Left-wing voters, what is your most right wing belief, and right wing voters what is your most left wing belief?

[ffsnewusername]

I’m on nights and fancy something to read.

Thanks

It's certainly interesting to me that you have framed this as a misunderstanding of those who formerly considered themselves left of centre. Rather than say, the remodelling of the left over our lifetime from one rooted in class analysis - to the one we see now in which people can express an opinion on immigration levels and the affect on the working class, that leaves those same posters feeling jettisoned from considering themselves 'properly left'.

Broadly centrist and socially liberal but have some more extreme views.

RW- Although I am in favour of a good safety net (which as much as possible be more of a trampoline to bounce people back into a more productive and positive lives), people should take a lot more responsibility for themselves and not just rely on the state to hand hold them. Perhaps controversially here, this is why I don't support WASPI women. It is not hard to keep up to date with your own retirement age.

LW- Taking more responsibility for yourself means selling your family home if necessary. Property should not be as absurdly tax beneficial as it is. Why should someone with a big house and small bank account be more favourably treated than someone with a small house and big bank account?

Other RW- Not everyone should get a vote. Some people who are so absurdly ignorant should be barred from taking decisions on behalf of the rest of us. If you don't know that your Councillor doesn't report to your MP (as I have been told), or think that vaccines make you magnetic, you should be denied a vote.

Authoritarian- Social media and the press need more closely regulated. It is clear that the west and social liberalism is under attack by bad actors trying to split countries internally and from each other (see the network of supposedly Scottish Nationalist accounts on social media that went quiet when the Israeli bombing knocked out the internet in Iran, and then went quiet again when Iran cut the Internet itself to make the protests harder) and something needs done about it.

Usual mental gymnastics (contortions).

Hmm. possibly.

I don't necessarily mean the immigration stuff as the left have always been , shall we say, interesting on this.

I do think there is a a social phenomenon that , society wide, left-er views are considered 'nicer' , 'softer' and 'kinder' so people say they are left, or liberal, and when one digs down they aren't.

By saying the 'remodelling of the left' do you still think Labour, under Starmer are a left wing party?

I consider myself left wing and (whilst I will vote Labour tactically for sure) the current iteration is way to the right of me on almost every issue (as a party - individual MPS are a spectrum). And I'm not Hard Left.

What I think I am trying to say is that some people who have once or twice voted Labour believe they did so because they are 'left wing'. Actually they did so because Labour is no longer left wing. Totally how Blair refashioned the party.

Very true. I wanted Corbyn for PM, so I think I qualify. 😄

i’m left wing. While I agree with censoring the work of creators who have shown themselves to have behaved personally in a reprehensible/criminal manner like Michael Jackson, William Mayne, Eric Gill or David Williams, I do not believe in the censorship of creators who were creating within the context of their times, like Kipling or Conrad.

Gosh, I couldn't tell you what Starmer is doing and even if he were to make it plain you could guarantee that he'd be ripping it up only weeks later.

Like I say, I think most people would say that I lean right of centre. Ten years ago, I would say I thought I was nicer, softer kinder - I'd say I was left wing. But then I felt like being nicer, softer and kinder was being utilised against me and I was being asked to mobilise against my own interests, my sex and my class.

Honestly, I'm not sure where I land now. I don't fit easily anywhere apart from the fact that I can't abide this current government.

Anyway, it's all digressing from the op's point. I think it's been quite nice to see the fluid opinions of individuals while left and right discourses have become more rigid. And I think my point is that it's not fair to police how posters narrate their politics, especially against its shifting priorities.

LW. I worry we may be over diagnosing autism, adhd etc.

I agree totally, but I wasn't intentionally policing , as you call it. I was thinking out loud how some people's 'version' of Left is so hugely different from mine (so,as an example, 'I once voted Labour'). I was brought up on Red Clydeside so that may be partly why.

😁 Probably. Yes, perhaps you are right. Maybe people coded themselves as left wing only as an abjection to the bogeyman of what we were told the right of centre stood for - eating babies for breakfast and so forth.

Other RW- Not everyone should get a vote. Some people who are so absurdly ignorant should be barred from taking decisions on behalf of the rest of us. If you don't know that your Councillor doesn't report to your MP (as I have been told), or think that vaccines make you magnetic, you should be denied a vote.

@Rearranging The only place where I’ve heard suggestions that a test should be required before voting is allowed is on mn. A couple of people said this should happen after the Brexit referendum and iirc a couple of posters have suggested it when the possibility of a Reform government was being discussed.
I don’t think any of these posters were right wing - where have you seen or heard it suggested by right wing voters?
I’m not doubting you - I’m just interested.

While I agree with censoring the work of creators who have shown themselves to have behaved personally in a reprehensible/criminal manner like Michael Jackson, William Mayne, Eric Gill or David Williams.

@CurlewKate when you say ‘censoring’, do you mean works by these people should be destroyed?
Picasso and Lucien Freud mistreated vulnerable women - I’m not sure if what they did was criminal but it was certainly reprehensible. Should they be censored and their works no longer sold at auction or displayed in galleries?

It's fascinating to see this urge that some people on the left have to try to police who is or isn't counted as left wing.

You'll notice that nobody who has described themselves as right wing on this thread has tried to do anything similar.

..because the spectrum is always moving, even between countries, our left wing parties would be centre or even right in many european ones.

Harold Wilsons policies in the 60s were way to the left of Corbyn, as to their 1945 Manifesto? nowadays you'd have @peacefulpeach saying it is socialism/communism gone mad!

Plus of course, left or right, no party has a monoploly on good ideas.

To left or right is more to do with the role of the state in society, the right believe it should have a very small role and the left think it should be far bigger, plus compassion, many RW people i know (not all) don't have much.

I'd argue that as everything is now worse than it was in 2010 (even Zahawi says nothing works in the UK, even though HE was in Govt) the small state idea has proven itself to be useless.

OK, as I said I wasn't policing.

And, yes, I am now being policed... for musing.

I have encountered plenty of right wing people on here clarifying and defining what right and left mean. I don't think that's at all odd or unusual.

I'm left wing and I think currently my most 'right wing' belief, or one that was always a traditionally conservative value, is in personal responsibility. I have never thought was at odds with being left wing but within some circles it is treated that way because of course it's taken to extremes and 'what about'.

Frankly there are a good few here that aren't compatible with being left wing and are just an overall shift to the right.

That's not right wing, that's just ignorance. I know they're often one and the same but still.

I've just come back to this thread and I see the name calling has started🙄
Some people just can't help themselves

(LW here) The q about extra knowledge-based qualifications for voting - that’s more on the authoritarian versus tolerance axis, I think. To my shame, if I ruled the world I probably would stop some people from voting, because if you’re basing your vote on a wild misunderstanding of how everything works, you’re not going to be able to make any kind of rational choice.

I don’t mean Brexit, which had fiendishly complex levels that most of us (and plenty of MPs!) didn’t fully understand. But people who don’t understand the absolute basics — people who dick on about potholes without knowing that a huge proportion of council spending goes on elder care, and that councils don’t have any choice in the matter — those people really annoy me.

And yes, the WASPI issue, flipping heck. There are literally millions of more vulnerable people I’d rather spend the money (billions of pounds!) on.

I'd argue that as everything is now worse than it was in 2010 (even Zahawi says nothing works in the UK, even though HE was in Govt) the small state idea has proven itself to be useless.

Thats interesting. As a centre-right person, I would say the opposite. We have essentially had a leftist uniparty since Blair, and we haven’t had a leader who was ideologically committed to rolling back the state since (probably) Thatcher. Tory administrations since then, particularly in more recent years, have been so frit of being called kitten boilers etc, that they have abandoned any pretence at conservative ideology in favour of slightly watered down state largesse.

I’d be up for a return to proper one-nation Conservatism, but I’m fucked if I’ll vote either Conservative or Reform. And Labour is equally unconscionable, if not more. I’ve no idea what “wing” that makes me.

A few of my policy opinions manage to alienate both sides in turn in a single sentence!

• immigration: for a very high quantity of very high quality people.
• paedophiles: life-long prison sentences in holiday-camp conditions.
• net zero: we should do massively more, by paying poor people elsewhere to make carbon savings for us.

As you might guess, I’m politically homeless.

Left of centre, mostly centrist.
Most RW belief is that state schools are mostly failing not just academically but socially, unless you live in London, and taxing education is something we should be ashamed of, particularly with the SEN crisis. Knowing multiple kids who were bullied in failing State provisions I fully understand why parents who can will do all they can to pay for private; kids with Autism and other SEN are bearing the brunt of Labour's tax.

@PacificState If you restrict voting to those who understand (even at the most basic level) local council funding and statutory mandates you will have 5% of the population at best left.

Yeah, you’re probably right. But if I could wave a wand and impart one big piece of structural understanding to every voter in the uk, I think it would be that (the basic outlines of the social care issue - not council funding/statutory mandates).

I actually think the dementia tax was a good idea, that’s how politically homeless I am.

The problem isn't the voters, its that the main parties have taken us for fools for too long and now we see the results but even with these the levels of disillusionment, just 25% are backing an alternative.

Brexit happened because people believed the lies told and why shouldn't we? we live in a class ridden deferential society still.