In thinking that Left = Good and Right = Bad has gone too far?

[WilmaFlintstone1]

A few things have made me pause in the last few days and I realised I have become increasingly irritated by the Left vs Right discourse,

Take the recent spat between Lee Anderson and Jack Monroe. Now neither of them covered themselves in glory but I don’t think demonising him because he is Tory and praising Jack because she is a Lefty is right. They both have deep flaws and neither is getting it right.

The Margaret Thatcher statue is another thing. Why are people pelting it with eggs? Firstly in a country where there are food shortages it’s immoral to be doing this. Secondly I am not getting the wholesale glee with which certain commentators are reporting it. The very woke lot being all “hey, people are selling eggs by the statue” to wholesale amusement. I just keep thinking “FFS get over yourselves.”

Now I hated Margaret Thatcher BUT she was the first female PM which was in itself a massive step forwards. I am not about to go pelting her statue with eggs, yes I’d rather the investment has been put into local services in that community but pelting a statue with eggs won’t change that.

Its become as though some people will pass any behaviour because it’s Lefties sticking it to the Right.

For removal of all speculation I’d probably consider myself a Lefty and they tend to get my vote…for what that’s worth in my heavily Blue area

isn’t it possible that there are deep flaws both sides?

Should add that among those armed were some of the ‘Proud Boys’ now charged with seditious conspiracy. One of their leaders recently flipped and took a plea deal. I look forward to the rest being tried.

Here is an article about one of the ‘Oath Keepers’, Amit Mehta, who recently took a plea deal:

abcnews.go.com/amp/Politics/oath-keeper-emotional-accepts-2nd-plea-deal-jan/story?id=84400519

Amit admitted to being party to a conspiracy to oppose by force the lawful transfer of presidential power.

Another of the Oath Keepers, Joshua James, admitted that he and one of the other leaders had agreed to use any means necessary — including deadly force — to interfere with the transfer of power. They vowed “to use lethal force against anyone who tried to remove President Trump from the White House.”

One of the Oath Keeper leaders, Stewart Rhodes, went on a buying spree in the days leading up to the attack, spending more than $20,000 on guns and equipment for the attack. James, in an encrypted message, confirmed that the Oath Keepers were well armed.

In the buildup to Jan 6, Rhodes also told a regional Oath Keeper leader that if Biden assumed the presidency, “We will have to do a bloody, massively bloody revolution against them. That’s whats going to have to happen.”

These cases are still ongoing, and we are likely still seeing only the tip of the evidentiary iceberg. There are 11 charged as part of this particular conspiracy, but the Oath Keepers weren’t the only groups who participated in the attack with the intent to overthrow the government by force.

I can absolutely accept that not everybody at the capitol that day was a violent insurrectionist, but attempts at painting January 6 as a ‘peaceful protest’ are dangerous and reprehensible.

Yes, that's true, and many of the Obama supporters were very disappointed in him for one reason or another. He didn't bring the change they hoped for. Trump and Sanders both spoke very directly to working class people about jobs.

Americans don't really have the same kind of of a non-partisan civil service. I don't think the head of the FBI is normally an outright partisan position but it doesn't seem unnatural to Americans that a president might appoint someone closer to his own political views in the way it would to us.

1week,

Or do they want decent jobs, homes and schools in their area, immigration restricted to legal entrants, lower crime, society to take sex and marriage more seriously? Nobody respectable seems interested in finding out, rather caricaturing half their own country.

I think that's definitely not true of some of those issues. Especially regarding sex and marriage, society has thought about things at great length andmoved on, and they are simply a minority that hasn't.

But on other issues, it's absolutely true that lots of good, secure, decently paid working class jobs have gone and the established politicians have no remedy for this. I understand that opinion polling suggested that Bernie Sanders would have beaten Trump in 2016, and it's speculated that the reason is that he'd have tried harder to help those communities economically (and I daresay because he's male.)

Or do they want decent jobs, homes and schools in their area, immigration restricted to legal entrants, lower crime, society to take sex and marriage more seriously? Nobody respectable seems interested in finding out, rather caricaturing half their own country.

Define "respectable" for me, please. Across the western world, respectable is conflated with liberal in the media and social media. Decently paid, secure, respected trade-served blue collar jobs have been off-shored and replaced by the gig economy.

I really don't understand the surprise and outrage when those people take umbrage and vote in a Trump... and for the record, I hold him in complete contempt. But I do comprehend why he won votes.

I think the stage is set for a return to one-nation Toryism, ie, pre-Thatcher. I mean a party that supports social cohesion, the values of majorities, not much interest in social transformation, and an acceptance of a degree of wealth inequality (although less than now). They will want to protect key industries more than now, for national security reasons.

Even Johnson has an element of that. Plenty of cash has splashed since covid began, on business grants and the like.

Against them we will see left wing parties who are interested in diversity, reorganizing society, and will be very interested in equality, but in practice selective about what sort of equalities they want to achieve. They will want to protect workers' rights rather than industries specifically.

The latter looks like the Labour Party already but I think the Tories have some way to go. It would mean less tolerance on both sides for the very rich.

Totally agree with this, it’s the whole ‘shy Tory’ thing. I’m not a shy Tory. Millions of people agree with me and that’s fine 🤷‍♀️

TomPinch when you say 'the values of majorities' what exactly do you mean?

@WilmaFlintstone1 you lose any ground the moment you use “woke” in terms of buying eggs. Woke means to be aware of social injustice which doesn’t sound too bad really!!

I think that's a very optimistic and unrealistic view. I think the current tory party will continue it's current path of populist politics, authoritarian suppression of dissent, privatisation of ore public services and if they get voted in again will properly dismantle free at the point of use NHS.
They will continue to oversee massive wealth accruing with the very few and they will tolerate any size of wealth gap. They only did what they did during covid with furlough etc to avoid riots and public health risks and alot of it was only done when labour pointed out the lack of support for certain groups.
I think people who voted with nostalgic rose tinted glasses about one nation tories will be left disappointed.

In its worst form, whatever the Daily Mail / talkback radio / certain social media groups are going on about. Populism, as Stripyhoglets1 would say. But even not in that form there would be a slow ratcheting of pressure on any minority to conform. Actually I can think of a worse form: fascism.

...will properly dismantle free at the point of use NHS.
They will continue to oversee massive wealth accruing with the very few and they will tolerate any size of wealth gap.

I could see them running down public services more. But on the other hand, Cameron brought in anti-avoidance tax laws, and there is serious discussion in the UK about a wealth tax. Keeping the middle class onside during a time of rising inflation is a different proposition to promising everyone that they can become very rich.

If you look beyond the UK the same currents are elsewhere.

Also while left wing parties are supposedly keen on economic equality in reality they don't do very much about it. They're too busy with other things. It's easy for a right wing party to park its tanks in the left wings lawn by saying it's providing for ordinary decent people etc.

I don't think you can take the Daily Mail et al as representative of the values of majorities - if you look at polling on things like marriage equality and so on, the Daily Mail frothers are actually a vocal minority. I would hope a realigned Tory party would not pander to them.

I do agree that left wing parties need to focus more on an alternative economical model instead of identity politics. The problem is that in the UK system, FPTP is a barrier to that. There also seems to be a peculiarly British mindset that it doesn't matter how badly off you are, or that your chosen political party will make you worse off, as long as that party is punishing people who are not you by making them even worse off than you are. It's an odd way of thinking and it makes me wonder whether there is a large subset of UK people who are simply incapable of empathy or altruism.

Yes, the truth is that I'm actually not sure what the values of the majority would look like. It would be things people could rally around and claim as part of their core social identity. That would probably include marriage equality - it was the Tories who brought it in in the UK - probably because they recognised that the mainstream across the West is not only fine with same-sex relationships but also recognise that it's a mark of difference between them and other cultures. This is all very unclear, but I think the point to make is that it would be in opposition to groups who want to remake or remodel society.

I live in New Zealand now, where there is PR. It almost certainly means we have a more representative parliament than the UK (although I haven't actually compared very closely) but in terms of politics generally, it does mean that our governments come in two flavours. These are Labour, centre-left, socially and economically liberal, more inclined to social reform and more interested in environmental issues, and National, centre-right, socially and economically liberal, not particularly inclined to social reform and more interested in business than the environment. There are smaller single-issue parties that bolt on to the bigger ones to form governments, but they don't have that much impact. So, to be honest, not that different from the UK with the exception that National don't have anything like the level of entitled bad behaviour that the Tories demonstrate. So I'm not convinced that electoral reform would be any sort of panacea in the UK.

I actually think a lot of even moderately left-wing politicians really want to bring in reforms creating more economic equality but if they push it even slightly hard too many swing voters get spooked by the loony left. Until now that's meant increasing inequality because right-wing governments have the argument that the economy should be left to do its job and that the left would rather the poor were poorer so the rich could be less rich (in Thatcher's words). And I think the truth is that the average person is better off and more comfortable now than in the 70s. But I think the cost of living crisis means we're at a tipping point - if the free market economy isn't delivering for the average person then there's an obvious rational within Conservative philosophy (ie, social cohesion) to interfere to make sure it does, and they can deploy the argument that it's better they do it than the left who want to do all sorts of other odd things.

I'm from the Netherlands which also has PR and I disagree with you on the impact that it has. Not only does it allow every vote to actually count, it also does influence mainstream politics in terms of the different flavours of coalition that arise. Dutch politics has always been somewhat less polarised than just left/right - there have been 4 main parties since the 1960s, spanning the political spectrum without going into any extremes. Given time, this could happen in the UK (and in New Zealand).

My main reason for wanting PR and coalition politics is that it does mitigate the extremes of being more focused on breaking down what the previous government has done rather than building on it.

The main problem as I see it is this fear of the mythical 'loony left'. The left is just bad at selling itself. The left needs to make it clear that they are comfortable with people being extremely rich - as long as everyone else is better off too. It's about reducing inequality and that's where the problem lies in the UK - too many of its people seem to want inequality, as in: they want people to be worse off than they are themselves because it means they're 'winning'. I blame Thatcher for that mindset and it is intensely unhealthy.

If we're not carefully we will become as polarised as America

@pointythings

I hope you don't mind me @'ing you - it was in case you thought I'd left the thread - I've just been busy.

NZ and the UK are culturally very similar in many ways. A lot of people here were born in the UK, a huge proportion would have at least one UK-born grandparent and so the ties, although decreased, pretty close. My argument is that because the NZ political culture has remained similar to the UK despite PR, adopting PR in the UK would not fundamentally change UK political culture. There are other things that drive it. I wonder if the UK (and for that matter NZ) is more susceptible to influence from the US due to sharing a language. My question to you is do you think the Netherlands is insulated from this due to the language difference? You mentioned that many in the UK seem to want inequality. That's also so here, and the (in my view incorrect) rationale is that because the country is fair and equal, rich people all deserve to be rich and poor people deserve to be poor. It's a very American way of thinking.

I sometimes enjoy listening to Spectator podcasts - not because I'm a Tory but because they're quite well presented and I like image of a prematurely aged group of young people in tweeds earnestly discussing the issues of the day. In the one dated 28 May here www.spectator.co.uk/podcasts/coffee-house-shots all but one of them are in despair at the government's windfall tax on the energy companies, noting that tax and spend has gone up under Johnson, and that this is what a Labour government would do and that it is "socialist". They speculate that this is to shore up support in the red wall seats. The remaining one points out that there are good economic reasons for levying the windfall tax.

I think all this illustrates what I was trying to say earlier, ie, that there is a reason for right-wing parties to tack to the left on certain issues, e.g. when they cannot rely on the economy to deliver a decent living standard (as contrasted to an equal living standard) for everyone - they used to be more concerned with social cohesion than they are now and there could be a return to this.

Interesting to hear from NZ. I think in terms of measures inequality Aus, U.K. and NZ are quite similar. It’s not as stark as the US but not as low as Nordic (which are a fair bit lower)

I put on another thread the Gini co efficient over the years and it was highest as the end of Blair’s Labour and has steadied or decreased since then. I was surprised by that as we often accept the reverse would be true.

On spending and windfall tax the former has been incredibly high which has prompted some unhappiness eg Lord Frost iirc resigned early, I’ve found it difficult to watch as it’s passed down generations, although big economic shocks have been global - pandemic then war

Pandemic costs were incredibly high but once we’d started down one route it was hard to divert - eg furlough meant to be for 8 weeks, then over a year. Although thankfully when it ended fears of higher unemployment didn’t materialise.

I very much care about employment rate as that does have an impact on people’s lives, so at least that is ok

Inflation is hard and it’s key to stop it spiralling

But on the extra payments and windfall tax I think it was probably needed, unfortunately after huge spending already but many people are struggling.

@TomPinch the question of language is a really interesting one, because in the Netherlands everyone speaks English. It's compulsory in schools - no matter whether you're set to take the equivalent of GCSEs or A levels, English is a compulsory subject, alongside Dutch. However, economically since WW2 the Dutch economy has been closely connected to the German economy - which is logical given geographical proximity. And culturally the Dutch are much more German/Scandinavian in their outlook towards inequality. I suspect you may be right in thinking that the American nightmare idea is behind this desire for people to have less. And I can't get my head around it at all - I don't want anyone to live in poverty. Is that such a bad thing?

As a result of Dutch culture, the safety net is very different. If you lose your job, the benefits you get are much more generous - but they are contributions based. You can get up to 75% of your last salary, but it's time limited. So if you were in the job for 10 years, you get that payment for 10 months, with the expectation that it will be easier for you to find another job in that time because you aren't thrown straight into poverty. However, after that your entitlement drops (but is still higher than what you get in the UK) and there are stringent rules around job seeking. Pensions are also higher in the Netherlands, but housing costs are similar and taxes are higher too. Overall you don't see the deep economic divide that exists in the UK and the US though. And Dutch governments have been coalitions for as long as I can remember, never shifting very far from the centre. Even the government that had the PVV as a supporting party (much like the DUP under Theresa May) showed much of that extreme influence on policy. I guess we're just moderate.

NZ is an instructive comparison because for most of the twentieth century it was a very affluent (except if you were Maori), very egalitarian country with a highly regulated economy, very tied to the UK in its identity. It was shameful to flaunt wealth, being rich was to be suspect.

Then UK EEC entry in 1972 screwed NZ's economic model as food exports to the UK (our main exports by value) were basically blocked. The government at the time was classic one-nation conservative, ie, not keen on social reform, very concerned about supporting families, willing to borrow money to do this, and it nearly bankrupted the country doing so. In 1984, a Labour government came in and basically privatised everything and out-Thatchered Thatcher. Which sounds bizarre until you bear in mind that social and economic freedom can go hand in hand and both can be the opposite of conservatism. The same thing happened in Australia.

Now two generations of reform plus a lot of American influence have meant people are completely used to wealth and poverty extremes and the current Labour government doesn't really have the intellectual or administrative heft to fix this. It's very sad.

It's interesting, isn't it? The Netherlands has a hybrid model - health insurance for instance is by private providers and you have to have a policy - but it's kept affordable for people with serious chronic conditions because the state covers those cases. This happened with my Dad's Parkinson's, for example. It's the same for the railways - not fully privatised, not fully state owned. The Post Office and energy suppliers are fully privatised but there are strong regulations to ensure everyone has access and can pay. It just goes to show that irrespective of the flavour of government, extreme untrammelled capitalism doesn't work and extreme untrammelled communism doesn't either.

I wish the UK (and NZ and the US) would see that and act accordingly.