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I’m starting to feel uncomfortable with the black/white, left/right labels we divide into…
In a political economic way could we not say inclusive/exclusive? So “Inclusivity is for…”
Our brains seem to be wired to seek connections, that as you so clearly explain Richard, are not necessarily appropriate. Personally, I am tired of the left/right dictat that nails my foot to the floor of present party politics.
Could you expand, or have you expanded, on the notion that one of the key failures of government has been the growth in the tax gap: the tax that should have been collected and the tax actually collected? Is this failure the reason that our recent, short-sighted fiscal policies have been driven to reign back on expenditure, and as you say, exaggerate the problem. For example, reduce the number of HMRC employees who have half a brain cell?
Keep it coming Richard. Your considerable contribution to these debates is like a breath of fresh air. I breathe easier knowing there may be more possibility than that offered by the present left/right, ping-pong politics.
Bob
That’s an interesting idea
But I can’t see us getting to post-party politics as yet although I can see party alliances
Richard
OK, here goes:- my critique. These remarks aren’t meant to be unconstructive, and I hope they won’t be taken to be.
1. Sorry but, to my mind, too much of this is in the category of “motherhood” statements: what average person (ie not a sociopath, or a psychopath) could possibly, or in practice would if taxed with the question, refuse to endorse (pay lip-service to) such unexceptionable aspirations as, eg, “love thy neighbour…”? People’s actual behaviour does of course fall well short, but this is no less true of those who think of themselves as “Left” as of everyone else.
2. It is aimed, it seems to me, at preempting the moral high ground *exclusively* for the Left. No political party, being by definition of a specific, *partisan*, orientation, can possibly sustain such a claim; all that making it achieves is to create an impression of self-righteousness which automatically alienates all who do not flatter themselves that they enjoy any such monopoly. All parties are alike entitled to claim that they act out of no less highminded motives than their adversaries. All alike can plausibly claim to be striving for (in Bentham’s words) “the greatest happiness of the greatest number”, because that is such an unexceptionable, though vague, aspiration: it is their respective choices of ways of going about achieving it in practice which distinguishes them from each other, sometmes very sharply indeed.
I could continue in this vein but it’s already obvious that to do so would be otiose. What I suppose I’m questioning is the actual utility of framing such broad statements of one’s “credo”, other than as a template against which *privately* to test hard-edged policy proposals. I concede that in that restricted context they might serve a useful purpose, by providing a sort of *personal* moral compass. But I for one don’t feel comfortable criticising someone else’s, unless and until s/he were to seek to impose it upon me whereupon I might respond that they can keep their moral compass to themselves; if I should feel the need for one I’ll design my own, thank you very much.
There is no loving your neighbour in nenoliberalism
There is only the individual
So there is no morality in it either, as I would have thought was obvious by now
And yes, that is being imposed on you, like it or not
This credo is meant as a guide to policy, but it also reflects the reality of political creeds as they exist