Westminstenders: Social Conservativism

[RedToothBrush]

The post election autopsy is starting to show something up. Finally. Brexit is part of wider political issues and fractures. This isn't exactly rocket science but it's an inconvenient truth that has been ignored.

We have something of a conflict going on between economic conservatism and social conservatism.

The Tories as the party of business were economically conservative and put this ahead of other issues. "It's the economy stupid."

But as this has continued this has opened up social division and the gap between rich and poor has laid bare social issues.

This is where Labour and the LDs are now becoming something of a cropper. In Brexit they continued the idea that the economy was the most important this and in doing so has fuelled the idea that they don't care about social issues. They are perceived to be putting the interests of businesses as more important than those people.

Of course it's not as straightforward as this. To fund ways to stop social issues you need good economics.

Add to this the progressive movement which has become authoritarian and has lost sight of certain social issues in favour of identity politics and you start to have a real issue. One that the EU as an identity has become caught up in in this country. The wedge to drive in the cracks.

Issues haven't been tackled because identity is more important and was prioritised. And we've had scandals arising out of this.

Instead we've had the increasing demonisation of social conservativism and the idea that if you question certain things you are backward or bigoted as a means to silence people. And now we've had a massive backlash against that generalisation and lack of nuance. And not seeing what was happening and having a self awareness of how this read to more socially conservative types.

That's not to say there aren't massive issues in social conservatism which can be indeed racist, homophobic, sexist and yes very bigoted in nature. The trouble is that the failure to be able to tackle nuance which identity politics forced and a failure to understand that the pace of change needs to be set by public consensus rather than top down authoritarianism has lead us to where we are now.

Rights set up to protect certain groups have failed in practice even if they exist in law. And those who professed to stand for the interests of certain groups forgot the origins of rights.

Thus undermining the entire centre left project, which in some respects the EU embodies.

We now find ourselves in a divided and ruled scenario where those who should have benefitted most from rights can be exploited by an elite who have successfully seen an opportunity to step into the void that identity politics created.

And now the left and liberals have to wake up to this reality and come up with a solution to it.

There is a lot of uncomfortable and difficult decisions to be made here.

The solution to the culture war isn't to push back harder and to become more authoritarian in tone about the right of 'right and wrong'.

It's to address why identity politics caused the left and liberals to forget their origins and purpose and why they established certain ideals in the first place.

Meanwhile whilst they figure out just how they lost their way and were blinkered by their own self righteousness, everything that the centre left project established will be gradually unpicked. Or if Johnson can do it, without being challenged, at some considerable pace.

It comes down to remembering your roots and having a solid connection with the reality of people's lives rather than high minded idealism and a sense of superiority. This is what people saw regardless of the noble intent of Labour and the Lib Dems.

'Social conservatism' were dirty words. Now they are the reality of the present. Whether we like it or not.

Economic stability has become secondary to this desire for social conservatism.

Labour and the Lib Dems have to adapt to this and will have to offer something to those with more socially conservative views to move forward now. The alternative is a very long wait outside in the cold of politics.

Liberal democracy is about balancing needs. You have to identify needs and you have to understand how to balance them for liberal democracy to thrive. Failure to do the former means the latter fails.

And here we are.

2020 beckons.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New to all.

In education, if we go back to the immediate post war years, the 1944 Education Act brought in Secondary Education for all - this is now overlooked because we take Secondary Education for granted. It still had a very utilitarian curriculum, where rote learning ruled, and most children were not expected to stay on at school until O levels. The Labour party doesn't have a particularly sparkling reputation in this area either- they didn't have the same vision for Education as they did for health.

However, the rote learning gave way in the 1960s to Child Centred Education - encouraged by the Plowden Report, but it's probably worth noting that Plowden caught a rising trend rather than gave birth to it. By the late seventies, early 80s the child centred education had rather degenerated into a "let them do what they like" culture, in some schools, with an unwillingness to accept that some children need to be taught reading and maths, for example, they won't just discover it by themselves.

Where does that lead us to now? What do people want for their children's education - there are still 50% who don't go to University. What are we going to offer them. This is where the vision is needed, and it won't come from Johnson, who doesn't have the first clue about state education. So far all we have seen is tinkering around with the form of Governance, where in some cases poor Local Authorities have been replaced by poor MATS.

Pointless degrees not leading to a good job

Degrees, other than perhaps some STEM subjects, were never meant to be vocational. A degree used to indicate a trained mind, capable of research, ordering facts, analysing opinion and capacity for debate. All of which are highly relevant in most professional jobs. What’s a “good” job anyway? Highly paid? Personally rewarding? Improving society? Different things to different people I’m guessing.

Given that older, less educated people have just voted in a hard right government, I'm not sure why it's young, university-educated people you single out as exemplifying 'group think', howabout.

I'd be inclined to cast that net quite wide, myself.

Agree with your post very much, Peregrina.

I think the problem in a nutshell by the left and liberals is a failure to take ownership of the failings of 'Blairite Britain' by those who benefited from it.

This let in the far left and the far right into this void.

There needs to be an acknowledgement of how they blairite project didn't benefit everyone.

It's also why every time Blair was wheeled out it had an effect, even if he was right and saying the right things.

It's taking responsibility for what was done wrong rather than merely defending the status quo.

The argument for change is absolutely there, compelling and needed.

What the centre has been very bad at in recent years is being self critical and that's what they need to reflect on.

This is the entire argument of Nick Cohen and how the Centre lost touch with its purpose and foundations. And it's very much where I come from.

The centre isn't offering a narrative on how it failed in the 1997 - 2016 period. It needs to.

In terms of #classicdom I don't think it much matters whether the solutions are delivered by the Tories or Labour. A canter through the new Tory MP intake demonstrates that many of them would traditionally have stood for Labour.

Well maybe. It wouldn't matter to the majority of us if it was a Labour or Tory Government which re-opened Libraries, Sure Start Centres, and put real money into schools, and not just sleight of hand moves. In the way that MacMillan built council houses. But, since Thatcher, this is just not what the Tories have done - and it will require a big change in their mindset for them to begin to contemplate it.

I should add that when I refer to 'blairite Britain' I include the brown administration and the clegg supporters.

thecatfromjapan the MG interview covers the tendency towards groupthink in Unis.

It is common to assume that "older people without degrees" are in fact less "educated". Ime this is not the case. If that is your starting point then the chances of taking on board the viewpoint of others with different backgrounds and experiences are limited.

Was reading about Greta this morning. Now doing mental gymnastics trying to understand why anyone on the Progressive side of the debate gives her a platform at all.

And I agree with that, too, Peregrina.

Incidentally, just as an aside, the emergence of 'two different styles of schools within the state school system' was the exact thing I asked Michael Gove about many years ago, when he visited Mumsnet.

We were allowed 2 questions - the idea being that if he answered the first, he was then committed to answering the second.

To the surprise of no-one, he answered my first question (about his ringing endorsement of Mossbourne Academy) with characteristic charm, and ignored the second part.

🤷‍♀️

Given that older, less educated people have just voted in a hard right government, I'm not sure why it's young, university-educated people you single out as exemplifying 'group think', howabout.

What's the difference between shared experience and close minded group think?

Older people are likely to be aware of how they might not have succeeded in the way they did because of the closing doors that you can't get a job without a degree mentality has created.

I think students who don't have the benefit of time are always going to have accusations levelled at them in a different way.

I think the point has to focus on social mobility and how it's changed and that is reflected in student politics.

"Now doing mental gymnastics trying to understand why anyone on the Progressive side of the debate gives her a platform at all."

That mindset is a big part of the problem
Social media and communication has changed everything

Individuals who catch public attention for their views no longer need the "progressives" or the "authoritarians" or the yoghurt-weavers etc to give them a platform
Those days are gone

It is common to assume that "older people without degrees" are in fact less "educated".

I have to agree with this, although I think you mean less intelligent, because it's a fact that many didn't have a post 15 education, so are 'less educated' by definition. Many of the older generation (which is mine) could definitely have coped with post 16 education up to and beyond degree level.

Contrast this with Boris Johnson, who has been expensively educated. Here I feel another term would be better, expensively schooled might do, because he doesn't show any breadth of vision which might be expected in a well educated person.

Red That was just a comment to highlight the unfairness of broad-stroke generalisations.

It's as unfair to young, university-educated young people as it is to this chimerical 'other' (in this instance the supposed imaginary bloc of older, non-university educated people).

Absolutely right that the way forward lies in examination of material realities - rather than imagination - such as the failure of social mobility.

But ... that's a global issue, and almost certainly requiring some fairly hefty solutions.

And one thing we do know is that one set of solutions has been comprehensively rejected.

What people appear to have chosen is a hard right solution.

That's pretty scary.

Progressives probably have twenty years now, to refine solutions, with no access to the power necessary to try any of those solutions out.

Meanwhile, the hard right have twenty years to do exactly as they please.

It's pretty depressing.

Progressive analyses have pretty much the status of an elaborate ritual from the court of the last Emperor of China: compelling, but fundamentally an elaborate way to pass the hours.

I can still clearly remember c45 years ago as a stroppy teenager yelling at telling my parents that they were so open minded that they were closed minded

There was/is a degree of truth in that - that I'm probably myself also guilty of today, as a parent of a teenager - and it echoes the discussion that we're having now.

In Germany, the left and centre had a sharp wakeup when they ralised the Greens were taking their young voters and likely to take ever more

At the EP elections, I saw the parties still trying frantically to catch up to their former voters

Die Linke - the equivalent of the Corbynite hard left, that split from the SPD some years ago -
had "Climate before profit" posters everywhere,
but they have a lot of ground to make up.

The AfD has gone all out demonising Greta Thunberg, with astonishing viciousness that raises questions about their paymasters
That only plays to a very limited group of voters here, so all the sane parties are increasingly focused on climate change measures, with public approval.

The serious actions required to tackle climate change becomes ever more burdensome the longer this is put off
It is the poorest who will be hardest hit by climate change - we already see this in affected countries
It will be the same in Western countries

Oh - and of course I didn't mean 'less intelligent'.

I was one of 3 girls who went to university from my school & the first in my family.

I know the reality of 'less educated'. I know the privilege of having more education - it really is like getting more food at some level.

It's great. And one reason why I cast a wary eye over proposals to stop that roll out of education is because I know it's great.

It gives me great pleasure that someone like me - destined to have less education - actually managed to get more than people who were brought up thinking of it as a birthright.

My entire life experience has taught me the non-correlation of intelligence and education. Along with the correlation of education and privilege.

That's fascinating, BigChoc.

I wonder if the way forwards for Progressives is by way of a re-think of political aims and regrouping by way of taking in the enormity of climate change.

(And, of course, Brexit isn't going to make that any easier.)

As I posted before, imo a major part of the problem is how the benefits of globalisation and automation
have been disproportionately gained by around the top 5% in the West
and disproportionately suffered by the bottom 70% or so in the West

The Golden Age / American Dream / Western Dream that ran from about 1950-1975 was an exceptional period in history when ordinary working people felt they had amazing opportunities for themselves and their kids
That's been shattered, taken away - stolen away ?

As someone of 60+ I see such a difference in prospects now - I'm glad I grew up when I did, even despite the greater racism and sexism

I keep saying this - but statistically, there is a missing generation amongst the Corbynite Left. And it corresponds to the AIDS generation.

I've no idea as to why (but I guess naming it the 'AIDS generation' rather than the facile 'Gen X' or whatever gives a clue to my thinking).

Not missing amongst those who voted one way or another - but explicitly missing amongst the pro-Corbyn Left.

It's been noted a lot.

Yes, BigChoc.

Big global idealists need to think about the concepts of immediency and relevance to small town thinking.

How do you make a global problem which isn't high on their list of priorities? If you are struggling for access to social care, a lack of suitable housing, poor public transport connectivity and a basic lack of food on the table why should you care about global warming?

Solutions to global warming will have to also incorporate an immediency to people's lives - even if its as a side effect - to make them relevant and popular.

That means solutions have to be economically beneficial and solve multiple problems at the same time.

thecat Labour lost many voters of the left and centre to the LDems and the Greens
They only won 49% of Remain voters
Even once the Corbyn factor has been removed - by hopefully a new moderate Labour leader - many voters will remain lost

The UK has a particular problem with FPTP, because the right has only 1 party, whereas the centre and left are split among LDems, Greens and Nationalists

However, across the West, the left and centre have been unable to do much to tackle the disproportionate effects that globalisation and automation have had on those who would have once worked iin those sectors

Hence, in many countries, voters are hoping the right can do something
The real trouble will start when they can't, especially if they resort to cutting benefits and ramp up austerity again

I think that howabout has a point about the education of older voters.

Part of the reason why Brexit and Tory voters are now so relatively "uneducated" in terms of formal qualifications is simply that they are on average much older than remain/other party voters.

People in their 70s and 80s mostly don't have degrees because hardly anyone did. This includes both my father (left school at 16, had a long career in banking and then international finance) and my FIL (left school at 14 or 15 with no formal qualifications at all, became one of the first generation of computer scientists and managed IT for the U.K. subsidiary of a large German manufacturing company). Both of them had management careers in highly technical roles which would nowadays require a degree and probably some post grad qualifications.

I imagine that among younger voters there is a much stronger correlation between skills, formal qualifications and political leanings but I am not sure that this is true for people in the >65 age bracket.

Totally agree with both those points, BigChoc and Red.

I still think the Progressives are looking at 20 years out of power.

The solutions are kind of obvious (an alliance, foregrounding environmental concerns, delivered in a discourse that knits the immediate and the abstract, focusing on benefits and optimism,) but also completely undo-able in the short-term. And by 'short-term, I mean 20 years.

Which suggests the next few years are going to be very bumpy indeed.

But, you know, it's what pretty much everyone on this thread has been saying - for as long as I've been reading them.

But being right is utterly, utterly grim.