The Labour Party should dump compassion

[Upwind]

"Christianity has not done socialism any favours. The Left must embrace progress and winners, not the workshy and the weak"
argues Matthew Parris in the Times

I have a feeling that with so many things coming together - global credit crunch, peak oil and gas, climate change, food prices rising... we will have to compete for limited global resources as they did in days gone by. It won't be easy and these arguments will be increasingly favoured - especially if Christianity's influence continues to wane here.

What a tragic paucity of vision.

Why LB? Do you think that Labour's current strategy is more likely to get them elected again than the one that Parris proposes?

I'm not really interested in election strategies tbh, I'm interested in the philosophy of how to organise society. People join political parties because their aims and values are broadly in line with what those political parties stand for and because they think that party will organise society better than the other lot. If there is no political party out there which is remotely interested in the needs of people who for whatever reason are being prevented from taking a full part in society, then that's a piss-poor outlook for that society imo. It doesn't surprise me that tories who had their heyday in Mrs Thatcher's time can look upon that prospect with equanimity, but frankly I'm disgusted by it.

Agree LB, but don't the Lib Dems better represent those people?

Labour have shown themselves to be utter hypocrites over the past decade mouthing on about social mobility and equality while the credit splurge they presided over transferred vast wealth from poor to rich.

But that's not what MP's article is about. He's talking about a long-term re-alignment of party values. What he's basically saying is that compassion is something serious political parties shouldn't deal with at all, just something that should be left to marginal parties who are never going to be elected, or charities. Just like they used to be when kiddies were sent up chimneys.

The ins and outs of what Labour has done in govt viz social mobility, wealth transfer etc., are neither here nor there. The article is about the ideas. Political parties often suffer from the law of unintended consequences when they enact legislation, but the thrust of why they legislate the way they do, is the issue here.

WEll it si the times - but that piece shows it's petticoats in one phrase at teh beginning, "Little seems to be coming from the old warhorses of the left-wing intelligentsia these days"

Translated as, Parris has not done his research because meybe the 'old' warhorses are quiet - and thank god for that - but the next wave certainly have been producinf a lot.

He's just an old crow crowing ibnto his back yard. Forget it. Everyone else will have by tomorrow - expept the people on this thread.

Parris is a Tory, of course he doesn't believe in compassion!

Agree MT that the article is forgettable - but I don't think the arguments it presents for less compassion would have been published in one of the main newspapers a few years ago. In hard times hearts harden and Parris might be tapping in to a change in direction in politics.

Agree upwind, in the same way that it now acceptable for a mainstream publication like Newsweek to discuss whether it's OK to use torture against al Qaeda types.

Now that there is no ideological or practical alternative to the untrammelled free market, those in charge can drop the pretence that they ever believed in essential decency.