UK Politics

Only briefly Brian, as we were discussing parallels between US and UK.  Other than that I'm more interested in learning about the UK which is why I asked what I did. 

The trouble with the left in this country, aside from a reluctance to move away from outdated statist positions, is the appalling tendency to continually split. It is the single most defining and unappealing aspect of our left wing politics.

So, we have The Socialist Party, Socialist Labour Party, Respect, Respect Reform, Communist Party of Great Britain, Socialist Workers Party, and so on and so forth ad nauseum. As soon as one lot springs up, you can bet your bottom dollar that some member within will declare that comrades do not expouse true socialism, and bugger off and start a new "pure" party. Then they will split asunder, and, well, you get the picture.

The Green Party suffers from this a little bit from attempting to portray itself as an "old Labour" party and finding out that many comrades will simply not be able to offer their full support, because the socialism portrayed is not "pure" enough. In addition to this, they have the added problem of attempting to make themselves electable under our arcane electoral system.

I have been fighting for many years within my trade union to bring together a coalition of like minded, radical, libertarian, yet realistic socialists in order to offer a credible alternative to the right wing. I am of an age now where I realise this will probably never happen, and, depressingly, I am only 45!

The Labour Party will not change dramatically under which ever Muppet is elected as leader. Indeed, Tony Benn himself once declared that his party was a shocking disappointment in office. He was right then, and he is right now. It is simplistic to merely blame this on a right wing media, although this doesn't help. It is the party itself which has moved so far away from the traditions and values that made the labour movement great. The splinter parties try to hold on to ritual politics that simply have no place in the modern world.

Therein lies the problem. How does a credible left wing party offer a modern alternative to the right wing hegemony prevalent these days, one that commits itself to localism, whilst protecting the weak and vulnerable? One that doesn't bankrupt the bloody country every time it comes to power?

Sorry all....rant over

Finnforest wrote: Very interesting Rob, that the Greens there are viewed as somewhat naive, I think they suffer from that here too.  Although Ralph Nader gave the party a very seasoned head for a few cycles.  Beware the common perceptions of the US though.  As with the UK I think these media perceptions are too simple, things are always more complicated.  It's overstating to believe that all Rs are knuckle dragging extremists, and that all Ds are centrist.  IMO, anyway.  I personally know many moderate conservatives among my friends and family, and I know many Ds who are truly to the Left.  But I'll leave it that, this is the UK thread, not a US thread. That is why I was so interested in your perceptions in this thread....its great to get the guy on the UK street view rather than what we read in the media.  Thanks guys, nice to learn a bit about the UK's politics

Pretty sure that 90% of anything we hear about the US here is about the fringes or vast over-generalisations (the Tea Party comes up an alarming amount... a strange celebration of the destruction of privately owned property by a mob). Sure if I knew more about the US's politics, I'd be more aware of the nuances within it.

FinnForest wrote: What kind of reform is this that is so badly needed?  What would it achieve going forward?

Our parliament is elected on a first-past-the-post basis. The Labour and Conservative parties get between them an inflated (by tactical voting) 65-70% of the vote most elections but normally at least 85% of the seats (most of the rest are grabbed by nationalists and the Lib Dems). They also tend to win solid majorities from what are far less than half of the electorate. At the last election the Lib Dems gained a small increase in percentage share of the overall vote and still lost six seats.

Blair won a majority of comfortably over 60% (I think) of the seats available from only 43.2% of the vote...

I don't think that's democratic... at best, it's democracy based on an obviously outdated local perspective and at worst it's a self-perpetuating system that ensures the over-representation of some areas and the primacy of the two main parties.

Really, we need a democratic system rather closer to straight proportional representation (the single transferrable vote sounds most appealing of the options we currently use in various non-parliamentary elections in the UK to me) but alternative vote will at least correct some of the representation problems we have here and will hopefully make it harder for the currently leading party to sweep electoral reform under the rug whenever they're not under threat of losing power.


Edited by TGM: Orb - September 18 2010 at 11:20

BLOB!



But electoral reform...it's all about parliamentary representation better reflecting the results of the popular vote, if I recall correctly?

The few Green candidates and spokespeople I've met appear to have little understanding of the comprehensive government or the economics they espouse and they lean towards a degree of left I'm not really comfortable with. Regrettable, really. If they stuck to being primarily an advocacy of a more neutral pro-environmental approach rather than trying to pick up old Labour's rather oversized clothes, they might be more electable.

@Finnforest, I think the conception of Left/Right is very relative. I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say almost everyone in the UK would consider the Republican party the extreme Right, and a lot of them wouldn't really consider the Democrats to constitute the Left.

As has been said, the media has a disproportionately right-wing mindset, as does the education system. I was basically taught that right-wing economics was the correct answer in school (and this is only a few years back) and only really reconsidered it independently and after seeing a couple of speakers who genuinely understood and believed in the principles of the left-wing economic policy they were defending (Dave Nellist in particular).


Edited by TGM: Orb - September 18 2010 at 10:59

How many parties are currently represented in the UK parliament? 

Trouserpress wrote: Finnforest wrote: What I don't understand, as an outsider, is why didn't this Clegg dude join with Labor if there is realignment going on.  Why wouldn't they choose to join labor to fight the conservatives, as opposed to helping the conservatives? Clegg wanted power. Labour had been in government since 1997, with their popularity waning year on year. After Blair left and Gordon Brown was 'installed' as our new Prime Minister (no election, not even an internal leadership election within the party), Labour's support dwindled to the point where an election victory was extremely unlikely. Many had always assumed the Lib Dems had more in common with Labour on an ideological level, but Clegg had no interest in joining forces with an unpopular party and an almost universally disliked leader.

@Finnforest, I think a majority in the UK is 326 seats... the Coalition Gov't has a margin of 37 or so, while a 'Rainbow Coalition' (Labour, Lib Dems and various nationalist parties and our one and only Green MP) would've had a tiny majority and been beholden to the whims of absolute minority parties. In political terms, it just wasn't plausible in a country where parliament has to ratify just about all of the executive's decisions.

It would've been completely impossible for a Lib-Dem Labour coalition to work for a lot of reasons. Not least a fair number of individual Labour party members pathetically trying to make personal political capital from hammering Brown/declaring they'd lost the election/attacking the notion of Mandelson's 'Rainbow Coalition' idea and trying to knock down the Lib Dems. If Labour had approached the last election as a party and not as individuals, they might have kept enough of the vote to be able to form a coalition now.

What everyone has to understand here is that the chance to push through electoral reform is a literal once in a lifetime chance (if even that). Such reform is certainly the most important thing politically for the country in the long term. If Clegg gets a trajectory towards meaningful electoral reform here by a successful AV referendum (which both of the other parties have supported when it looked like they were at a disadvantage but disdained when actually in power), then I can't fault him.


Edited by TGM: Orb - September 18 2010 at 10:43

Finnforest wrote: Dean wrote: UK parties are left when compared to the two US parties, though obviously not as left as David, Steve and myself would be happy with. Greens in this country are left-ish, but have some weird and incompatible ideas on science, technology and manufacturing that makes them unattractive to most voters. Oooh, please expand on this.  As a former US Green, what is it about the UK Greens that makes you say that.  I'm curious why the party I know from here is not wildly more popular in Europe, they seem to embody the progressive values I hear are desired by many of you.  So I'm curious about the bolded.

In Sweden the two main problems people have with the Greens is their compact resistance to nuclear power and the fact that they want to raise the petrol tax a lot.

They don't consider nuclear power safe enough, and as it's not a renewable source of energy (even though it's nearly CO2 neutral), they think the money should go into developing alternative sources of energy instead. This (understandably) make traditional left-voters in industry unions a bit uncomfortable, energy-intensive as their workplaces are.  They won't close down reactors on purely ideological reasons though (even though that's the ultimate goal, naturally), but it still makes many feel a bit uneasy about them.

Raising of the petrol tax. Doesn't sit well with the rural areas.

Thirdly, a very progressive stance on most social issues, even with Swedish standards.

But will still be the third largest party if the numbers stay the same until Monday .
They'll get my vote tomorrow.

Oh, and they actually have a rich history of not so great ideas. Born from alternative, 70s, live-in-a-cabin-in-the-woods-with-goats-in-the-living-room, prog-listening hippies. Hrm.

But they've grown up.


Edited by LinusW - September 18 2010 at 10:21

LinusW wrote: Indeed. I think triangulating for the political middle-ground is as much a phenomena in the UK as it is here in Sweden. But here that is true for both the Right and the Left (the Left more or less silently accepts tax cuts from the Right, the Right speaks about building the best welfare state in the world) However, there are obvious risks. Populist ideas tend to sneak in to the debate in such a climate and the political debate becomes deflated and anaemic, a sort of culture of agreement, where progressive and dissenting forces find it hard to voice their opinion. Political vision suffers so that political stability can prosper.

Very well put. In the UK's case at least, I think we should also acknowledge the role of a largely right wing press. One of the Labour leadership candidates (one who is, sadly, very unlikely to win) talked despairingly in a recent interview about Gordon Brown's constant attempts to please readers of the Daily Mail (a comically right wing populist paper). By paying disproportionate attention to the media, politicians grant the media disproportionate power.