r/tories

I just found out that, from April 2026, employees are automatically entitled to 80% of their pay for up to 28 weeks. This is essentially on the same scale as furlough, without the justification of a pandemic.

What is it about this country that can't just accept that, if you can't do a job for whatever reason, however unfortunate that may be, you shouldn't get paid the same (or 80%) of what you would be paid if you were doing the job?

Of course leftists will say it's fine if 'big corporations' like McDonalds have to pay for absent employees, but lost productive capacity from the economy hurts everyone else as well (I saw a GP on Reddit saying they never refuse sick notes bc, as far as they're concerned, they applaud anyone who can get McDonalds to pay them for not being there).

Given we know how much honesty-based systems are abused in this country (not necessarily because Brits are more dishonest, just because no other country is mad enough to implement them), I wonder how many people are just pretending to be ill for 28 weeks, then magically recovering on the 29th week?

I get that some people will say you still have to pay bills when you are ill. But saving up enough money for a short-term illness is just part of life, is it not? If you are unlucky enough to get a long-term illness, you will likely have to quit your job and then claim unemployment benefits. Obviously these should only be available for medical conditions that can be shown on a scan, rather than unfalsifiable anxiety disorders, but that's a debate for another day.

We’ll assume in this scenario everyone in the UK suddenly became a loyal Conservative voter overnight. With a unanimous popular mandate and total control over all branches of the government, what would the Conservative Party do with such power? What reforms would they enact? What would Britain look like a few years down the line?

I'm sure we've all heard Reform banging on about how the Tories and Labour are a uniparty, and as much as I'd love it if the Tories went full Thatcher, having 2 very similar main parties is just a consequence of democracy, or at least FPTP. Because both parties will move to the centre to try and gain as many votes (assuming a simple right/left spectrum, which isn't 100% true of course).

It's the same logic for why 2 ice-cream stands on a crowded beach will set up right next to each other (rather than spaced apart), because it is always in their own interest to move nearer the other one (assuming everyone to the other side of them buys from them). Obviously this is partly theoretical but it has been observed in real life.

So would Reform prefer it if the government swung between Thatcherism and Corbynism every election or so? Because if the Conservatives should had given up trying to be centrist, in the name of breaking the 'uniparty', then by the same logic Labour should have as well, and a Corbyn-like figure would have gotten in at some point, perhaps multiple times.

I'm basically just fed up of hearing how the Conservatives and Labour being a 'uniparty' is some establishment/deep-state conspiracy theory, rather than the natural outcome of FPTP (which I don't think Reform is opposing anymore, as they need it to ever form a majority government).