Mazzer2:
And is there truly nothing that your son, as someone starting in life, can find in the manifesto for him? An extra 1m homes being built (which even if he doesn’t occupy those new homes, will take the pressure off mortgages and price increases for everyone else)? Better security of tenancies? What about better schools if he has kids, or better hospitals for his dear old dad? What about another four national bank holidays, even?
A lot of the things mentioned there will not happen 1 million homes built over a parliament pie in the sky. Education? I live in one of the poorest areas of the UK yet it’s education system is far and above that in England, Wales and Scotland, we still have grammar schools as well as good alternatives, my son aged 11 has just passed his 11+ with a good result and with no external coaching his cousin is at one of the best grammar schools in the UK, not bad for the son of a lorry driver and the son of a plant fitter give people something to strive to and standards will rise. As to the 4 extra days bank holiday I already get 3 more than you so not exactly up there on priorities.
Well if you don’t live in England, Scotland, or Wales, I can only imagine you live in Northern Ireland?
The 1m homes is over 10 years - so two parilaments. There’s nothing remarkable about 100k homes a year - the Tories built 300k homes a year in the 50s, iirc. And of course, there are other key aspects to the plans, including the reintroduction of secure tenancies and the fact that rents will be pegged at affordable levels relative to incomes (rather than “affordable” relative to runaway prices in the free market). Personally I’d like Labour to go further, but it’s not something to sniff at.
And I’m glad to hear your son’s doing well at school, although I don’t know why you indulge the stereotype of lorry drivers and plant fitters as being guys with not too much between the ears! 
And you mentioned his interest in student fees. Doesn’t he want student fees to be abolished in England any more, like they already are in Scotland? What about reducing or controlling the interest rate on the loans that (I presume) he already has?
Higher education has to paid for one way or another in Scotland the free tuition fees have not increased the number of students coming from poorer backgrounds as the universities have had to recruit more students from abroad to make up the cash shortfall, it has been half baked in Scotland by not increasing the number of places available they have not opened up opportunities for the poor, a higher proportion of people from poorer backgrounds go to uni in England than they do in Scotland. My preferred method of paying for high education would be a graduate tax of say 0.5% extra on a graduate as after all the graduate benefits the most from their further education so a small increase in tax would be a fairer way to give something back, and the education would be free while at uni leaving them with much smaller debts on completion.
I wouldn’t disagree with a graduate tax, although really I think it should simply be paid for from general taxation. Graduates who genuinely improve their earnings from the process, will pay extra tax anyway, and education is not completely a private good whose benefits only accrue to the receiver.
I’m also not entirely convinced that we need more university places. Many graduates are doing jobs that they could successfully do with a primary level education (as are many secondary school leavers), and most universities from what I gather have lost their intellectual culture, and are becoming expensive recreational camps and social experiences.
To give you an anecdote (which I think will be relevant) from a retail store manager I know, she bemoans the area managers who entered directly at that level and lack the natural gumption and shared understandings you gain from having any real experience at lower levels. It’s hard not to believe that graduates, if they want a career in management rather than a traditional profession, would not gain from doing fewer years of university, and instead doing more and longer stints in different job roles in actual businesses (not in the sense of the old trope of “working one’s way up”, but as an actual and more substantial management training scheme).
If a person can’t find a single thing for themselves under Corbyn’s Labour (and assuming they’re not even more radically left), or not even (as someone on a very good salary) be satisfied with guarantees on tax rates (small increases on which don’t kick in until you earn twice what your son will be earning, and are beyond even the highest range of the occupation that he’s entering), then I really don’t see what Labour could offer to someone like your son.
The problem with small tax rises is that people don’t trust Labour to keep them small, a lack of trust in politicians is across the board and not just confined to Labour, to many politicians in all parties have never had jobs outside of politics and so have no idea of life in the real world.
Indeed, I think that relates to the point I’ve just made, about a lack of wider experience. That is true of politics like other occupations, that many are coming through who don’t have sufficient breadth of lived experience, and are third-rate politicians as well.
As for surprise tax rises, I’m not sure it is justified on historical evidence that old Labour tended to promise small tax rises and then impose swingeing ones. New Labour were swines for regressive stealth taxes in the form of “use charges” and fines for all sorts of petty misdemeanours, whilst letting the rich get away with murder with tax evasion (even in the context of the lowest progressive tax rates in living memory), but New Labour were rotten to the core anyway with all sorts of fiddles. There is also the need for the electorate themselves to be realistic about tax and the cost of things.
Your invitation for Labour to become more moderate is, I suspect, not so that people like yourself will actually vote for them, but to lift the pressure of real opposition from the Tories who you naturally support (and will support, come hell or highwater). As I said, Ed Miliband tried that approach in 2015, and he didn’t gain hordes of these magical “moderate” or “centrist” voters - instead, he simply alienated the working class (some of whom fled to the far-right), alienated the left-wing, still had the Tories and the Murdoch press bemoaning that he was too left-wing, and scored one of the worst results in Labour history whilst handing Cameron an overall majority. Miliband would have done even worse in 2015, possibly gaining the worst result for Labour in it’s history, if the LibDems had still been seen as a left-wing alternative (as they were in 2010, when Brown claimed that dubious achievement for Labour).
Why is it that as soon as anyone disagrees with Corbyn,s view of how the world should look they are immediately branded right wing. I sit in the centre not wanting an extreme of either side. If you look as to where I live you will see that I am unable to vote Labour even if I should choose to do so as you have no true representation in NI a failure by both major parties and something which would help to eradicate the tribal politics here but then seeing as both Labour and the Conservatives made such a mess over here I can see why they are not keen to allow the people to show what they think of them.
Because if you’re not to the left of Corbyn, then you’re to the right of him! Most people who call themselves “centre” are actually “centre-right”, but like to pretend that they’re moderate, malleable sorts who are free of their own stubborn ideology.
The likes of Ken Clarke - someone I quite like to hear from, and respect in his own terms - is a centre-right politician. It’s a mistake to assume that there is some sort of coherent third position between someone like Clarke and someone like Corbyn, and you’re splitting hairs if you don’t feel onside with either of them.
And I agree about NI politics - it has completely separate politics. I think as far as most people on the mainland think, if you’re from Northern Ireland, you’re from Ireland, and the place is a foreign policy issue for Westminster - much like Gibraltar. If you contrast that with the Scots, I think most people who support Labour think of the SNP nowadays as being the autonomous Labour party north of the border, and still think of Sturgeon and Salmond as being British politicians who speak collectively for shared British issues and interests. I’ve shared a joke before now that if the SNP had fielded candidates in the north of England in 2015, they’d have probably gained seats!
Contrast that to 2017 under Corbyn, who scored one of the best results in Labour history (and the biggest improvement since 1945) - the Tories scored one of their lower results in historical terms, even with a workmanlike leader, some populist cabinet figures like Boris, and unwavering support from the right-wing press (which is why they’re in a minority government - just 10 seats or so less would have made them unable to form a government in the face of their left-wing opponents).
The Tories’ result in 2017 is undercut only by their results during the wilderness Blair years, when the Tories elected a series of odd and unpopular leaders who differed from Labour only on social policy, and Labour was so right-wing economically that many Tories didn’t feel that there was anything at stake.
And if I can infer your attitudes to certain things, don’t you think as a parent (particularly of someone who has future ambition to be a successful manager in a large corporation) you should be encouraging a more mature approach to democratic participation than simply “what’s in it for me, today”? To have some concern for other people, and for the good of the whole, or even for your own interests as they were in the past and may be in the future (and to therefore have some consistency and perspective over time)?
A more mature approach towards democracy should be and is encouraged however that is a two way street and more maturity from politicians of all parties in the way they behave would go along to regaining some trust in MP’s. Whether we like it or not the days of a family being loyal to a particular brand of politics down through the generations is long gone different people want or need different things at different stages of their lives and their political attitudes will reflect that
But in my view it’s totally unreasonable to change your politics according to your life stage - that really is the nadir of political integrity amongst the electorate. It’s like a farmer insisting that he wants to see carrots out of his front window today, and sprouts tomorrow, and you have to say hold on a second, seeds have to be sown, crops have to be grown, and only that which is grown can be reaped. Of course people need different things at different life stages, but you expect the majority of people to have a perspective on what is needed at each stage of life, and have (as best they can) a consistent political policy on that.
What a disappointment THAT was! NO PR after all those years of banging on for it. THAT was the flagship reform I wanted to see under the coalition government… If it had been done, of course - my vote for UKIP in 2015 wouldn’t have been a wasted vote. 
(I just hope my vote for Leave won’t end up being a ‘wasted vote’ either!)