As far as I know I am not related to fellow Twitterer Sarah Murphy, but I am a big fan, because she asks questions like this:
Could someone please explain the political revulsion for representing liberal, informed, socially-responsible, pro-EU, pro-immigration, pro-education, pro-equality voters?
Why has that become the ultimate challenge rather than the fucking least we should be able to expect?— sarah murphy (@13sarahmurphy) January 10, 2021
Why is it that politics now apparently demands that vast numbers of people must not be represented by the two mainstream political parties?
The current political consensus between the parties, with Labour appearing to go out of its way to echo and support the government, is dangerous.
That's partly because the government is usually so wrong.
It's also partly because this is not what democracy is about.
And it's because to deny people choice is to undermine faith in our parliamentary processes.
Sarah Murphy has posed the right question. I wish I knew the answer.
Thanks for reading this post.
You can share this post on social media of your choice by clicking these icons:
There are links to this blog's glossary in the above post that explain technical terms used in it. Follow them for more explanations.
You can subscribe to this blog's daily email here.
And if you would like to support this blog you can, here:
Buy me a coffee!
Perhaps times are changing. In the United States the Republican Party is beginning to be identified as the Sedition Party under its current leadership in both houses and of course Trump.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jan/10/donald-trump-capitol-attack-impeachment-abc-poll-majority-joe-biden
https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/10/politics/arnold-schwarzenegger-capitol-siege-trnd/index.html
Here’s one explanation why the Republican Party turned into the “Sedition Party”:-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herrenvolk_democracy
Does it have any relevance why so many voted for Brexit in the UK? Was it a sort of “historic invasion hysteria” whipped up here? Was it genuinely an economic motivation here concerning availability of jobs and downward wage pressure? I doubt we’ll ever know the strongest motivation.
Thank you for this Richard. This question really troubles me because I think the answer bodes so ill for our politics and future. Both main parties now seem to be locked in a dance of delusion and denial which means their strategies seem to be built on false premises. If you decide that ‘x’ was the reason you failed or succeeded, when really it was ‘y’ – then you will continue to fail (us).
The Tories have decided that their version of Brexit is what people wanted whilst being adamant that, despite consistent polling to the contrary, they won’t ever check or ask again. So it suited them to listen only to the anti-immigration voice, not have an honest national debate on the issue and autocratically remove our rights with all the additional economic fallout that brings with it…
Labour seem to prefer to follow this Tory reasoning than face up to the devastating unpopularity of Corbyn and their refusal to act more collegiately with the other parties… with whom they could have stopped such a ruinous Tory majority.
Altogether, this means that we are being hustled into a mindset that isn’t actually a true reflection of who we are and what we want as a country. We’ve been shut out of having a say because our two parties and our press have decided for us.
This is bad faith politics because it distorts the very real social problems we have through the prisms of what the parties think are easy wins. It’s dishonest, short-termist and ultimately lets all of us down.
I agree, wholeheartedly
It’s “bad faith politics.” Indeed it is. Seems to me that, among many reasons, the parties want first and foremost “Power” and it’s power without social responsibility. It’s autocracy.
I’ve never read Burke so I don’t know what his philosophy of conservatism amounts to, but it’s clear the present Tories have no coherent philosophy based on any kind of social justice or what constitutes a “good society”. It’s more like “greed is good”. I dismiss them on any kind of intellectual level, despise them, but regard them as exceedingly dangerous.
Labour at one time had something of a philosophy of social justice but that slowly ebbed away with Callaghan and more so with Blair, “Mrs Thatcher’s successor”. While Wilson kept us out of Vietnam, Blair was proud to be Bush’s poodle.
Now with Starmer, I find it really difficult to detect a political philosophy or ideology based on values of social justice – or anything. We have thousands sleeping rough, thousands having to use food banks, children without access to connectivity or quiet places to study, the most disastrous Brexit settlement, some of the worst outcomes in the world to the pandemic and Labour (who we must remember not long ago supported Osborne’s austerity) seem content to score lawyerly points rather than sink the knife and twist it.
Marxism has it’s flaws, but at least it’s an argued case. Neither Labour or Tory have any case to put forward for discussion, a case that would point towards a better society where fairness and equity are central. It’s just about power.
Sarah Murphy.
I share your despair at the present state of UK politics. I’m not sure where the change is coming from.
For a brief moment, Labour under Corbyn, really excited me. At last some progressive politics/policies. They were speaking my language
Starmer seems to have reverted back to the Blair philosophy of trying to be like the Tories but with a social conscience. It’s difficult to be sure what exactly Starmer stands for? His suspension of Corbyn and the subsequent suspensions of those who question the decision, does not bode well for the future of progressive policies within the party.
If Labour cannot be changed from within and the Tories are going further to the right, where is the change coming from?
I used to think that the situation in the US was even worse. A two party system, where both parties are effectively singing from the same hymn sheet. But progressives have managed to get a foothold in the Democratic Party and the likes of Bernie Sanders and AOC may be able to pull Biden to the left (a bit).
I can’t see the progressive left doing the same within the Labour Party under Starmer. Be interesting at the next bi-election, if the Labour candidate is picked from the local CLP or, a pro- Starmer candidate is parachuted in, like in the Blair days. Democracy within the party is going to be squashed, I fear.
The irony is, that it was democracy and the membership, that joined Labour under Corbyn, that was his downfall. Delegates deciding policy at conference delt him a fatal blow. By voting to commit to a second referendum (a policy backed by the vast majority of the membership) Corbyn’s fate was sealed.
The membership hadn’t done the electoral maths. The 70 most marginal seats Labour needed to win from the Tories, all voted Leave in the referendum. Likewise, the most marginal seats the Tories needed to win from Labour also voted Leave.
Over 400 seats out of 650, were in areas that voted Leave. It was never a level playing field, even if the opinion polls showed Remain ahead. This was never going to be reflected in parliamentary seats.
Anyway, that was then and now is now!
I can only see electoral reform shifting the log jam but how to bring it about?
The only glimmer of hope I can see is for a hung parliament with Labour as the biggest party. It then has to form a coalition, but the price is a referendum on electoral reform.
But don’t bet against Labour campaigning AGAINST in that referendum!!!!!
I was quite enthusiastic about Starmer during the leadership election because he seems like a competent, capable, sensible adult whike Corbyn, for all of his principles, is an activist not a politician, and on the other side we are faced with incompetent, amoral, cheating, lying scumbags.
I have been underwhelmed so far, and economically I expect them to play it safe in terms of not wanting to rock the neoliberal boat for fear of the “profligate labour” tag. I hope that Johnson’s recent loosening of some spending constraints continues and shifts the centre ground on spending. I’m not optimistic though.
I also hope that once Brexit is seen to be done, it will allow space for politics in the UK to move on. both Brexit and COVID have been utterly suffocating and by the time of the next election we’ll have had ten years of those two things dominating news and current affairs. And if we look back as far as 2008 then really we’re looking at the best part of two lost decades.
It will indeed, as Labour will keep failing once more to gather support from their base, now a homeless base.
I do wonder who advises Starmer, what goes on at the top of Labour to keep those blinkers so solidly attached.
Ive followed Sarah Murphy for a while and she exactly captures my sentiments.
To take a specific example, a Labour party that is prepared to compromise its principles to regain the votes of people who were happy to buy the argument that immigrants and foreigners were responsible for their problems is not worthy of the name. There is an element of xenophobia (and worse) in there that should be unacceptable. They should be out their challenging that argument head on or they are no better that their Tory/UKIP opponents. Also in doing so they fail to challenge the real causes of the problems – jobs, inequality, public services et al – which are mostly home grown.
Its no better than going along with the argument for austerity based on Labour having spent all the money.
Wasn’t it always like this? In my entire U.K. general election voting history I have only ever voted “against” the Tory candidate. Usually by voting Labour, but not always.
Sarah sounds like she’s loudly banging the Lib Dem/ Green drum! So Starmer’ s switch in policy should be good news for them especially if they can “act more collegiately” too. They will have the rejoin vote to themselves.
I’m sticking with Labour. The immediate challenge now is to make sure that we don’t soon have Singapore on Thames. The Tories said they wanted a restoration of democracy. This should not be taken to mean they get all their own way.
Rightly or wrongly most voters think we can’t go back, cap in hand, to the EU. At least not just yet. We have made our bed and we have to lie in it. I think this is what Starmer too was saying yesterday.
I think he is wrong on that
More important, he was wrong to give up on freedom of movement
When capital can roam and labour cannot the return to labour will always fall
Labour should not be supporting that
Richard
Now come on – we know the answers don’t we?
We know that people have been misled on an industrial scale for years (think about how the EU has been portrayed) and now such misinformation is turbo charged illegally using the psychological profiling data from people’s internet use and people are bombarded with information from the monitoring their use. We know that as Jaron Lanier asserts, that sneaky bit about the internet is that is succeeds by CHANGING BEHAVIOUR – by seeking to influence you. This was created in order to sell stuff to people; it has been used however to sell ideas too – the sort of stuff Ms Murphy mentions.
Added to that is (perhaps) people’s in-built reluctance to change what they have got used to – their nice cars, cheap air travel – all portrayed by markets (and the Government even) as being without consequence. I think that this trait could be attributed to those of us who still have a modicum of wealth to play with after 10 years of austerity. Maybe these are the middle class voters for BREXIT in the South East and elsewhere?
And think about the brutalisation of those lower down the pecking order, made to prove for example that they are looking for jobs on the faulty basis of New Labour’s borrowing of Clintonesque social policy and whom since 2010 have had things much harder (Universal Credit sucks – I worked on it for my ALMO, I should know) and as a result have got angrier (the Precariat perhaps?).
It’s also the use of the ‘silent majority’ phenomenon that Nixon used in the Vietnam war – people who hold views that were once held in check by society, but have now been unleashed by the very people who should encourage those attitudes to stay where they are (at home).
Those people are politicians – using any means to get into power as the end game of Neo-liberalism is now increasingly revealed.
Fascist populism has enabled Neo-liberalism to keep going Richard. Right to the end. Gramsci knew this and so did Freire. ‘False consciousness’ is the period we are living in. Orwell showed how it might be too – but who would have thought that the extreme Right instead of the extreme Left would use such tactics given the fear spread about rise of socialism in the post war period?
Quite simply many people have had their capacity for critical consciousness (ably demonstrated by you and others here) sucked out of them by the short term satisfice of buying ‘stuff’ and ‘someone else to blame’.
I know I’m going to sound like a stuck record on this, and after 4000 comments maybe I’ve over stayed my welcome here, but I still maintain the Jesus-like view that the tendency for our population to behave like Ms Murphy describes is not pre-ordained or even organic; it is the result of the deliberate scientific application of certain political and psychological practices/beliefs in order to maintain power.
Think about the book Piers Morgan that was recently share with us on his blog? The Right – driven by those in it who are wealthy – are just ahead of the game all of the time.
And why not? If we had a world as described by you in the Courageous State (oh I wish!!), they would not be as rich or exert the sort of power they can with their money. They would be disabled. For the Rees-Moggs of this world, that is unacceptable to them. They will fight to keep what they have and also, seek to increase it!
And if that means resorting to good old fascism or the same old propaganda techniques the soviet system utilised on the populace to manufacture consent (thank you Herman and Chomsky) – so be it – because for them, the means justifies the ends. Money = Power.
I mean its bloody obvious Richard.
How can a puny species as successful as ours have come to dominate the planet without co-operating with each other and sticking together, from man’s first tribes to the birth of the nation state and nations themselves? Our survival and pre-dominance is based on collective action.
However, the arrogant false consciousness/narratives of von Hayek, Buchanan, Friedmann, Rand and a certain Englishman banging on about the ‘selfish gene’ have all (along with others) hyper-inflated the role of the individual, and emphasised the darker side of existentialism.
Then add in the mendacious stories we’ve been told by politicians in order to simplify the world for us (nod there to Adam Curtis) – for example we had an economic crisis in the 1970’s because of generous welfare systems and not because the West’s backing of Israel offended the Islamic oil producers who then put up the price of oil in response (to name one of a few of the causal elements of economic 1970’s instability).
It’s down to this for me (and we’ve seen this before):
“When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a society, over the course of time they create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.”
― Frédéric Bastiat
Bastiat was right – this is where we are right now. But that group of men cannot maintain their hegemony without manufacturing the consent in the population. And that is what they’ve done. We manufacture consent in many ways as mentioned above – but we also fetishize wealth with TV like ‘Through the Keyhole’ and with an apparent interest in ‘celebrity culture’. One of the things the Left does not get perhaps (but the New Right certainly does) is that people now accept wealth as an ideal, an objective even for themselves so they are not against it. But that is because they do not really know how modern wealth is accrued and maintained – the means. But no matter – leave that to the already rich.
Put simply, don’t look to your neighbour, or the English, or to immigrants or the precariat – look up at your Government and politicians and watch them for your answers to how we got BREXIT, 80,000 + deaths from Covid and problems with terrorism, the NHS crisis – you name it – all created by vested interest driven political mendacity – people who have basically wasted all that was gained in the post war period and allowed the biggest misallocation of resources in human history to occur instead.
I’ll end by quoting Burl Ives as the character ‘Big Daddy’ in the film ‘Cat on a Hot Tin Roof’ – by Tennessee Williams:
“There ain’t nothin’ more powerful than the odour of mendacity. You can smell it. It smells like death”.
Yep – it certainly does to me. From the death of so many Iraqi’s; the death of Covid victims in the UK; the death of proper political discourse and the possible death of the planet itself – all because of political lies perpetrated by those men that Bastiat rightly identified 171 years ago.
As for Ms Murphy, never mind asking ‘Why?’. The big question remains ‘What are we going to do about it?’.
P.S. It was not Piers Morgan but Alistair Campbell’s blog that shared the book ‘The Sovereign Individual’.
Piers Morgan!! No way! Sorry to Mr Campbell.
I know that Ms Murphy is as frustrated as the rest of us BTW and hers is an honest howl for decency and rationalism in public life – badly needed as they are.
I think Sarah is doing her bit….
Very much how I feel.
And, Starmer may be keeping his powder dry, but even he should notice that people want passion from leaders. Parable of the talents comes to mind – I buried them to keep them safe.
What part of any MP etc. thinks not calling out the sh#tshow of Brexit is a good idea. It appears to be similar principles to Republicans in US regarding Trump; they knew what he was like and could reasonably have foreseen what would happen. It is easier, isn’t it, to wait until everyone sees the ‘problem’ before jumping ship.
I agree with the need for passion and authenticity, but come on man… Labour need to be every bit as savvy and cynical as the Tories at their worst in order to win an election.
Otherwise it’s like Stourbridge Town trying to play against Liverpool in the FA cup with Barcelona tactics. To win when the odds are against you sometimes Tony Pulis tactics are your only hope.
Perhaps a dodgy metaphor. But there is far too much denial of reality about Brexit by those who resent it (myself included).
Brexit is electoral poison to Labour. It is far more toxic to them than the Tories. The absolute last thing Starmer should do now is to shout and be passionate on a remain/rejoin ticket. That is exactly what the Tories would want. Labour need lots of water under the bridge on Brexit as fast as possible.
Both Republican and Tory parties have skewed towards the far right in recent decades, possibly under the influence of Bannon/ Cummings. In both cases, there was a recognition that there exists a significant underclass of undereducated, unsupported struggling white people who did not participate in elections and carried a burning resentment that tended to be directed at immigrants, especially when those people flourished where they could not. Both Johnson and Trump have played towards this group as a means of shoring up their base, such that the last Conservative manifesto was very similar to that of the National Front in the 1970s.
At the same time, the tribal loyalties tend to keep old style Tories and Republicans voting for them.
In both cases, the electoral system works to maintain a two-party power balance. There is probably also something about the political animals that stand for election that repels many reasonable, sensible thinkers ( like you, me and Sarah obviously) so that the worst judgement thrown about is that one is ‘playing politics’.
My climate change group sent candidates for the local elections a series of questions on the climate; the Tories en bloc refused to engage with us because they said we had ‘become political’. Duh.
The other major flaw in our system is that political choice is not determined by argument, but by emotion. The sensible way out of the current impasse is for all opposition parties to make a short term pact so that there are only two candidates in every constituency. The resultant government would reform the voting system to provide proportional representation, with the long term result that more people would feel it worthwhile engaging in the political process and we would not be faced with the current system of rotating dictatorship. The real tragedy is that, but for the woeful judgement of those in Parliament at the time, we could now still have a ‘hung Parliament’ in which it would have been necessary to develop government by consensus in a balanced parliament, rather than the dictatorship of idiots that we are saddled with for the next four years (and probably beyond).
Thanks
Maybe the reason there is this malaise of Tory/Labour duopoly is that activists don’t shout loud enough and both parties are supine before the overwhelming power of the main media outlets. They only take notice when there is an allmghty fuss they cant ignore such as Extinction Rebellion and Black Lives Matter. The defenestration of the unions by Thatcher and later under Blair/Brown having not reversed this criminal theft of workers rights has not helped either.
Johnson as a classical scholar will be familiar with the ochlocracy or rule by mob. Machine politics focuses like mass marketing on the lowest common denominator. So minorities can lump it.
We have a similar issue here in Scotland if you are gender critical but Yes for Indy you were faced with the Pro GRA, woke captured SNP or the even deeper down the woke rabbit hole Scottish Greens.
Then the ISP was formed. More keen for Indy than the SNP currently are and in favour of women’s rights. As soon as it was possible I joined. My first party in 54 years. I’m deep in it now both at national and local level.
The solution is third parties. Insurrection in Labour won’t be allowed for a long time now. So you have to think outside the big two.
Easier here in Scotland with the PR system. Why we already have a multiparty democracy. In England you will build starting at the local level. Standing for council elections.
Does the ISP support an independent Scottish currency at independence? It doesn’t say on the website.
Our ‘democracy’ revolves around people, rather than policy.
The trick is to cram policies into this govt saying this what ‘the people’ want.
To limit their action potential with real democratic messaging.
Twitter
or
Petitions
They do not like referenda it spoils the fun of ‘leading the country’.
Blair won’t like. Thatcher hated them.
Even force out the incompetent?
It is a start.
Labour will always advocate that any future immigration policy will be non racist. But even Libdems aren’t advocating removing all immigration controls.
Labour, unlike the Libdems, has never been totally in love with the EU. Support for the EU was always lukewarm and on balalnce. Many of the old eurosceptic members still exist at grassroots level. Most stayed away from the leave campaign purely because they didn’t want to side with Nigel Garage and face accusations of racism.
I’m not sure that Sarah Murphy fully understands the dynamics of the issue within the Labour Party. It’s not realistic to expect anywhere near the same level of commitment as she might hope for.
That can only come from the Lib dems but even they don’t seem fully decided on the question.
If Labour can only deliver on the claim that it is not the government, but otherwise is similar, what point does it have?
Sarah Murphy fully understands the issues as I see them.
My concern is that Labour does not.
Labour is only similar to the Tories in that it has always been hopelessly split on the question of the EU/EEC
Even Tony Blair was first elected on a eurosceptic platform. Owen Jones has written lexit inclined articles.
That euroscepticsm has only recently been set aside, at membership and parliamentary level due to the rise of UKIP/TBP and Nigel Farage. But it’s still there among many Labour voters. That’s the problem to which there is no obvious solution.
There isn’t one. Anyone wanting to campaign to rejoin the EU, above all elde, shouldn’t expect too much from Labour. The Greens and the Lib dems in England and the SNP in Scotland have to be better choices for them. However, those, like myself, who want politics to about more than the question of EU membership might take a different view.
I think the broad coalition that is the Labour Party is no longer sustainable.
The majority of the membership is at odds with the majority of the PLP.
Corbyn’s tenure, brought this devision to the fore.
If we did get PR then the party would split. The left would form a new party and the right would inherit the Labour “brand” but have no “door knockers” on the ground. That’s probably why the powers that be in the party are not embracing PR.
Be fascinating to watch that play out if FPTP is ever ditched.
I have two immediate thoughts:
We were ‘offered’ Proportional Representation, which might have helped more people feel represented but, unsurprisingly, both main parties campaigned against it (turkeys and Christmas spring to mind) because they would lose the chance of complete power and end up having to share and compromise. Unsurprisingly, it was voted down.
My second thought is that it is all a bit like the American dream – anyone can become rich and successful… and poor people will vote to keep their class poor in the (usually vain) hope that they will be the lucky ones and make it big… this is more enticing than socialism and that dream is rammed home by right wing parties and the media. So we end up where we are – people vote for something that will objectively do themselves harm because of a minuscule chance that they will be the winners… (forgetting the xenophobic and several other reasons).
First Past the Post is the problem.
It is not democracy.
It is not democratic to have only two parties that can win an election determined by a small number of marginal constituencies.
The two main parties have to go through cyclical processes of ‘filtering’ their policies to try and reach a lowest common denominator middle ground.
If we had PR there would be room for parties to follow what they actually believe in and not just what their filtering process leads them to believe is their best shot at the next election.
FPTP is not democracy.
I could barely understand Sarah Murphy’s sentence.
Regrettably, Richard’s first line was little better.
These are prime examples of a careless lack of clarity of expression.
Sorry Nirman – but to me Sarah’s comment was absolutely clear
We both have Athens of thousands of Twitter followers precisely because we are clear
Oops – twice!!
One answer is FPTP. Parties with weak leaders triangulate.
Another is that the people Sarah describes – our people – are represented by only one national paper. Most newspaper readers read toxic papers which come to define the norm.
And we are too DAMN reasonable. UKIP captured the tory party by obsessing over one issue and forcing it to align with that one issue. We see many issues – Sarah lists 7 – and vote accordingly so are votes lack focus.
May I have temerity to answer Sarah’s question? It’s quite simple and it’s worrying that amongst the responses here there is no mention of it. To paraphrase Clinton but with no disrespect to Sarah: it’s FPTP, stupid. This is an anti-democratic system designed, yes designed, to produce a two party system which at best purposely denies the wishes of a huge swathe of voters and at worst could allow one party to win EVERY parliamentary seat with a fraction of the popular vote. (Who knew that?) Worse still it discourages voters from voting as they would wish, because their votes count for nothing, and it therefore discourages many people from voting at all. But worse still, any party deviating from a narrow, right of centre agenda will be savaged not only by the opposition but by a rabid media. So the two main parties compete for this centre ground. Hence Starmer’s denunciation of the whole of Corbyn’s progressive agenda. This is clear in the US which, of course uses FPTP.
The most powerful tool used by the Tory party is the ‘profligacy’ of the Labour Party, which they claim will ‘ruin the country’. (As a bonus, this also allows them to falsely justify their austerity measures). The answer to this is MMT, the basis of which is as well understood by the Tories as the benefits to them of FPTP. This is why they are adamant that FPTP will remain in place forever (citing the sham 2011 voting referendum as proof of people’s wishes) and that MMT is a discredited theory that would bankrupt the country.
So please don’t be sidetracked. The solution, the only solution, is to get rid of FPTP a corrupt, anti-democratic, pro-right wing voting system supported by predominantly right-wing media, and at the same time expose the lies – for they are lies, not mistakes – about government spending through a vigorous campaign for MMT against fierce opposition from the media and vested interests.
To partly know why Trump ( and Farage here) gathered so many angry followers it is worthwhile to watch on Netflix a film called ‘Saving Capitalism’. A former U.S. Secretary of Labor investigates the way over the past 20 years financial inequality has grown.
Sure Andrew. Now how do we get rid of FPTP?
I agree FPTP has to go and will be part of the answer, but you could equally well end up with a coalition of the right – in 2015 Ukip polled 12%.
Something we do need, is some new political philosophy of the Left, that is, if there is any “Left” anymore.
Labour have failed twice to challenge important Tory narratives that have managed to dominate public discourse.
Firstly with austerity where they failed to change the narrative that the crash was caused by Labour spending rather than the City and the financial crash. They ended up going along with austerity and the need for balanced books, and by default accepting that it was all Labour’s fault. The Tories still attack them on this and the idea that Labour are unable to manage the economy
Secondly with Brexit, the narrative was that the UK’s problems were caused by immigration and by the EU, and that the EU itself was the reason for the UK’s levels of immigration. Both arguments were again utterly false with the problems being caused by decades of policies within the UK, most recently austerity but policies that date back through previous governments of both colours. There is a proportion of any community that are susceptible to the argument that their problems are caused by ‘others’ and any study of history shows that unscrupulous politicians are able to exploit and amplify that. The Right has been completely taken over by that kind of politician. Now no different to UKIP
Again, Labour failed to challenge the argument and even ended up complicit – remember the notorious mug? Apologising for the EU’s few failings (no its not perfect) whilst failing to promote the huge benefits. Continuing to accept Brexit with little questioning is to continue to accept that the UK’s problems are caused by immigrants and the EU and that somehow those problems will now go away. In practice as should be blindingly apparent, they are and will get significantly worse.
I also think that a Labour party that is prepared to blame problems on ‘others’ is one that is betraying what should be its fundamental values and principles. Voters that think that way, should be challenged, not by calling them racists, though a proportion undoubtedly are, but by repeatedly pointing out the real failings that have caused the problems and promoting policies that address them. There is plenty there with which to attack the Tories. Pandering to prejudice should not be what a respectable Labour party does and it will not help solve the real problems,
Whilst I wholly agree with the arguments for PR and the failings of FPTP, on its own its not going to get a government into power that will implement it. The British public has shown itself to be pretty uninterested in voting systems or even regional governments, which I’d argue should be part of the package.
That means first getting a Labour or centre-left coalition in power, which is committed to PR. That in turn means a Labour party with enough core policies to appeal to a working majority of voters, that has a leadership team that proves to be credible and serious over a few years, and is serious about working with others. It also has to stop all the internal squabbling. Might be unpopular to say it but the Blair era was serious about winning and about not seen to be fighting internally.
It has some way to go at the moment but I’d credit it with having made a start
I agree Robin – the coalition is vital