breaks and handouts to corporations and the mega-rich.
Just imagine the cynicism of knowing that your own party's ideological fixation with hard-right austerity dogma has caused this dreadful situation, but deciding to print up a load of propaganda to blame your political opponents for it.
That's the cynicism of the Tories in a nutshell. Deliberately and systematically wrecking local government services up and down the country for eight ruinous years, then trying to actually take over local councils that have been gutted by this strategic wrecking by blaming the local councils themselves for the appalling financial position that Westminster Tories have left them in.
The really sad thing is that because of the mainstream media refusal to critique Tory austerity dogma as the disastrous hard-right fanaticism it so obviously is, a lot of people will be unaware of the massive cuts the austerity obsessed Tories have imposed on their own local council, and will actually believe this kind of outrageous Tory propaganda when it gets shoved through their door.
Another Angry Voice is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.
As the May 3rd local elections approach many of us will have the uncomfortable experience of Tory canvassers knocking on our doors to pretend to be our friends. In this article I'm going to provide 12 questions you can use to blast them off their feet.
1. How much have your party cut the local government budget since 2010?
They will try to bluster and blunder their way around this question because they know the answer is not good for them at all. The Institute for government say that they've cut support for communities and local government by 67% since 2010.
These ideologically driven Tory cuts are the reason your Council Tax bill is going up, while your local services are worse than they've ever been before.
2. Do you think that there is a link between rising violent crime and you lot the police force by 20,000+?
There is obviously a link between the Tories slashing 20,000+ police jobs and the soaring rates of violent crime, but the Tories will try to deny it because to admit it would be extremely damaging.
So instead of admitting the truth they assume that the general public are so thick that we'd actually reject our own common sense understanding of cause and effect, and mindlessly accept the Tory fairy story that slashing the police force back to 1970s levels of per capita policing has had absolutely no effect whatever on rates of serious crime!
3. In 2010 you lot said you'd eliminate the deficit by 2015 but you failed, what is your projection now?
When the Lib-Dems enabled the Tories back into power in 2010 they endlessly promised that their hard-right austerity project would eliminate the budget deficit by 2015. They obviously missed that target by miles because it's mid-2018 and the deficit is still there.
Again the Tory canvasser at your doorstep is likely to try to bluff and bluster their way out of answering the question, because they either don't know, or they know that the answer is awful. Maybe allow them bluster away for a while before you burst their bubble by informing them that the latest projection is 2031, and asking them if they think it's acceptable to take 21 years to achieve what they promised to do in less than 5.
4. Does the Tory party have a problem with bigotry?
The Tory canvasser on your doorstep will almost certainly try to deflect onto Labour and the charges of anti-Semitism, but you can nip this kind of evasion in the bud by pointing out that YouGov surveys have found that rates of anti-Semitism are way higher in the Tory party than in the Labour Party, and asking why they're so keen to deflect away from the problem of anti-Semitism in their own ranks by criticising a party that has lower levels of anti-Semitism than their own.
Then you can ask them subsidiary questions about things like Theresa May's vile UKIP-pandering anti-immigrant legislation that has been used to dehumanise and discriminate against the Windrush Generation, the fact the Tories put up an extreme-right white-supremacist as a local election candidate in Watford, or the fact that they simply wait for the public fuss to die down and then let their racists and bigots slide back into the party later on.
5. Why did your party defeat Amendment 58?
The Tory probably won't even know what you're talking about because the mainstream media barely touched this incredibly important parliamentary vote, so you'll have to explain it to them.
When the Tories put their EU Withdrawal Bill before parliament the opposition parties all supported a Labour Party amendment to stop the government from using Brexit as a Trojan horse to scrap our workers' rights, environmental laws, food standards, consumer protections, and equality legislation.
The Tories and their sectarian DUP mates voted the amendment down.
What possible reason is there for the Tory party to have voted down this amendment to prevent them from using Brexit to attack our rights and protections unless they intend to use Brexit to attack our rights and protections?
6. Which was the first local council to go insolvent?
The answer is that Tory run Northamptonshire was the first council to declare de facto insolvency in February 2018. This is incredible because the Tories have loaded their worst local government funding cuts onto non-Tory councils for the last eight years. So despite having a massive artificial advantage over Labour run councils that have suffered much deeper austerity cuts, the Tories in Northamptonshire did such a woeful job that they were the first to break under the pressure.
7. How much are you Tories going to slash from the budget of my local school?
Use this school cuts calculator to find out how much they're planning to slash from the budget of your local school (or the school your kids/grandchildren attend), make a note of it, then ask the question.
They won't know the answer so expect more bluff, bluster and misdirection tactics from them. Let them bluster away as much as they like, then tell them the figure and ask them whether they think it's acceptable that they're making children pay the cost of the 2007-08 bankers' crisis.
8. Are you proud of what you've done to our wages?
Ask the Tory canvasser if they're aware that since 2010 British workers have suffered the longest sustained collapse in the value of their wages since records began, and ask them if they're proud of having imposed this record breaking level of wage repression.
9. Why has housing become so unaffordable since 2010?
Ask the Tory canvasser whether they are aware that UK housing is more unaffordable than it's ever been before.
Then ask them whether they think that home ownership souring out of the reach of millions of ordinary people has anything to do with their wage repression policies, and the fact that between 2010 and 2017 the Tories oversaw the lowest levels of house building since the early 1920s.
10. How many more children are growing up in poverty since you lot came to power in 2010?The answer is 400,000.
11. Why do you expect me to pay compensation for the consequences of your horrible policies?
Theresa May has announced that she's considering compensation for the Windrush Brits who have been denied housing, employment, social security, pensions, and NHS treatment, and been made to live in fear of imprisonment and deportation.
What she hasn't been clear about is that the Windrush scandal came about because of her own vile UKIP-pandering anti-immigrant legislation in 2014.
So what she's actually saying by promising compensation is that she's going to completely evade responsibility for her own actions by not resigning, then compound matters by using taxpayers' money to pay off the victims of her own malicious legislation.
See if you can get the Tory canvasser to admit that it's wrong for Theresa May to make the general public to pay the cost of her own horrible mistake, while she suffers no negative consequences at all.
12. Which political party has imposed the biggest armed forces cuts since the end of the Cold War?
The answer is the Tory party who have dramatically slashed the size of the armed forces since 2010.
They've reduced the army by over 20,000, the RAF by 8,500, and the navy by 5,500.
General advice
Don't be afraid to print this article off and leave it by your front door so you can use it as a guide (I absolutely don't give a damn about copyright issues). These Tory canvassers will be speaking from a script, so it's totally fair for you to refer to notes too.
Feel free to compile other questions you can stump them with too. If there's some local issue or controversy you can hit them with use that, or take a scroll through this list of 50 disgraceful Tory controversies to find other issues that you're particularly concerned with and make note of them.
Remember that the information in this article doesn't specifically have to be presented in the form of questions, it can also be used to rebut several of the set talking points the Tory canvasser will try to raise.
Also remember that the longer you can keep the Tory canvasser engaged in discussion, the less time they'll have to try to convince other less well-informed people into voting Tory through their bombardment of lies and deceptions. It's actually much better for you to keep them occupied by asking them questions like these and watching their absurd displays of mental gymnastics, than just angrily telling them to get off your doorstep.
Another Angry Voice is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.
