>>46932062everyone sees their own party as they'd like it to be, not as it is, and the opposing party as the version of that party they hate the most. (usually: labourites pretend all conservatives are thatcherites, and conservatives pretend all labourites are socialist idealists.)
someone who likes labour doesn't actually like the labour party of 2020, they're either a 90s nostalgist or a careerist with no real politics who likes 1997-2010's labour party, a vague idealist who likes the labour party of 1945-sometime1980s without really knowing the history except that "it used to try to make society better", or an utter doomer who sticks to a certain line of labour thought and knows it died decades ago.
similar with the conservatives, although since they're in government there's also a more pragmatic element where people don't support them, really, but do support keeping them around to get brexit done or whatever. but if you look back at David Cameron, nobody actually liked him. some people fell behind him because they liked the party (i.e. they like some historical version of the party - usually the vigor of Thatcherism, or a vague "one nation" Toryism that still wants low taxes, but also quite likes rural railway lines.) and wanted it to win.
then you've got the Liberal Democrats, who used to have an easy time since nobody really hated them, while they got to feel smug and superior to the other parties and sometimes even had a point (like when they argued against getting involved in the Iraq war, or tuition fees, which were introduced by a Labour government for no obvious reason, or how our electoral system isn't really fair) but then they went into coalition with the conservatives in exchange for magic beans, which made everyone hate them, then they tried to become a single-issue anti-Brexit party, which failed, so now they're seen insufferable instead of "Nice but pointless"
in summary: british politics is a big game of pretend to hide from a sad reality.
