Senate The UK Politics discussion

Well I would probably want to clarify the above with a broad disclaimer to the effect that we're not saying Green = Teh Commies!!1!

But I'm a little confused as to how their policies wouldn't be considered radical left. Unless you didn't know V2 was British and we're talking about the Green Party of England and Wales?

 

Well, yes, I took into account that the UK Greens are different than the U.S. Greens. Before I made that post I looked up their generalized party platform which didn't seem very radical to me at first glance. Though I guess being anti-austerity and anti-privatization automatically makes someone a radical in Europe nowadays.

 

No no. I'm don't mean to suggest that at all. And I thought I did suggest they were a leftist party. But in the U.S. you can't consider them a far left party. And even in North America as a whole they can't be. They're really not in No. America.

In GB and the continent, yes, they do align themselves with leftists usually. And some of their members are former communists. But some of their members are also former social democrats too.

And I would fully embrace the greens stance on animal rights and protections. But that doesn't make me a far lefty. Even the old liberal party in GB is for animal rights(not the liberal demos but the splinter libs who opposed the social dem/liberal merger).

 

Sure, that page is a fairly wishy-washy collection of broadleft statements. But if you look to the right, you have their philosophy which is further expanded here and absolutely is aligned to the radical left.

Such as:

PB413 A sustainable society can be prosperous, but it cannot have continually rising affluence. We accept that there is a limit to the wealth each person can receive, and this is true no matter how much or how little work needs to be done to produce that wealth. Some redistribution of income will be required. What wealth there is must be shared in such a way that everyone has a guarantee of economic security, otherwise people will not heed ecological restraints in their daily lives.

The notion of a limit on wealth and redistribution on top earners is not consistent with mainstream, broad left politics and is, for example, no longer a policy platform of Labour (owning to Blair abolishing this clause from the Party's constitution).

Anything which seeks redefine society and "upset the status quo" is radical, by definition. I know also that in the US there's a tendency for right wing imbeciles to use it as a pejorative term; they also accuse Mr Obama of socialism so you know how much weight their remarks should carry.

 

Actually, many in the right in the U.S. characterize themselves as radicals because they regard the status quo as institutionalized great society programs that they wish to roll back. So, the right in the U.S. doesn't exactly think of radical as a bad word.

Socialism, yes. Radical, no.

Why is the Green Party UK using mileage as a measurement?

Eh, Green Party UK seems to be just a bit more potent than the U.S. version. But, I wouldn't consider them revolutionaries. Probably Fabians with an environmental plank.

 

I'm fairly sure Labour still wants to tax the rich more than the poor, how is that not redistribution of wealth all of a sudden? And the guarantee of economic security, isn't that an old Tory idea? That whole welfare state thing?

I didn't realise the status quo since the 1940s was so radical and left wing.

 

Yeah I didn't actually read anything there so far left really. Nothing you don't get to see or hear if you ever watch PM's questions in the Commons.

They want to take the trains back……. Watch out!

And the fair wage…Seattle already enacted one here. It's basically just taking the minimum wage, which is a joke that no one can live on, and just raising it.

Affordable housing.

These are all basically things fabians talked about long ago. They're basic social provisions to help blunt some of the negatives of capitalism, but not overthrow it and change it completely. I don't hear greens at the EU parliament talking about getting rid of the EU and the economic policies as a whole.

 

Labour, if I recall correctly, either abolished or just overhauled comprehensively the text of Clause IV to move away from aggressive redistribution and nationalisation to what's effectively a classical centre left statement. They moved from being socialist to being "democratic socialist" or somesuch but if we're simplifying things - Labour and the Tories are content to tweak the system, the Greens seek to entirely redefine/rebuild the system.

FWIW some of the Green's policy positions are fairly sensible, but they've not really articulated how they achieve them. It's fine to have your head in the clouds if your feet are firmly planted on the ground, or some other such mangled metaphor.

I guess to illustrate further - why are Greens taking Labour votes if they're both similarly centre- or broad-left?

 

Labour made those changes back in, what, '94? Thing is if you speak to any Labour politician or listen to what they say, read their manifestos, etc, they are always in favour of taxing the rich at higher rates than the poor. That's not a Labour value that died with Clause 4. The minimum wage was fought for by Labour, the living wage is another Labour cause, as is the repeal of the bedroom tax. Elections since 94 have been fought on wealth redistribution tickets, they're on about their mansion tax right now. Blair, architect of the destruction of Clause 4, may have sexed up their business friendly centrist image but that didn't stop him renationalising the railways in 2001, or appealing to his core members and the unions.

There are Labour people who want to nationalise everything just as there are Conservative people who want to privatise everything. *shrugs*

Greens aren't 'taking Labour votes' per se, but I see what you mean. Thing is, UKIP take some Labour votes too. So have the BNP in the past. One party being affected by another doesn't prove that both parties sit in the same spot on the left/right spectrum.

The Parliamentary Labour Party has moved a lot further right than the Labour Party itself, due to stuff like the unpopular wars, the PFI disaster, creeping authoritarianism, the 2008 global financial crisis (somehow being all Brown's fault), the membership is declining. Most of those lapsed members will, one assumes, stay Labour voters, but many will actually seek out a politician or party that better reflects their views. So the Greens say they are in favour of nationalised utilities, free NHS, welfare/social security, etc, these are all Old Labour principles, it doesn't make the Greens far left or radical left, it just makes them bog standard left.

The idea that energy and mineral resources are finite isn't radical, nor is the idea that economies cannot expand forever. The idea that the natural resources will not run out, the environment is not affected by human activity, and that we can all get richer at nobody else's expense is a dangerous fantasy, it's typical of right wingers and libertarians but it's not what I'd call a right wing principle, just a very bad idea.

Sure the Greens haven't spelled out how they'd work their magic but none of the other parties have either. When they try, everyone else points out how it doesn't work. This is standard, but I can understand why you have a need to hold the Greens to a higher one than your favourites even if you can't. Unbiased lol.

I'm not a Green, btw. Pro nuclear and GM right here, but I've voted for them once or twice in the past, especially at local council level.

 

Only problem with the idea of wages paying more than benefits is which way do you go? Do you lower benefits or raise wages? If the latter who pays for them?

It's complicated further by the identified mismatch between wages and the cost of living, which places benefits and the state as filling the gap, which practically acts as a form of subsidy for low wages. Something's got to give here.

The bedroom tax could have worked if there was a supply of smaller and suitable 1-2 bed properties, the problem is that there isn't thus it can't work. That and, like with their mandatory re-assessing of all disability claimants at great cost, likely more than what is paid to them, there is no discretion permitted. So you have second bedrooms being used to enable carers to stay and equipment to be stored which is not accepted or recognised.

But then this is the case with the coalition's approach to policy - as soon as a politician talks of evidence-based policy, expect the following policy to be generated on cloud cuckoo land thinking! For instance the replacement of Disability Living Allowance with Personal Independence Plan. Sounds fine, except the fraud rate for DLA was estimated by the Office for National Statistics at 0.5% or less*. That means 99.5% of the payments are legitimate. The coalition propose to reduce the PIP claims relative to DLA by 20%, so that means at least 19.5% of those people receiving support, with a justified application and evidence, will get screwed over. And, in being so, they will likely end up needing greater help at greater cost due to the short-sighted of this policy. It ain't going to actually save any money, likely inflict a major net loss instead.

( * Ah, but all you have to do is fill out a form, don't you? Yeah, a 40-page form that goes into great detail as to how exactly how incapable you are, with evidence backing it up. If you really want to do benefit fraud, there has to be easier and more lucrative methods!)

People love to slag off statistics but if you don't use them, what do you use instead? Evidence from the Blokes Down the Pub focus group? Evidence by anecdote? Iain Duncan Smith is a particularly serial offender in this respect. Then again, his boss is no better: David Cameron uses his dead disabled son as an all-purpose political shield on disability. I can't help but see that as disgraceful.

At the same time, I think there is a desire for conservative politics. Cameron pretty much positioned himself as this in 2010 and then betrayed his entire position! What do I mean by 'conservative'? A respect for the status quo, an assumption that it works and only needs minor tweaks. That respects the principle of: If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Just about every UK government in my lifetime has claimed to be conservative while re-organising and throwing out the status quo across the board at vast cost to everyone. The NHS and education has likely had double digit revamps over the last 20 years, which helps no one. Linked to this is a kind of juvenile approach to politics, whereby each side can only have contempt for their predecessors, which in turn promotes the model of permanent revolution and perpetual change.

Then again I suppose it could be said I'm only wanting the holy grail of politics: A smart, grown-up government that acts in a joined-up way to improve what needs improving and maintain the rest without being suspicious and scared of professionals.

Nope. Cynical response: No one cares about what MEPs get up to! More serious response: For a leader of a party committed to exiting the EU to be elected to its parliament and then claim +£100k of expenses certainly takes the biscuit and the entire packet!

 

I'd have a slightly different take on some things in your post, Jedi Ben - I don't think Cameron had contempt for those gone past, he's basically positioned himself as the heir to Blair's legacy. Not only was this canny from an electoral position it shows how centrist Blair was.

 

Oops, I was thinking of immediate predecessors ES, but should have added the qualifier: 'when of the other party'!

You can see this on the way Cameron and Osborne keep the fiscal attack on Labour running, despite pretty much backing their policies, but wanting more deregulation of the finance sector, across the noughties. It's as if neither Labour and Conservatives can admit the other side did anything right in power, thus when they get power, everything must change. It's ideology blocking pragmatism.

In part, this is politics as usual, especially for Opposition politicians mouthing off, but continuing to act like that once in power? Doesn't work.

 

I like the tactic though of knowing there's no appetite for Blairism or New Labour in any front running Labour candidates; and that the public might be skeptical of the party continuing that agenda following the misadventure in Iraq and Gordon Brown's vague attempts to emulate a human being. Cameron can sledge Labour and be Blairite and it gives the concession that the most centrist, reformist, non-socialist leader the Party has had was a good chap.

If Miliband fakes being a Blairite, then it makes Cameron look correct.

We're no different here; despite 11 years of conservative rule leaving the country with substantial surplus funds the Labor party continually denigrated their legacy whilst spending and borrowing their way into rapid debt. The subsequent conservatives haven't so much denigrated Labor's legacy as said it was all debt and then pretended nothing else happened.

 

One line of thought I've seen crop up is that there's a need for a new political paradigm for UK politics and the things tend to come along every 30-40 years. So post WW2 there's the Attlee govt and the creation of the NHS and welfare state. About 3 decades on, along comes Thatcher, here we are another 3-4 decades later... What's it going to be?

 

Oh god... we really need our own thread to discuss this...

 

Interesting. Is that because some sort of fatigue sets in with a ruling government and the opposition?

I guess to take your thought of 30-40 years out you could go back before Atlee. That time would fall roughly around Bannerman/Asquith/Lloyd George liberals and the Great War era. I think Labor came along in that same time period. Before that you would have Gladstone in there bouncing around between conservative governments. So, do you think it's some sort of fatigue that sets in because the victorious side gets to enact their agenda and people just get sick of the mandate?

 

The presentation of it only seemed to start from post-WW2, but yeah, jump back 20 years or so and you have Labour displacing the Liberals as second party in the early 20s. Mid-to-late 19th century you have D'Israeli's creation of One Nation conservatism too.

EDIT: As to the why, could likely be very mundane - the ideas get over-used and ran into the ground!

 

Realistically the best thing you could do is pop Boris into Downing St.

 

But at least a party gets to take their agenda and enact it. One thing I like about the Westminster(?) system is you can't exactly blame another branch of government for your failures like we can here in the U.S. I guess you can blame the previous government like our president now still blames Bush and so on. But you can't name a do nothing congress for blocking your agenda.

Where is your new Supreme Court placed in the government ranks? I know it was newly created but don't understand how it fits into the scheme of things in a government.

 

Ender Sai Boris:

You want a MUMMY PM?

You want a DUMMY PM?

 

I don't know what you're on about, frankly, Shane but since you didn't agree Boris is the t**s I'll assume you were being unkind and offer to fight you if you speak ill of him again.

 

Oh, any US President would likely kill for the powers assigned to the office of Prime Minister and that's before factoring in the Royal Prerogative powers the PM exercises on behalf of the Monarch.

Supreme Court is the highest court for legal matters:
https://www.supremecourt.uk/about/role-of-the-supreme-court.html

In relation to Parliament:
http://www.parliament.uk/business/news/2009/07/from-house-of-lords-to-supreme-court/

So the judges can make case law, but don't think they can reverse a Parliamentary Act, as that would be for Parliament to do.

 

You don't need to, he's armed!

 

See, my constitutional knowledge is about 20 years out of date so had to be careful on the Supreme Court bit. It was the House of Lords and the Law Lords that were the top tier. Can't recall the reason for the change, it was a different world after all, pre-crash and all that!