Rumours abound that Tristram Hunt - always an unlikely Labour MP - will be the next right-winger to quit the party and look for a new job before the challenge of 2020 comes too close for comfort. He's the second to do so, but I suspect by no means the last. My discussions suggest that many Labour MPs feel that the despair they feel about the party will translate into votes and so direct their futures, whether they like it or not.
At the same time Momentum is still fighting off the far left: Trotskyists still want the party whose right wing despair of it.
It's a pretty desperate situation. For many like me, clearly to the left of Hunt and clearly well to the right of the Trotskyists, all that is left is a void where there appears to be no hope of proper political representation.
If you're a social but not economic liberal; a social democrat with green tendencies but who thinks the label green is too limiting; and whose aim is centred on social, economic and tax justice in a mixed economy that is not dominated by global corporate interests then right now the UK political scene presents you with the prospect of howling into the wind but no immediate chance of securing political representation from a party that comes close to representing your reasonable aspirations for the country, economy, health, education, the planet and so much more.
I do wonder when the tipping point will come and some new party will have to emerge because the chance that Labour is going to come near representing the aspirations of the many millions who it should be representing seem remote for a long time to come, if ever.
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Labour is dead as a political force in its current form. What we need is a centrist party who can take the best bits from the left and the right. An enterprise based economy which funds social justice and fairness for a uk community
If that is not the Liberal Dems then what do the Liberal Dems stand for?
Vince Cable’s 2010 stupidity on austerity goes a long way to ruling them out in my book…
I agree with Gerry Boyle on this point: by making coalition with the Tories and providing George Osborne with the chance to put his recklessness to the test, the LibDems proved their unsuitability for the role of progressive champions. This followed on as the natural consequence of party – capture by their neoliberal ‘Orange Book’ tendency. Ironically, Labour is now paying the price for its affair with neoliberalism, in its current post – New Labour confusion.
Times change
We may be beggars now
Neoliberalism.
Sounds like the Lib Dems, for Scotland, the SNP?
That sounds to me a lot like Tony Blair talking. ‘A centrist party’ is a little nebulous isn’t it? The political landscape has shifted so far to the right over the last 40 years, that I now find the view from the centre pretty bleak.
Hunt was definitely not an ‘unlikely’ Labour MP, given that he was forced into a reasonably safe Labour seat on the behest of a heavily Mandelson influenced NEC during the death-throws of New Labour (with a local ex-Labour candidate standing against him as an independent).
That was just par for the course back then.
Have him and his ilk make Labour MPs less likely in the future though? Almost certainly yes.
Having just attended my first few Labour party meetings for 28 years, I’ve seen very little evidence of Trotskyist influence – and from conversations I’ve had with members, the Trot threat to Momentum is (unsuprisingly) being hugely overblown.
Did you read the rest of Corbyn’s Brexit speech by the way Richard?
Yes
It was hopeless
He and his advisers have no idea how to write a speech, manage the press and meet expectations is my summary
Tristram Hunt called himself a centrist, but was a pretty hard-line privatiser and free-marketeer; well to the right of the mass of his party. I don’t mean to insult him when I say he would have fitted equally well into the Tory party.
Centrist parties always define themselves relatively: in between the left and the right. A lot of people, certainly the majority of the Labour Party membership, are looking for something more absolutely representative of their views, less dependent on triangulation with a Tory party driving firmly to the right.
Many people on the left went precisely where they felt they could representation – hence Labour’s shift under Blair. Corbyn is a welcome break with that, but sadly, without a strategy, and against the big guns of populism supplied by the corporatist media.
What we need is a commitment to pluralism, to deliver democratic reform this country requires, so we can all wear our true politics on our sleeves with out pandering to the marginals and populism. A progressive alliance is, in the short term, our only hope and people with the ear of many progressives – that’s you Richard – need to put your weight behind that.
The first step is to recognise this will not be led from the Westminster bubble. We need a conversation in every constituency starting with what are our Green, Red and Yellow lines in the sand which we could collectively get behind to support a local candidate from whatever party had the best chance.
I have continually made clear I support a progressive alliance
I am a member of the group supporting it in my own constituency, albeit not very actively as I am finite (sadly)
Yes, I appreciate that Richard – I’m hoping others will listen. I’m bored of the line about the LibDems being Tories. I’m not a libdem and I’m appalled with what they did; they should admit the orange booker corporatist agenda. But the challenge we face now is serious – long term neoliberal lock-in is a serious possibility unless progressives work out what the priorities are and fight battles we can win.
I am old enough to have long ago given up grudges
People make mistakes
If they apologise, we should move on
Philip and Richard are right; a good example in London is Caroline Pidgeon, and leader Tim Farron has been making leftish noises. Orange Bookers seem to have been wiped out in the LDs. The Brighton and Hove Green Party and Labour Party also made mistakes in certain ways in the 2011-2015 period of NOC where the Greens were the largest party; they did not go about debates and policy making in quite the right way given the neoliberal establishment networks out there with entrenched beliefs that had to be challenged.
Now, Brexit could enable the revival of the LDs, starting with seats where they were second in 2015 to the Tories. We are living in very unusual times but can achieve good things if we try our best and shun dogma. “It doesn’t matter if it’s a black or white cat as long as it catches mice.” Deng Xiaoping
Its a desperate time for the party. I’m not a great admirer of Hunt but losing talented people like him is a sure sign that things are very horribly wrong. He might be a high profile leaver, but I know of and have heard about many good people who have left over the last few months.
I still remain an optimist. I don’t believe there is a viable alternative to Labour. If it comes to its senses, there is still the hope that it can become the party most of its members want, which is basically what you’ve described above “a party centred on social, economic and tax justice in a mixed economy that is not dominated by global corporate interests”
The leader isn’t our only problem but his removal is essential for a proper rebuild and for the electorate to take us seriously. Right now we are a joke. I’m convinced the membership will give up on Corbyn when it becomes obvious that he is taking us nowhere. I think the May elections may force the issue. If we perform badly – and the signs are that we will lose seats – then even his most ardent supporters will surely say enough.
Answer: a long time, depending on events!
If you were to ignore the question of competency then surely the policy platform largely being espoused by the current Labour Party is precisely the platform you are asking for, with perhaps the exception of a willingness to except and perhaps even welcome Brexit
There is no almost link between what John McDonnell says and what Jeremy quoted from me to get elected – for which I accept my responsibility
So is Labour too left wing or not radical enough?
It’s just incoherent
And people realise that
“Howling in the wind” – we’re going to sound like a pack of wolves! You describe my stance exactly – and, I expect, many millions of others.
I expect you know by now that Hunt has resigned after accepting a job which will probably suit him better.
Interesting times, because the result could be the first elected UKIP MP after the potential loss of Copeland.
I think we are reaching a tipping point more profound than even Thatcher’s victory. I suspect (well, I hope) that a centre-left party will emerge, but at the moment I don’t see how that’s going to happen. I’d love to be around in fifty years to read what future historians will make of it all.
Sue
I haven’t got 50 years to wait!
Richard
For as long as the MSM constrains all discourse to within the Overton Window.
It doesn’t; http://www.standard.co.uk/business/mitchell-feierstein-abolish-central-banks-and-slay-the-zombies-a3437736.html
Short, sweet and spot on – I thought there might have been some hope via the internet, there still may, but the drive to label anything not ‘sanctioned’ as fake news is in full swing. Some sites I use also came under fire when the Washington Post published it’s ‘list’ of Russian patsies. Yes it’s been retracted and some apologies issued but damage was done. Meanwhile the MSM has spent decades sowing belief in neoliberal economic ideas.
Richard, I understand the problem with the Greens is that we seem to many like sandal wearers, no-fun lentil eaters who would ban cars and planes. The Lib Dems now seem to be more economically to the left than before, do you agree? I’d place them in the bottom left of the political compass, i.e. socially liberal and economically left; the Greens more so.
First past the post is causing enormous problems, however, and I would love PR where one can rank candidates for constituencies in order of preference, then have a nationwide party list vote via PR, like in London (although for London Assembly constituencies, it’s FPTP. I can live with that being used in UK elections if there is more proportionality). What I described is AV+ and MMS.
We need to keep telling the public that they should vote for economically left and socially liberal parties and policies to maximize their well-being
I agree overall with your analysis Matt
I can work with anyone really left of centre
Coalition is a fact of life
The Greens made a difference in the London Assembly under Livingstone and supported him in return for having certain policies of theirs enacted. Same in Lewisham 2006-2010 as it was NOC with Labour as the largest party. Now, under FPTP, with a similar Green and LD vote share compared to 2006, in 2014 53 Lab and 1 Green cllr were elected. It is just that few pay enough attention to local government, and I understand that in Brighton and Hove Green Party 2011-2015, and latterly in LB Lewisham Labour/Momentum, certain members have been encouraging councillors to set illegal budgets to defy the Tories. These days, though, the cllrs would not even be sacked and surcharged because more than likely, the council’s CFO would set a budget for you. Kinnock may have had a point in ’85 about it ‘not being about whether you won or lost, or how you played the game’ if more cuts and redundancies happen, with further loss of local control.
Here, the Lewisham Green councillor supports most of the Labour council’s policies, but will provide constructive input.
Oh come on please?!!!!!
What use is a centrist party in a polity that is already pulled too far to the Right? Would the new ‘centre’ pull us more to the Left? Or just form a new centre firmly in the Right so effectively, there is no Left?
Which is what New Labour did in my view – wooing Tory voters (yes I know that New Labour did some good stuff but relying on schmoozing the the more disgruntled members of your opposition’s voting base is not only a high risk strategy but does not really work for the people you supposedly cared about in the first place).
What I hope emerges is a Left of centre political movement that (1) sets out to change people’s received wisdom of what has happened in 2008 and before and (2) is able to articulate its self in such a way as to appeal to the public and (3) has the testicular material to try some if not all of the very good alternative ideas put forward in this blog and others.
My definition of being ideological is sticking to ideas that we know do not work. As Einstein said, this is nothing but insanity. Centrists think that they can do the wrong thing righter. Which is insane too.
So please – no more centrist crap. It’s an illusion – a big political self-deception that finds its birth in the guff put forward by Anthony Giddens and the like.
If a centre really exists, then politics has actually ceased to exist. The risk then is what comes in to replace it? Business thinking? Free market thinking? If so just reflect on where we are now and the market’s contribution to our present situation. BTW I appreciate that we need markets – but not those who do not like to be regulated.
Surely politics is a push pull between conflicting points of view and the centre is the result/outcomes of genuine compromise from that tension – not a political movement in itself. When will this be understood?
I do not see any policies at the moment of such quality in the country. And boy do we need them now.
Apologies for sounding so irascible but this secular stagnation business is infuriating and dangerous.
I am not interested in the centre
I am interested in the left
I was not ranting about you Richard but on those proponents of the ‘centre’.
Or what is more commonly known as ‘sitting on the fence’.
“wooing Tory voters (yes I know that New Labour did some good stuff but relying on schmoozing the the more disgruntled members of your opposition’s voting base is not only a high risk strategy but does not really work for the people you supposedly cared about in the first place).”
The voters in those constituencies that Old Labour “care about”, mostly ex-mining, have been brutalized politically and economically for a long time, and historically Labour has been their only support, so they just trust it to do what’s best. If the party parachutes a posh spiv in their midst, they assume that the party needs the posh spiv in parliament to advance their cause. It is just reflexive trust: the party knows best about what works down in London, and we trust them to do what’s right by us.
Labour has always been a coalition of do-gooder liberals and working-class socialdemocrats and some socialists, both in the party and in the voting base. it used to be that both sides of the coalition got their interests protected by the party: the do-gooder liberals would get in power with the votes of the working-class and would in exchange work on more bargaining power for the working-class and better social insurance and access to education.
What has changed is that New Labour are liberals (and some tories) who still use the votes of the working class to get to power, but then in exchange do very little for them, and enact policies that take care of the southern affluent middle class and the upper class. So this essential advantage of Labour for mandelsonians like Tristram Hunt is that it has a large “bank” of (so far) safe seats in ex-mining areas where Labour voters will elect even a “New Liberal Conservative for Europe and welfare cuts” as long as they carry the red rosette. Of course the Liberals have no such large “bank” of safe seats, so the mandelsonians infiltrated Labour and not the Liberals.
And that’s the main difference between the Liberal Party and New Labour: the Liberal party don’t have a large bedrock of reflexively voting constituencies that provide them with dozens (around 150 I guess) of safe seats.
The problem with New Labour is that even those who vote Labour reflexively, because of a long history of trust, eventually realize that their trust is no longer justified, and start voting UKIP, or simply abstain from voting in disgust.
As to taking care of upper class interests an interesting and quite disgusting quote:
http://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/labour-fears-corbyn-will-be-seen-as-unambitious-3tww86v5n
«Labour MPs have raised concerns that Jeremy Corbyn’s rhetoric on tax avoidance could appear anti-aspiration.
A senior shadow cabinet source said the party leader was in danger of overreaching himself in his criticism of David Cameron for investing in Blairmore, the fund set up in an offshore tax haven in the Bahamas by his father Ian.»
That is quite amazing… Explains a lot of what is going on in the PLP.
But actually the cause of this ultimately is that the end of the cold war and “of history” has meant that the “atlantic” elites have decided they no longer need to buy the good will of the “home front” by tolerating social-democratic policies.
Those “atlantic” elites seem to have decided to mean that the servant classes need to be kept constantly afraid of displeasing the master classes, and under constant surveillance.
Also that since some important political agglomerations show centrifugal tendencies, the pressure of an external threat (Russia and Islam have been used, with China as a distant third) is needed to keep them together.
To be clear – my use of the phrase ‘care about’ relates to the
fact that for many years the Labour movement was made of people who came from those constituencies (ex miners, union officials, activists, steel workers etc.,).
It seems that Labour has lost a lot of such people and are more the sorrier for it and less useful to working people in my view.
Other than that then, what was the point you were making please?
Until some party or group emerges that understand how money actually works I think the situation won’t change much in your country or mine. We need someone with a a voice that will be heard and listened to who will counter the myths about money effectively.
You are doing a good job at it but I fear you aren’t being listened to. Until your message and the messages of other people who understand how money works gets out to ordinary voters I have little hope of real change.
I note the Greens are in favour of establishing community banking, which suggests to me they have some idea of where money ought to be coming from.
Putting all questions of leadership and competence to one side, which parts of Corbyn/McDonnell’s domestic agenda do you disagree with? Is it purely that McDonnell seems to think that eliminating the deficit is important (even if he plans to achieve it through investment and growth rather than austerity)?
I can’t find much in the way of policy on almost anything
What I can find in economics is we must balance the books and live within our means
What this means is there is a plan to build infrastructure but no plan to employ people to use it
None of this makes any coherent sense at all
But do you actually seriously believe that McDonnell would indeed balance the books and live within our means, in the highly unlikely event that Corbyn were ever returned to power?
That’s not within his gift
But from what I know he seems to think it is
And I don’t like the claim, pretence, or whatever it is if he believes it
What we need is a common sense party – you know one that would work for the benefit of everyone. Won’t happen though. Everyone wants to be left , right or centre.
I wondered whether my use of the word Goldilocks would confuse the point I was trying to make. I was suggesting in reference to the position of earth within the solar system ( the habitable zone also known as Goldilocks) that most people ought to gravitate to this area. Politically the Goldilocks zone would not consist of people labelled left or right, labour of conservative, rather it would be where the shackles of polarised politics do not exist.
I believe the majority of your beliefs lie in this zone and it’s why you cannot fully position yourself in the camp of either party. If we had a reasonably balanced press and someone in the labour party who could move the party towards the Goldilocks zone the normal folk of this country would benefit hugely. You ought to be the man.
I have to be candid, my personality does not suit the life of a politician
Most of them are pretty extrovert in the Jungian sense, and I am pretty introvert on that scale. I stress this does not mean I cannot look people in the eye, it suggests a way of thinking and the degrees of gregariousness I need. I would find the demands of political life totally suffocating. I love meeting people but need a lot of space to think and write alone too. That’s probably why I have stuck to a blog when most give up
There are exceptions though. I believe Bill Clinton is considered to be introvert, but that I suggest other commonalities
Just one point. You assume that Trotskyites are on the left. In my view, like the other totalitarian “socialists”, they have more in common with the hard right. Experience shows that, though small in number, they can cause disproportionate damage to democratic socialist parties. This is what they did to Labour in the 80s and they seem to be repeating this with Momentum.
If being on the left is being egalitarian then you must believe in democracy. Totalitarians dream of seizing power for themselves and only use democracy when it suits them. They are never prepared to accept an adverse democratic decision or indeed any criticism of their views. I think you can see the parallel with the way the hard right have used the EU referendum and then tried to keep Parliament out of the Brexit process.
I have a lot of sympathy with your suggestion
Trotskyism is about materially based hierarchical social order in practice
Can we have an up to date definition of what a Trotskyite believes in and works to cause to happen?
There are plenty in the net
Although they will be inconsistent
I think while simple and easy to understand the old left and right dichotomy has long since ceased to be very accurate as a political description. I much prefer the political compass approach with two axes. One economic and one broadly social on a authoritarian/libertarian spine.
https://www.politicalcompass.org/uk2015
I suspect most of us here are in the bottom left quadrant with socially Libertarian and economically left leanings. Tristram Hunt is probably much where Labour appear on the 2015 graph above, i.e. mildly authoritarian and mildly economically right wing. An old school one nation Tory in all but name. Maybe I’m unfair on him with this label but that’s my perception. The so-called Trotskyites, where they really exist, I suspect are actually more Authoritarian Socialists in a cold war Revolutionary Marxists or Stalinist vein and so should be in the top left quadrant somewhere.
Looking at this second graph below, showing the historical positions, we can see a clear direction of travel up and right.
http://cdn1.globalissues.org/i/political-compass/uk-parties-over-time.png
Look how much towards the economically right and authoritarian sides Labour has moved since Wilson’s day. The difference between old Labour and New Labour is greater than the difference between old Labour and the old Tories.
I think this is the core problem within Labour at the moment The majority of the grassroots want Wilson’s party back while the majority of the MPs and party apparatus are still New Labour ‘Red Tories’, albeit one nation red Tories. Certainly the Momentum members, old returners and new joiners that I know are all somewhere in that bottom left quadrant, many, but not all, quite far left economically. Richard is definitely not alone in feeling the green label is too limiting though, despite the obvious positional association of the Greens and these Labour lefties. I’m not sure about Corbyn and McDonnell themselves. They are seemingly not adequately capable of making the case for the desired position of their supporters but perhaps they are also personally more ‘hard left’ authoritarian than the majority of that support. Either way they are almost certainly closer to the position of their supporters, but maybe not voters, than the likes of Tristram Hunt. There in lies the dilemma I see. Do we in the bottom left quadrant support a mildly top right leadership with a tarnished reputation for competence? Or do we support a certainly left, possibly bottom left, leadership that is seemingly incompetent? Obviously a fully competent bottom left leadership would be best but that doesn’t seem to be on offer.
Surely nobody will deny that a defeat of the Corbyn leadership will be trumpeted by the ‘right wing’ press as final proof that ‘left wing’ politics is dead and anyone who believes anything left of centre is a deluded dinosaur. So how do we come back from Corbyn’s now seemingly inevitable fall from power? To my way of thinking the best answer is still to find someone more competent from within the bottom left believers to take over his leadership before it collapses. I’m not convinced I will see it though and any other road looks much longer.
I have some sympathy with your last para
First of all there are Trotskyites and they are currently tying up Momentum. From the experience of Militant in the eighties there is likely to be a small leadership core who are very clear about what they are doing and a larger number of followers who think they are simply being true socialists.
The reason I made my point initially is that I believe that you cannot legitimately claim to be on the left unless you believe in representative democracy. If the core doctrine of the left is egalitarianism there can be no room for ideas of revolutionary elite seizing power on behalf of the working class.
You appear to omit this point in your analysis in terms of economic/social libertarianism/authoritarianism. All the corners of your grid could be accommodated within an acceptance of the democratic system but the extremes of left and right cannot. They are willing to use the democratic system when it suits them and will try to undermine when it does not. That is why these extremes are essentially similar.
The right are much more powerful in Britain and, in my view actually now pose a threat to our democracy. The totalitarian left have far less support but they can be a serious problem for parties arguing from a left perspective despite their small numbers. That is why Jon Lansmann is now trying to get them out of Momentum.
Many believe that proportional representation is an intuitive pre-requisite for ‘true democracy’.
However, any worthwhile discussion about the nature and consequences of proportional representation must ‘engage with’ more radical insights:
1. Without fully-proportional representation, there will always-be a spurious but overwhelming imperative for ‘natural’ Parties to coalesce into precisely-two dominant ‘covert coalition’ Parties. For example, in the UK, the ‘Labour’ Party is a ‘covert coalition’ of a ‘natural’ ‘Old Labour’ Party and a ‘natural’ ‘New Labour’ Party, and the ‘Conservative’ Party is a ‘covert coalition’ of a ‘natural’ ‘Europhobe Conservative’ Party and a ‘natural’ ‘Europhile Conservative’ Party. These two ‘covert coalition’ Parties both present themselves (rightly) as the only Parties which stand any chance of forming a Political Executive, and (deceitfully) as all (mutually-exclusive) things to all (diverse) ‘floating’ voters. Similarly, the US ‘Republican’ and ‘Democrat’ Parties are ‘covert coalition’ Parties. Those who want to vote for one of the underlying ‘natural’ Parties never have that option, and have to vote for the ‘covert coalition’ Party which has ‘enclosed’ their preferred ‘natural’ Party (with very little idea as to what they were voting for, and very little confidence that they would actually get what they were trying to vote for). That is not ‘true democracy’! That is a political regime in which it is not worth voting (or even registering to vote)!
2. With fully-proportional representation, there would be no such imperative. We would expect the current ‘Labour’ ‘covert coalition’ Party to break into a ‘natural’ ‘Old Labour’ Party and a ‘natural’ ‘New Labour’ Party, and we would expect the current ‘Conservative’ ‘covert coalition’ ’Party to break into a ‘natural’ ‘Europhobe Conservative’ Party and a ‘natural’ ‘Europhile Conservative’ Party, out of the enlightened (if venal) self-interest of those aligned to the ‘currently-out-of-favour’ ‘natural’ Party. We would expect to see perhaps 10 or so substantial but non-dominant ‘natural’ Parties on offer, and those who wanted to vote for those underlying ‘natural’ Parties would have that option (with a much clearer idea as to what they were voting for, and with much greater confidence that they would actually get what they voted for). That would be ‘true democracy’! That would be a political regime in which it was worth voting (after first registering to vote)!
Thus, honourable democrats of all Parties should aspire only to a fair and proportional (but non-dominant) share of power and influence over the de-facto Political Executive, and should consider the possibility of working with honourable democrats of all other Parties in a campaign for ‘Optimised Democratic Governance’ (based on fully-proportional representation in each Representative Assembly holding a de-facto Political Executive to account), as a pre-requisite for a constructive re-grouping into ‘natural’ Parties.
I think you are so right Tim, and your comment is an important corrective to the demands higher up for a new ‘centrist’ party. The truth is that for any who care to look, both the Labour and Tory parties are hiding warring factions from ‘left’ and ‘right’ behind a ‘unified’ front. And neither parties are doing it very well. That is precisely why those of us who fit Richard’s description have no-one to vote for. Coalition is a messy business, just like real life. PR is the only game in town!
It occurred to me that a movement into a centrist viewpoint for politics, if it was successsful, would bury democracy. If the centre carried the day and the left and right were marginalised, perhaps obliterated, then the centre would be free to play with itself – what would happen to democratic opposition?
What about this as a thought experiment?
Do we actually need politicians? What if there was a parliament of ideas instead of political shiftyness? This consensus could feed into a body of public servants who translated the consus of ideas into action.
We could vote for ideas that best supported the survival of humanity and shift expectations onto a truly level playing field.
Until then you can define the range of possibility as left, centre or right, or any degree in between, but the reality is we are ruled by scrapping factions that have at their root the capture and exercise of power. They are concerned, so it seems to me, with making others wrong in order that they appear to be right. And we are dictated to by these buffoons. What a sad state of affairs.
Germany has had coalition governments since the end of WW2. They’ve swung left or right depending whether the CDU/CSU or SPD has been the largest party, but if you look at Germany’s policies as a continuum, they have been more consistent and centrist than in the UK.
Can we please get rid of the ‘centrist’ stuff. ‘Centrism’ is a confection aimed making something unpalatable acceptable – usually in my view related to making the political Left less scary to the establishment and more attractive to the swing voter.
If Germany has ‘swung left and right’ then how can the result be ‘centrist’?
I agree with you though that in Germany (and other places) a golden thread runs between differing administrations probably related to deep seated concepts such as gemeinschaft (community) and gesellschaft (society). It seems that cross party commitment to these principles comes from their recent history perhaps? A good outcome if you ask me.
In modern Britain we are told these things do not exist as we are into American hyper-personalisation instead (thank you Margaret).
Instead of howling in the wind, maybe us Brit social democrats ought to sod off to Germany. Both my children are learning the language – enthusiastically supported by their Father of course.
Great idea. It reminds me of some of the arguments in ‘Crowdocracy’ which contains much food for thought…
As someone who has studied literally hundreds of websites, and continues to do so at the rate of 30 a day, and has a Kindle with more than a dozen books open on it (Including The Joy of Tax, there is a very distinct but well camouflaged undercurrent of “Fudging the definitions”.
I have a couple of heavy duty Libertarian sites on my list and in one the other day the author was quite clear in his understanding that Slavery as practised a few hundred years ago was a “Socialist disease that spread like wildfire throughout the western world”…yadda yadda, thus all things socialist were bad by rote.(“So what”) I hear you cry……the site is getting literally millions of hits a month is what.
People are calling themselves whatever it is that they think the listener wants to hear. It is crystal clear to me that during the rise of Blair, the very word “Socialism” was converted into a dirty word, in the US, saying you are socialist is on a par with saying you have Syphilis to your Texan Father in Law.
I would like to see some clear cut definitions, I would like to see a clear explanation across the entire political spectrum, of what different persuasions occupy what positions on the important matters
Has anyone out there got any pointers as to where I may find resources to help me?
Step 1 : Google your question:
http://www.dummies.com/education/politics-government/quick-definitions-of-political-ideologies-the-isms/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_political_ideologies
http://democracy.org.au/glossary.html
etc. etc. etc.
Thanks, I had already done most of that, several times, but had never come across the Aussie version £3 on your list, which s just what I was looking for.
I understand that Tristram Hunt’s constituency will disappear with the boundary change- as will Copeland i.e. jamie Reid’s
I would imagine that was a significant factor in considering his future employment as there would be no certainty that he would get another constituency, especially given how right wing he is.
That may well have had something to do with it, but I think the bottom line is this: if you are a bright and relatively young Labour backbencher, with no prospect of serving on the front benches, the next 4 years (perhaps even longer) are going to be a complete waste of your time and life. I suspect that many Labour backbenchers (even those with a realistic prospect of holding their seats in 2020, and even those more left wing than Hunt) would jump at a chance to quit if, like Hunt, they had attractive employment lined up.
I rather like the way the Scandinavians do PR with pre election coalitions officially put to the electorate so if you vote for the Centre party in Norway you know they intend to go into coalition with the left bloc, so your vote counts towards the formation of the govermnent and the exact shade you would want strongest in that coalition
If only we could do the same
But that would require a level of maturity and agreement that seems beyond uk politics as yet