Who's right -- and who's left?
Now that the party conferences are over for another year, let's play Let's Pretend.
Let's pretend we've already had the general election - and let's pretend that the Conservatives have won.
So David Cameron is in Downing Street. And let's pretend that he invites a few EU leaders over for tea. There'll be Nicolas Sarkozy from France, Angela Merkel from Germany, Silvio Berlusconi from Italy (well, if he's still around by then), and maybe Donald Tusk from Poland and Fredrik Reinfeldt from Sweden as well.
What do they all have in common? They're each and every one of them leaders of centre-right parties - and even if they were joined round the Downing Street dining room table by the leaders of Finland, Denmark, the Netherlands, Belgium and Austria, they'd still all share the same basic political philosophy.
Europe is now an overwhelmingly centre-right place to be. Of the major EU countries, only Spain bucks the trend: there, the Socialists were comfortably re-elected last year even as the country was in the grip of a very nasty recession. (The left has also just regained power in Greece.)
So here's the question: why, at a time when capitalism and free market economies are going through a major crisis, are left-of-centre parties being defeated again and again?
In the past, wouldn't they have been leading the charge against an economic system that has brought so much turbulence and uncertainty - and often real financial hardship as well - to so many millions of lives?
Last week, at the Labour party conference in Brighton, I heard Gordon Brown talk about how Labour would look after ordinary, hard-working, middle class families. This week, I heard David Cameron talk about how the Tories' top priority is to look after the poorest people in Britain.
And I was tempted to look for a mirror, because I found myself wondering if politics is now reversing itself. And if so, why? Might it be that one reason why left-of-centre parties aren't doing better during the current crisis is that they're no longer saying the sort of things they used to say? And that centre-right parties are saying what centre-left parties used to say?
Or do voters take the view that if you need someone to sort out a capitalist mess, you'd better get people who really understand capitalism to do it? Or was Francis Fukuyama really on to something when he suggested that the end of Communism in Europe meant the end of history?
Some political writers have been arguing for years now that the terms "right" and "left" no longer mean much. But there clearly are still real differences in how political parties look at the world: David Cameron says, as Ronald Reagan used to say, that Big Government is the Big Problem; Gordon Brown says that although he accepts that governments should never try to do what they can't do, they should never fail to do what they need to do.
There have, of course, been major social and economic changes throughout Europe over the past 30 years. Hundreds of thousands of jobs in traditional heavy industries like steel-making, coal-mining and ship-building have gone, and with them has gone the central role of trades unions and their political party allies.
So I'm not surprised that the shape of politics has changed too. But I do think it's interesting to look at our forthcoming election battle through a European prism. The UK is no stranger to bucking European trends, so I wouldn't dream of suggesting that because the left is in retreat across much of the European continent, it will head in the same direction on this side of the Channel.
But in our game of Let's Pretend, if David Cameron does find himself hosting that Downing Street tea party, he'll know that - Lisbon Treaty or no Lisbon Treaty - he just may have been part of a political transition that extends well beyond our shores.
© MMIX~RS~q~RS~~RS~z~RS~35~RS~)
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Robin,
I think your analysis is reasonable. Labour are, in some areas of policy, to the right of the Tory party, but only in some areas. Neither party has an ideology - except to get re-elected, and is it not probable that this is driven by the need for the career politician to maintain their income.
The rise of the 'real' left and decline of the SPD in German is a reflection of the same political movement. I always like to know that any political party has a driving ideology, and I believe so do the voters. The poor want a party that wants to help the poor etc. etc. It is to the shame of the Labour Party that the Tories could realistically dare to claim that they were the party on the side of the poor. We have two Tory parties, not because the Tories have changed, but because Labour has moved so far to the right.
There are immense dangers in the effective disenfranchising and marginalisation of the mass of the population and this is also reflected in the rise of the far right, and other xenophobic racists. This is above all the fault of the Labour party. If they had not supped with the (printers) devil in East London and compromised their values of Methodism and Socialism just to get elected - they might have not been elected - but what good have they been, having been elected? They have wasted over a decade by being essentially Nu Tories. Now the real Tories will come to power (it looks Like) and the Labour party will have to reinvent itself - properly, as a party of the left that stands out and argues for better treatment for the poor? (Fat chance!!! More likely as supporters of the bankers!)
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"Who's right -- and who's left?"
Nobody's right, everyone is wve all gone so there's nobody left. That's why the only choice is between Brown and Cameron. Blair wants to be President of the world now that he's solved the Middle East, Kinnock has gone on to bigger and better things, and Smith dropped dead. How inconsiderate of Smith. His timing could hardly have been more awful.
Now about this role reversal. I think we're just one step removed from cross-dressing. Merckel in a three piece vested pants suit with a necktie, dress shirt and cufflinks and Brown in a Kilt. Yes I know a kilt is not really a woman's skirt, they wear them up in Scotland when they throw 80 foot trees at each other and eat haggis (which was invented in England.) Just kidding.
So European political pendulums swing too. As Europe moves to the right, America moves to the left. Europeans hope they will somehow meet America somewhere in the middle but I think they will miss each other like two ships passing in the night. Left and right have a different context in Europe than in America. But who ever would have thought we'd see the day when a President of France would chastise a President of the United States for not being aggressive enough? Makes you wonder how America could have gone so wrong as to be soft by French expectations.
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Robin, I share your dismay at a topsy turvy world in which the distinctions between right and left have been reversed like in a hall of mirrors. But looking at Europe from the US where the division between right (Republicans) and left (Democrats) has never been sharper and greater than today, I do not for a moment believe that even in Europe you should expect that deep down the (old) differences are erased. My thoughts on European politics may be superficial and shallow but you may find them interesting. John is correct that New Labour has in many cases moved to the right of the Tory party. Neil Kinnock started this movement to the right when he seized control of the Labour party in the eighties from the left wing of Michael Foot, Tony Benn, and the radical left. This was followed a decade later by Tony Blair's New Labour party which radically changed the organization of the Labour party by coalesing power around a select group of operatives like Peter Mandelson and Alastair Campbell. Blair then resurrected Thatcherism in a modified ideology called the "Third Way." This later evolved into the private-public partnership movement in Britain and elsewhere. In Germany, the SPD under Gerhard Schoeder, retained many aspects of the old SPD ideology, and in addition Schroeder resisted and rejected the Anglo-Saxon market fundamentalism that had gained a powerful influence under Tony Blair, Bill Clinton, and George W Bush. But under the crushing weight of economic recession and fiscal pressures, Schroeder introduced federal measures to curb wages and union democracy that created a rift in the SPD, with the breakaway "die Linke" party, that doomed his re-election bid. To his credit, Schroeder joined with Jacques Chirac in opposing the Bush-Blair invasion of Iraq. This courageous decision created a rift with Washington and London that has not fully healed to this day. Joining with the CDU-CSU to form a grand coalistion under Angela Merkel has not endeared the leaders of the SPD to their members who continued to resent Gerhard Schroeder's measures. The recent elections in Germany has ended the CDU-SPD coalition which will present an opportunity for reconciliation of the SPD with its leaders. The clash of political ideologies in France is an old rift that has deep roots in French history. Complicating the picture has been the Gaullist ideology which was shared to an extent by both sides. The weakness of the left in French politics which has worsened lately is a complex matter that I do not pretend to understand at all. I have not encountered any comprehensible explanations of this matter in English yet.
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Who is right and who is left?......
Interesting question take the BNP as an example, clearly many of their policies are left of centre, indeed many of the people voting for them are typical Labour supporters. Yet Labour would have us believe that you must be right wing to be racist or xenophobic !!, does Labour forget that the National Socialist Parties (NAZI) policies were also clearly left wing?.
It is concerning that so many people feel able to vote for parties such as the BNP, equally it is regretable that the rhetoric being used by Labour Ministers (Milliband, McShane etc) to attempt to smear the Conservatives is the same as that used by the NAZI to smear their political opponents.
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Robin,
"So here's the question: why, at a time when capitalism and free market economies are going through a major crisis, are left-of-centre parties being defeated again and again?"
Because the Bilderbergers have decreed it. They want a business-friendly government model across the world. Low regulation. Free trade. Low tariffs. Bailouts when it goes wrong. Privatised utilities. Diminished public sector.
And it looks like they are getting it. From the Caspian Sea to Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific. The only thing they aren't as strong as is the plaent. And she is fighting back, bless her...
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#5. lordBeddGelert wrote:
Bilderbergers? - Do you rally think "Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands" and he chums run things, or do you jest?
Let me offer a different conspiracy theory, and my own made-up portmanteau word "Zeitungführer" that is those who run and own the news media in the ever popular (fake) German to give it some street cred! Now there is a conspiracy that looks good - it was after all "The Sun wot won it"!!
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Spain and Greece aren't the only countries that have bucked the centre-right trend in Europe.Scotland has a social democratic(aka SNP)government in Edinburgh.And it currently has a higher poll rating for the next Holyrood elections than it recieved in the 2007 contest.
Also,the SNP's European allies the Greens gained their highest ever number of MEP's in June's Euro vote.It should also be remembered that although the SPD had a very bad result,there are many centre-left parties in Europe which still have plenty of electoral strength.
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Your post looks like a fair analysis Robin. I wouldn't be too surprised though if Labour win next year (with the British public trusting the devil they know).
What is interesting about the German elections (if there is such a thing as an interesting German election) was the drop in support for all the centrist parties. This may be due to the shortcomings of the 'Grand Coalition'. The centre-left took a bigger hit than the centre-right, but my guess is that SDP voters supported the leftist party and the Greens, while CDU voters only had one other alternative on the right.
On a separate issue, I can't see Blair becoming EU President. I think he's tainted by Iraq and his relationship to Bush.
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