Do people see centre left parties as more moral?

Speaking of grift, rumors are swirling that Hillary "we came, we saw, he died" Clinton is going to run in 2024. I'm sure you'll be thrilled that someone renowned for destroying nations - and therefore not at all extreme - might be the next President.

There's no way she will win, surely? She couldn't even beat Trump! Surely the Democrats have better candidates

There does seem to be a perception that anything remotely framed as 'left wing' or 'progressive' is inherently moral and superior by those who subscribe to such ideas. I'm intrigued when some people deny this because it's pretty obvious from reading all kinds of stuff online and from conversations in person that this is the mainstream narrative and general mindset among 'lefties/liberals'. It's all about Good vs Bad to them.
There is no acknowledgement that people on the soft or centre right may also care about various social issues, but probably disagree on how to best fix them.

What I've noticed over the years is that people that tend towards the left are very invested in the concept of 'marginalised groups'. Anything or anyone labelled as marginalised must be supported wholeheartedly against a perceived 'oppressor'. The validity of the marginalised group must never be questioned. - that's the important bit...

The benefit of this approach is that people who are affected by injustice or treated unfairly are supported and given consideration. The downside is that there ends up being an infantilisation of such people / groups. They need to be patronisingly viewed as perpetual victims with no agency so that the narrative can continue.

Another big downside is that groups / people that aren't particularly marginalised or oppressed can (deliberately or unconsciously) reframe themselves as such and thereby get the unquestioning allegiance of those that tend towards the left. We see this with the rise of identity politics. The simplistic oppressor vs oppressed narrative leaves many people feeling uncomfortable about themselves and with much self-loathing, but call yourself non-binary or self-diagnose a list of conditions and voila, you have conveniently switched from 'oppressor' group to 'oppressed' and 'marginalised'.
And because claims of marginalisation are not allowed to be questioned under this framework, it is susceptible to manipulation and exploitation, ironically by those with power and influence.

I don't have as much exposure to right-wing political views until fairly recently, but again over the years I've noticed there's a tendency to favour individual ability and initiative. This has its merits and demerits as well.

Those that lean left prefer more government intervention and less individual accountability, while those that lean right prefer less government intervention and more individual effort. Neither is inherently moral or good, and in my opinion different issues need different combinations of both types of approaches.

The authoritarian / liberal axis and the conservative / progressive axis also adds further complicated dimensions to people's views and I agree with previous posts that left-right categorisation is becoming increasingly irrelevant.

Issues like gender ideology and Brexit are fascinating in a sense because people from all parts of the political spectrum can either support or oppose it depending on the angle they take.

Like you can be an avid supporter of gender ideology because you think anyone who calls themselves trans is marginalised without question, or you think an individual should be free to do whatever they like irrespective of how it might affect others/society or even themselves, or you think men and women should conform to strict stereotypes and those that don't are somehow 'aberrations' that should be 'corrected' by surgery or legal changes.

Similarly, those that oppose gender ideology might take the view that simply claiming one is marginalised or oppressed isn't sufficient - you have to consider material evidence and reality; or individual liberty has its limits especially when it starts to impact others or society in a wider sense; or that government enforcement of certain beliefs and social norms are an infringement on individual liberty, free speech, freedom of belief etc; or that 'men should be men and women should be women' and a religious / very conservative approach would be to oppose gender identity on the basis of that principle.

Most of their other conservatives were Enlightenment type classical liberals.

Similarly their leftist tradition is somewhat different, in part because it developed against a different conservative tradition.

Both their parties are very broad, and include both moderates and some very extreme positions. Trump was an anomaly, in that he was always, as a private citizen, a Democrat, and in politics he was drawing on some old fashioned leftism and also old fashion conservatism of the non-liberal kind. Which is why there was a contingent of voters whose first two choices were either sanders/Trump. or vice versa.

When you look at the questions they ask, I think that's the problem - they are making the wrong assumptions about what ideas correlate with authoritarianism. I think it's basically out of date thinking.

The Democrat* Party abandoned us, not the other way around. The Party is now nothing but an inter-generational grift.

Speaking of grift, rumors are swirling that Hillary "we came, we saw, he died" Clinton is going to run in 2024. I'm sure you'll be thrilled that someone renowned for destroying nations - and therefore not at all extreme - might be the next President.

*I don't use the word "democratic" here for the same reason I'll never refer to a man as "she".

So ... what you do is ...

Cut a hole in the ice

Dangle your Fishing line through the hole

Then wait ...

Exercise patience cos it might take a little while

... the Republican Party in the United States then I’d say that they are a party of the moderate/mainstream centre right ...

This is a joke yeah?

The movement towards self-ID has happened more less simultaneously across Western nations. That should be a big clue that this is not happening because of any particular politician or political party in the UK. It's a broader phenomenon.

The activist base who support and push for this appear to be drawn pretty exclusively from the socially progressive end of the political spectrum (albeit that some of the philosophical underpinnings of the movement could be argued to be influenced by elements of libertarian individualism). As there are more of these people on the left, it is unsurprisingly the more left wing and/or socially liberal political parties that have embraced self-ID and the trans movement more generally. But there are also examples (given in this thread) of socially liberal but right of centre politicians who support this cause and it is not inconceivable that a Conservative government trying to burnish its progressive credentials could one day try to bring in self-ID.

Paradoxically many of the strongest opponents of self-ID are drawn from the social progressive part of the political spectrum. This is probably because those are the people who have the greatest exposure to the ideology, have spent the most time considering the implications and therefore have the most well thought out objections. By contrast, I don't think many opponents on the right differentiate this issue from their general antipathy towards left-wing "wokeness".

This is not at root a party political issue, and no part of the political spectrum is wholly to blame nor wholly free of responsibility.

It's the "soft power" held by those groups that is driving the agenda.

This. It's thoroughly embedded in many Universities, for example.

I agree with NotDavidTennant re the driving forces.

A left wing government is in power in Scotland.

Here's a report on one of its recent achievements.

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/019b25a6-7a3e-11ec-9998-b2483743c25e?shareToken=cd6081f3c8b24a33a86ec80f032e5467

The Left isn't in power now

Well they don't have government power (at least not at the UK level), but most of the movement we have seen towards self-ID has not been driven by the government. It's been driven by activist groups and NGOs like Stonewall, Mermaids, etc. It's the "soft power" held by those groups that is driving the agenda.

On the trans issue, politicians (both on the left and right) are mostly following, nor leading. Debating which government the changes happened under is moot.

You keep referring to past Tory ministers yet ignore Liz Truss.

Why are you so desperate to pretend this is not being pushed by the left?

It's a bit like the defence of Communism where apologists try to defend the real- life disasters Communism has caused by claiming "but they aren't real communists"

Its been discussed so often on this board you can go and do your own research. Start with the Penny Mordaunt webchat and the threads about Maria Miller and PSHE, which was originally supposed to tackle male sexual violence against girls in schools but was immediatly co-opted.

Are you really trying to claim there isnt? The Left is not in power in England, and isnt doing much of a job in opposition either.

Are you claiming there is as much support for self ID from right wing politicians as left wing?

To answer the OP- I do. I thought DC might have been a bit more human because of family circumstances, but that was sadly not the case.

The Left isn't in power now, and several people have said 'Right and left support self ID for different reasons'.

I'm amused at the arguments on here trying to distance the left from this when it is so clearly the left which is pushing it.

In Scotland the SNP have lowered the voting age and direct the school curriculum to induct their ideologies in children.

The argument that women are more likely to vote left was one of the arguments used against women's suffrage.

Henry Asquith (Liberal leader and Prime Minister) opposed women's suffrage at least partly on the grounds that women would vote Conservative.

And indeed women were consistently more likely to vote Conservative than men until about 2010. Some data and analysis here:

ukandeu.ac.uk/gender-gaps-in-the-2019-general-election/

I'm a centrist and a swing voter. Part of the reason why I swing from one party to another is because I value change - I think there is harm in one party being in power too long regardless of who they are. They start to feel unaccountable and corruption seeps in. Policies they put in place are not reexamined to see if they are working as 'we put them in place so they must be right' and biases are embeded. Representatives are chosen by parties for reasons other than to represent the voters (if they will be voted in regardless why worry what the voters think).

Just look at the SNP to see the problems with lack of change, or labour groups in places like Liverpool, or Crispin Blunt.

Time out of power should be a time to reflect and listen to all the voters. Labour seem to have decided it is time to bunker down.

Anyway, to answer OP's question: Inused to, but not any more. Yes I've probably changed a bit, but I think The Left has changed quite a bit too.

They have long ago forgotten their leftwing roots.

Yes I think that's the real issue.