To worry about the right wing?

[Swingstotheleftslidetotheright]

I'm politically homeless at the moment in terms of who to vote for but morally I sit firmly centre/centre left. I'm very British with that it would seem.

I've seen over the last few years a very hard push left across social media and among the "chattering" classes which has seemingly come with a desire to shut down discussion, debate and conversation if it involves even the mildest of challenge to their way of thinking. What seems to be happening as a result of this shutting down and refusal to engage in a debate is a rise in harder line opposition, whereas before the two sides would have a somewhat heated and healthy discourse about an issue and come away mindful of each others views and with a solution in sight.

I'm noticing the louder the left shout the harder the, previously moderate, right push back and vice versa. Both sides appear to be getting more vocal and more extreme. I'm seeing this a lot around migration, feminism, the economy and crime. I'm now worried that this continued closure of conversation is going to lead us down a path of extremism - from one or both sides - and lead us to a dramatic and unwelcome rise from the far right.

Are we at a point of no return? Can we ever go back to being moderate and tolerant?

The by-election results demonstrate that Sunak's tactics of trying to appeal to the right are not working. He really needs to push the likes of Braverman out to have a reasonable hope of getting the support of the moderate right.

The Tory party are finished because they only focus on woke or wedge issues which they use but do nothing about.

Meanwhile they do nothing effective about the poverty people feel. People feel poorer. Their public services are demonstrably worse than they used to be. Their day to day living is harder than it was.

None of this is rocket science. It is hugely privileged to say but woke or wedge issues are more important than being able to pay your bills or see a doctor. That's all this is, and if the Tory Party stop drinking American kool aid and look at the economic bottom line and improve it so people feel less poor then they will do much better. The current cabinet are absolute garbage on this basic aspect.

It won’t change much unless Labour have some deep pockets for extra spending. And that means getting it from somewhere.

People are expecting more though.

You get the point. In focusing on cultural woke issues, the Tory Party is apparently ignoring that people are struggling. That is incoherent and the public will vote for a party that does talk about that. This isn't very complicated

The Tory party is an echo of the US Republican party in congress. Enough wreckers to ensure it can never deliver a unanimous moderate voice anymore.

Successive leaders have dodged the pain of excising the cancer of a party within a party in the ERG and now the whole class is paying the price.

The irony is the smaller the parliamentary party becomes (and at this point it would be a brave person to look to any more than 100 seats) the more in thrall it will become to it's lunatics. Not less. And this is something the next leader (obviously not Rish!) will be factoring in now. As in no need to court 200+ people who won't be around next election.

There is no fix, not that I’ve seen offered so far anyway. By fix I mean funding not spending promised. Although I would absolutely take up Germany on that recent phone call.

Labour have the advantage of indicating they have one though

That’s not going to change they will always get to promise more as not in power, people are pissed off yes, but if they go too heavily on we did it before we will again we’ll see how it plays out.

Women’s rights aside if they do damage a successful sector, that’s poor. They could just be ultra bland without that and still get in

Well good luck with the rabble that is left. I cannot believe how much idiocy the Conservatives have indulged in. People vote for them because of economic competence. They don't want extremes. I don't think they care about racial diversity or transgender politics. The only party that is now talking about these issues are the Tory party. That is perverse because it doesn't seem to affect the vote they get. It makes politicos all hot under the collar. It excites journalists. It sounds exciting.

But it doesn't do anything about bills, public services, corruption or crime which polling says that British people do care about a lot more.

There are some non crazy Tories who are saying this. They are not in cabinet.

I’m not particularly tied to any party (voted for a mix), I’ll see what happens with Labour, I don’t get the excitement at all as the economic policies are pretty much the same, but if that’s what people vote for so be it. Their choice, I don’t get not accepting votes generally. I don’t see what others do but it won’t impact me that much.

On parties though I don’t regret not voting for Corbyn at all. If there was an actual danger in politics we got it there.

People vote for them because of economic competence.

?????????????

That one reason, but not the only one. And my personal view is that is a handy fig leaf sold to people by a media that feels at home under Tory rule.

It's not mentioned so much nowadays, but it was certainly a thing in the 80s that voting Tory was an aspirational vote for a working class person. Like hostess trollies and matching luggage. Ken Livingstone praised Mrs. Thatcher for it in his hard-to-find-now excellent book "If Voting Change Anything They'd Abolish It". He said she had turned society from a pyramid with the working class able to outvote the middle and upper classes to an egg with a bulging middle class. And Tony Blairs "genius" was to realise that and campaign accordingly.

Ultimately, we can only live our own lives. We can only trust our own experiences. And my experience is that people I've known who say they are Tories because "of the economy" would still vote Tory in a Tory recession (as indeed they did in 1987). Because it's more acceptable to say than "I hate ...." with a shopping list of tropes. Immigrants. Single Mums. Layabouts. "Disabled" people. (Other peoples) Children. Tax.

Well I agree it is the media message but overall "economic competence" has always been the strongest Tory message.

Saying "transgender pinkos" are coming to endorse immigration and then doing NOTHING to address this apparently critical issue is ridiculous.

It's not even a left right issue. It's a head in the sand issue.

‘Transgender pinkos’

No women’s rights here

Come on @SunnyEgg - it's a piece of flippancy to convey the shallowness of the Tory message. They don't actually have a cohesive message on women's rights that doesn't refer to transgenderism. It is a reactive stance that does them no credit.

I join this thread very nervously - because I'm not a 'party political' person, despite being interested in politics. I've never managed to swallow whole any one party's manifesto/world view. I guess I'm a sort of floating centre/soft/right, sometimes centre left (depending!!).

A couple of points, a bit off topic:

Someone mentioned the 'culture wars' as a tactical distraction by the 'right'. Hmmm. Personally I think the culture wars are really important at the moment! Won't bore you all with detail, but there are/have been some scary things going on recently.

Secondly - a strange phenomemon I've found to be true in my experience: I'm afraid to say that the nastiest, most narrow-minded, bullying, sneering, (often misogynist), spiteful gits I've come across have been left-wingers. Tories (IME) have always been friendly, kind and much, much more open-minded. Sorry - but that's how I've found it, after a long career in education and museums.

Anyone else found this, and if so - what's the reason?? It's counter-intuitive.

I’ll pass. Women’s rights is women first.

This is quite interesting on the economy. Debt to gdp is now 97.8 percent, as inflation falls and we all pay more tax.

So it is falling. What we do about the two major forms of public spending, social provision (benefits and pensions) and health is something that should be addressed by all the parties come election time.

Secondly - a strange phenomenon I've found to be true in my experience: I'm afraid to say that the nastiest, most narrow-minded, bullying, sneering, (often misogynist), spiteful gits I've come across have been left-wingers. Tories (IME) have always been friendly, kind and much, much more open-minded. Sorry - but that's how I've found it, after a long career in education and museums.

Using a concept like "left" and "right" conveniently disguises the reality that it's a circle. Go too far one way, you end up the other. This is why you really couldn't get a rizla between Hitler and Stalin, and why life in a fascist regime is indistinguishable from life in a communist regime.

A much more nuanced view is a foursquare-type approach. But then you can still end up with people with whom who agree strongly on one topic, and disagree violently on another while bother being in the "X" half".

https://www.politicalcompass.org/test

I think I am "naturally" more on the socialist "from each according to their ability to each according to their need" kinda person. However that said, I think some of Mrs Thatchers ideas weren't so bad, and had very little time for the Militant looney left of Hatton and Hackney.

@CoffeeCantata I feel similar

Authoritarianism increasing in left away from liberalism?

The Guardian to me shows this type of shift

Genuinely, I feel lost on this thread, I have no idea of paradigms and have never read a political book.
I will definitely be voting Labour this time though because I see people (patients) living in utter poverty everyday and that isn't fair.
I saw the Tories lining their own pockets over COVID (PPE) and I lost colleagues because of it.
Then there was Johnson trying to change protest laws that didn't suit him. I ask myself why Rishi the billionaire wants a job that pays so modestly if it isn't to protect his own wealth and the wealth of his associates? This is the man who tried to divert funds from poor areas to wealthier areas but that seems forgotten about.
Also the complete fuck up of the billions wasted on HS2.
I don't know much about the far right, but I imagine it doesn't look a lot different to Pritti Patel. I didn't mind Theresa May as a prime minister (at least you got the feeling she had some integrity) and she sacked Pritti.
In my mind there isn't an alternative to voting Labour.

No i haven't found this at all, in fact the opposite, one only has to look at the racist homophobic anti woke headlines the Sun, Express and Mail come out with Or Terresa May and her Hostile Environment (failed) immigration policies.

Apart from women’s rights which as people say they don’t care about, I won’t share that view

Of course people care about the loss of womens rights over the last decade or so, but they also care about waiting 2 days for an ambulance, 24hrs in AE used to be a drama, now its a fact!!! they care about the 240 schools with RAAC, sky high rents, 3 week waits for GP appointments - if you ask someone who is in debt/threatened with an eviction/off sick waiting for an operation "Do you worry about a man going into a womans loo?" You wont get the answer you re looking for.

Sunny Egg

Authoritarianism increasing in left away from liberalism?

The Guardian to me shows this type of shift

Yes - I think that's true. I find the Guardian hard to take nowadays, and 'liberalism', in the sense of being open to a range of views seems to be a dirty word there. I often raise an eyebrow at the way some of their most controversial articles don't allow comments...smacks of cowardice on their part!

Now you've got me started on the Guardian! Something that has struck me but which I haven't often been able to pin down - a kind of controlling of the news, just as they would claim right-wing papers do:

A few years ago news broke of a violent attack on an Imam in a Birmingham mosque. The Guardian online was flashing it up excitedly. As I continued to check for developments over the next half hour, the story disappeared completely. I later found from the BBC that the attack had in fact come from a member of the mosque. Clearly this didn't fit the Guardian's narrative at the time, so got quickly spiked. They are not the paragons of journalistic virtue that they would like us to believe.

Well of course I’m not expecting people to answer a question with my view, but their’s. Not that I ask it much of anyone, too busy with chatting over other things.

All the stuff you list comes down to funding. It needs to be there to promise stuff.

I also wouldn’t ask that question in any case as it’s a particularly ‘trans issue’ way to get an answer

Not my thing

Howpo
No i haven't found this at all, in fact the opposite, one only has to look at the racist homophobic anti woke headlines the Sun, Express and Mail come out with Or Terresa May and her Hostile Environment (failed) immigration policies.

But that's not what I'm talking about - and why I mentioned that my experience was counter-intuitive.

Yes, by logic left-wingers ought to be nicer people - but IME, in everyday encounters, they're not. I could give many, many examples from my work in education and museums...but it would be boring!

My point is that left wingers are often really nasty, spiteful and aggressive people in practice. The very term 'Tory scum' is one clear example - there isn't really an equivalent generalisation for the left-leaners. And - people who use that term seem to ignore the fact that usually they're labelling half the population with a way OTT insult!

If anyone wants a more informed debate on the Conservatives you can check out ConservativeHome.com where there is actually a sensible discussion by conservative members on the absolute mess they have made.

The issue is moderate people will not vote for them. All they have left is their headbanger vote.

Hmm at ‘headbanger’ not really shifting that view put forward by @CoffeeCantata

I’m pretty central as it goes but so are both parties on economic policies

Not really interested in another forum, if I were I’d be on that one already