UK General Election - 8th June 2017

Less than a week to go to the  UK general election and the opinion polls are showing that Tory support is ebbing away.

Opinion polls in this country seem consistently to under state the number of Tory voters possibly partly because they canvass a large number of young people who tend to support Labour when asked but also tend to be less inclined to cast their votes in the polls. 

Add to the above that those likely to vote for Conservative Party candidates, tend to keep that information to themselves whereas Labour and LibDem supporters, judging by the poster displays in local house windows, are keen publicly to announce their voting intentions.

If the voting outcome in Wimbledon was proportionate to the parties' posters in local house windows, the Tories would hardly muster any votes at all. Usually though not always, Wimbledon returns a Tory MP - we shall have to wait and see.

Younger voters tend to support the Labour Party whereas older voters tend to prefer Conservative though this is not universally the case.

Possibly the explanation  for the general rule set out in the preceding paragraph, is derived from experience. In other words, older voters having had first hand experience of a Labour government seek  the alternative - essentially the Tories with some protest voters switching to the Lib Dems -  whereas the younger voters who have only considered the theory and not experienced the reality, opt for the Labour ideas of increasing expenditure on everything from free university education, to  unlimited National Health Service provision, paid for it is assumed, by the very few and very rich. 

Alas in my experience anyway, there are insufficient numbers of the very rich  in this country to pay for the rest of us. 

Substantially  increasing higher earners'  income tax and likewise UK corporation tax, will not pay for the huge benefits being promised and will drive companies and high earner entrepreneurs away from the UK sadly resulting in more poverty and less employment.

Corporation tax in Ireland is at rates starting from only 12.5% - no wonder Google and similar international companies, base their European HQs in that EU country.

My expectation is that Mrs May will win the forthcoming general election by a convincing majority.