Why is socialism viewed so negatively in politics and media?

[Vix150]

Why do people not like socialism?

To me it doesn't seem disastrous but it's portrayed in the media as a horrific way for a society to run.

Any thoughts?

Understood @Alexandra2001 , and a lot of response on MN is emotionally and ideologically driven.

When I say we are becoming, or already are, ungovernable, I’m not really thinking about crime so much as policy: government policies failing to land, failing in implementation, and a failure of coherence.

We are a very fragmented and polarised society. For many, the blame lies solely with Brexit. But we must already have been a fragmented and polarised society in order to arrive at Brexit in the first place.

What we often do, from our own ideological defensive positions, is compare. “Things were better when we were in the EU, before austerity, before Boris Johnson, before Covid, before capitalism, before this, before that.” It becomes an endless search for the single moment everything went wrong.

I think one thing many of us can agree on is that the economic crash, and the form of capitalism that produced it, left deep damage that we are still paying for and will be for a long time to come.

My broader point, though, is that progressive centrism often tries to deal with political volatility by moving more and more questions out of ordinary democratic life and into law, institutions, regulators and systems of managed consensus.
That may feel safer, but I’m not sure it has made us more governable. If anything, it may have made the country harder to govern honestly.

It might feel as if this branch of the debate, derails OPs original question. I think OPs original question was a simple question to a very complex situation. We can’t talk about socialism, honestly, without discussing all the other ism’s that constrain it, compete with it and that have overly replaced it.

They had massive support from the public, from backbenchers and a booming global economy. It was a heck of a lot easier for them than any government since.

That's not to downplay the political genius of Tony Blair.

Most sensible thing I’ve read on here to be honest. I could see that the big crash was on its way in the late 90s and I’m no economist. The type of capitalism we have doesn’t trickle down and as such is redundant because there’s no growth. Brexit has A LOT to answer for. As a teacher, I saw racism increase literally overnight. It gives me no pleasure to say that. It happened, I saw it and heard it. We do have unrealistic expectations about what governments can do through and are too quick to condemn- but a lot of that is fuelled by the media is majority right wing. Remember, Blair cosied up to Murdoch and mitigated that hostility for a long while. Starmer is a pretty dull guy who has inherited a load of shit. Quite why anyone would want to be PM over the shit is beyond me. But he’s doing his best to keep us out of Trump’s nonsense and, genuinely, thank God for that!

Agree with much of this.

One thing that makes me despair is that when politicians do have a sense of what they want to do, the mechanisms of the state seek to frustrate them. This is often commented on by those who have left government or politics and are free to speak up.

So, modern politics is a negotiation between ministers and civil servants and neither side are satisfied with the eventual outcome.

I just read Jeremy Heywood's biography (written by his wife when he became ill with cancer) and it's fascinating to hear how many PMs came into office naive enough to believe they could be the one to reform the civil service and nearly all of them were frustrated in their attempts.

They had massive support because of the genius of Blair. It was the bloody hard work and skill of Blair, Brown and the New Labour project that made it look possible and even inevitable. Only 5 years from the defeat of 92 when it felt like we would never have another Labour government. I do think it's funny when people say it was easy for Labour be cause they inherited a good economy - that usually favours incumbent, not a change of government.

With a booming global economy, Keir Starmer's ratings would not be in the toilet.

Blair and Brown were, undoubtedly, incredibly politically astute, but since they didn't have the enormous challenges of high debt and high inflation, they had the space and freedom to make real change. Some of that change has not served us well.

He courted the right wing press though. Do we want Starmer to do that? It ended badly with The News of the World, Rebekah Brookes, Andy Coulson et al. New Labour as guilty as Cameron. It did feel very good under Blair for a bit but I won’t forgive him for taking us to war - twice!

@TeenagersAngst , I agree with your points.
The electorate votes in a general election and a Prime Minister is installed, but that Prime Minister is then constrained by the Treasury, the Civil Service, the Home Office, and all manner of unelected departments and offices. This is the apparatus of government.

I think the realisation of this came as a bit of shock to the current government, which, it has been said, had a plan for winning the election but no serious plan for governing.

You saw what it was like before? Your tone doesn't suggest that you recall theat a Labour Goverment had to go being for a loan from the IMF to keep the economy afloat.

You also seem to forget the utter humiliation of the 6th richest nation in the world begging to borrow money, and the public spending cuts demanded by the IMF as a condition of lending it.

Begging, not being, in first para.

1973 oil embargo, series of shocks including wars in Middle East is what I remember. Not so different eh? You can’t argue Thatcher made any of that better. We had our own oil and gas and she flogged it; closed or sold off anything that employed working class people. There’s never been a shortage of wealth in this country, it’s just badly distributed. Nowadays in off shore accounts where it can’t contribute to anything. That’s Thatcher’s fault too.

We have great inequality in the UK, with that comes greater division but then every now and then, along comes a disruptor this time it Nigel Farage, he took that dissatisfaction and encouraged it, immigration was the the tool he used, Brexit was the end result.
He is doing it again with boats and immigration, only this time has upped the rhetoric, mass deportations now..... how divisive will that be?

Things better before x y or z? not from me, things have always been tough for some, its just that number has increased over recent years.

But we also have to be honest, if services aren't funded and people cannot get help and/or the services they have paid tax for, then they either take matters into their own hands, become bitter and disillusioned and we get some terrible outcomes, especially in Health care, both physical and mental.

I'm not a big believer of the so called Social Contract but if it ever existed, its gone now, people work to stay poor & pay taxes for rubbish services, this is what makes Governance very difficult.

The IMF loan followed 27% inflation in 1975, our economy was a basket case compared to other European countries. The condition of the IMF loan was a drastic reduction in the budget deficit and public spending. If Labour had had the guts to do that themselves that would have restored international confidence in the pound (exactly as the loan and its conditions did) and the loan would not have been needed.

It worries me that you're a teacher, with your entrenched inability to see good in a single thing she did, even making specs affordable. My experience of that time was that she restored the Nation's pride in itself and that's why the working class voted for her in droves. I'm sure you have a different view, please don't feel the need to explain it with another diatribe.

Blair was a conservative. He put competition and profit into everything from doctor's surgeries to universities. That's all gone terribly well, hasn't it?

The size of the UK economy in 1976 was £230 billion, the Labour Govt borrowed £2.3 billion from the IMF, 1%....

Not sure we were the worlds 6th richest country in 1976, even if so, we were also bit of a basket case in comparison to many others.

The loan was required after the early 70s Oil crisis, caused when a barrel of oil trebled in price, Labour had only been in for less than 2 years, following 2 GE's in 1974

So you tell me how any Govt would manage if a barrel of oil went from $100 to $300 ?

I can’t be arsed either. But no, I cannot think of a single solitary thing that woman did that benefited working people. My parents brought their council house but it’ll have to be sold to pay for their care - which thanks to privatisation will be extortionate. The woman was incapable of cause and effect thought.

Uh? GP surgeries have always been private enterprises, as have Uni's... unless you mean Poly's? changed to Uni's under John Major....

Might want to improve your general knowledge.

Blair completely changed the way GPs were remunerated and the way Universities were funded.

That’s true. I was at university at turn of century and remember the changes to funding. Protested them in fact.

... you claimed competition and profit were introduced into both GPs and Uni's.

On Uni's, Blair changed some funding from state to student funding with tuition fees, set at an affordable £3000 per year.

Cameron trebled this, thats where it all went wrong, esp with plan 2 loans.

Yes he changed the GP contract, done because OOH was a disaster, GPs leaving the NHS.

But the issues with GPs are fundamentally because neither Labour and then the Tories addressed root causes... too much PT work, an aging workforce and far greater demand, population and aging.

Well maybe if Thatcher hadn’t sold our gas and oil making share holders rich and the people poor.

Prior to Blair GPs we're quasi employees of the NHS as individuals or small partnerships. Blair opened them right up to operating as businesses with changed the rewards structures making them much more like profit driven businesses.

As well as destroying out of hours care.

Blair changed University funding, presided over a massive expansion of them taking on debt and again changed the flavour to them being run more like businesses competing against each other for students and profit.

Resulting of course in grade inflation because if you didn't award enough firsts, students went elsewhere.

'an affordable £3,000 per year...'

Yes, I remember how popular that was at the time. No protests at all.

Yeah , I saw that . Mumsnet all over. What’s 3 grand ? Nanny’s Christmas bonus😂

Err in the context of £9500 (50k in total) and plan 2, yes very affordable....many of those students who had 3k loans have paid them off.

Students graduating now, have debts around 50k... not 9k..... they'd love to have that cut to 9k....

£9000 even back in 2000's would nt buy you an average car and 9k was around 1/3rd of the average wage in 2002. AND mtce was still a grant....

So whilst you might enjoy pleading poverty, 9k in total for a degree education is affordable & good vfm.