It is all about democracy at the end of the day. Do we want it, is it worth fighting for. Are ordinary people just all morons as Red says and apparently the likes of Liz Kendall, Blair and Yvette Cooper believe, incapable of deciding anything for themselves: are the political class the only people who by virtue of their birth are worthy of education and therefore of educating the rest of us. Are the millionaires and old boys of the public school networks the only people who can see what is good for us, because they have their eyes set on higher things than us ordinary folks can ever know.
I disagree and reject that view of society entirely. I do think the levels of education in this country are low, I do think the level of information most people have access to is appallingly bad quality. It is no accident that free education, media and libraries have all been attacked, co-opted and to greater or lesser degrees effectively privatised at this time. We need to address all of those things, but the solution is not going to be bringing them further under the control of an elitist patronising anti-democratic rich oligarchy who can never have any idea or care of how the ordinary people are forced to live.
This constant attempt to claim there is only one possible solution, one possible way of living is a lie and a lie born of and perpetuated by an increasingly narrow perspective. We need more solutions, not fewer; more perspectives, not less; more voices. Anything that proposes to widen the debate is not only welcome, but desperately needed.
We are not a poor country. We can afford to support our most vulnerable. We do have an ethical imperative to do so, or at least a pragmatic one - there but for the grace, and it may be our turn next - for those who won't accept ethics. We do not have to live with the greatest levels of inequality in western europe, we do not have to accept still higher and yet higher levels.
The more elite people who come out in support of the oligarchy and necessary inequality and tell us how only they have the only correct solutions, the more ordinary people are going to get annoyed. Works on me every time. There is a large current of dissatisfaction in the country, though it isn't always well-informed - but then neither are the elite who won't see the trees for the forest. And for those going on and on about how left-wing ideas were trounced in the general election, two points: one, what left wing ideas were really available; and two for goodness sake please go look at the vote percentage figures, not the seat allocation rubbish. Labour did not lose by much - just 6%. I personally despise Farage's way of pandering to hatred and scapegoating, but ukip's vote share really ought to have earned more representation than it did.