The "Radical Left"

[Suff]

It appears, fro this Huffington Post article that Corbyn is infecting the Labour party with "Radical Left" values.

To me it's being infected with values which have been rejected, over and over and over again by the British people. But maybe I'm wrong. So I went searching for a bit about the "Radical Left" and found an interesting document entitled The Radical Left in Britain by James Jupp.

In the Preface he writes.

The initial search on which this book is based was undertaken at the London School of Economics in the 1950s under the supervision of Professors R.T. McKenzie and Donald G. MacRae. Since then I have seen no reason to change my basic proposition that the Left has a useful function in enlivening the Labour Party but has no future as an independent force in British politics

I wonder when people will remember that Tony Blair and the "Centre Right" led the British Labour Party to it's first "ever" second term government? That is First EVER. Labour never managed to even get a second term before Blair (I'm not counting winning after a coalition), sealing the position that the Labour Party were OK to right a few wrongs but not to be trusted running the country.

Blair broke that position and convinced enough people that they could be trusted to run the country. Spectacularly ended by the financial crisis when it was clear that they could not.

Just why anyone would believe that the "Radical Left" could take over Britain, an essentially right of centre capitalist democracy, is very bemusing to me. Although I'm willing to believe that people do believe that. Blair didn't change us that much and when he was gone people reverted to their beliefs they had held before.

We've seen this before where the crash of the Tories after Maggie led them to stray further to the centre ground that Blair and Brown occupied for 3 terms. Neither hard right nor hard left can hold sway in the current social and political climate.

All the hard left can do is damage Labour further at the polls. Just ask the SNP. Labour in Scotland swung to the left after Brown and it net the SNP an outright victory in the Scottish elections. Again they stayed Left at the parliamentary elections and were trounced by the SNP. Yes they were being punished for their stance on the referendum, but also the whole Left leaning made it worse as they tried to keep the Centre Right party away.

Then, in the last Scottish elections the "Left leaning" Scottish Labour came third to the Tories. Perhaps not forgiven for Thatcher in Scotland but seen as a better alternative to the Bampots who want to run off and be closet communists.

Don't get me wrong I'm not complaining. I want Labour to go back to being the also ran "Social fix" party that can only be tolerated for one term every 15 years or so. I'm just having some fun analysing...

[Workingman]

What, prey tell, is the 'Radical Left'.

Is it a belief in Marxist communism or a belief that the state should own and operate essential services? I am not sure any more.

I know that the term is much used by the right wing, or is that far-right, media, but it appears to have lost all meaning.

If I look at my own political spectrum of beliefs then I am, simultaneously, far-right and radical left. My guess is that tagging people like Mason as radical left when their views chime with a lot of what people think is fair will make many think: "OK, I can go along with all that, call me 'radical' if you want."

It might seem like a good tactic to call out "Radical!" for everything on the left of politics in the short term, but will NOT make parties like Labour disappear. It could, in some perverse way, make them stronger.

[Suff]

I was surprised (only because I'd never looked before), to find that "radical left" is quite clearly defined in the Labour movement and much more clearly defined than the right wing interpretation. From the right wing everything left of soft conservatism is "Radical". However to the Labour (or let's give them their true name Socialist), movement, there is way more granularity than that.

Just as, to many in the socialist spectrum, anything right of soft Conservatism is neo Nazi. Yet the right wing will give you chapter and verse on the stratification of right wing views. It's always more profitable to view the different strata of a political movement from the right viewpoint. i.e. the view of that movement itself rather than it's opposition.

The google book I pointed to was penned by a Labour party member, Political student, turned University Don, married to a Marxist trained wife. Someone I would clearly expect to understand the differing political strata of Labour.

But what I said is very true. Every time Labour veers to the harder left it is abandoned by the masses. Notably, right now, the Lib Dems are feeling very strong. Hardly surprising as they are the traditional beneficiaries of the centre left Labour voters every time Labour becomes unpopular. Given that Corbyn and his followers, are doing their level best to alienate the centre left, were I Farron, I'd be feeling strong too.

[Workingman]

I hear what you are saying, Suff, but it is not even hard-left never mind radical.

It is obviously to the left of the political spectrum and some of its leanings are much farther from the left than the centre, but to keep using the term "radical", as the media does, distorts and underplays what the hard-left and far-left actually are.

I would be saying exactly the same if the Conservatives were constantly referred to as Fascists or far-right in order to frighten people away from them. They are nothing of the sort and people are generally sensible enough to see that.

People are also sensible enough to see that Labour is not radical and I disagree that the masses are drifting away in droves. There is enough evidence out there that plenty of people are starting to like what they hear as Labour drifts away from it Blairite position.

The vast majority of us have a socialistic, in non-political terms, streak in us. That is why parties just to the right of centre, as the Conservatives are, generally get such strong following. They practice Conservatism, but with a social conscience. It is when they drift further to the right, as the Conservatives are in danger of doing if they are not careful, that people move away.

[Suff]

If I thought that Corbyn was a touch further left than Blair, who I see as a soft conservative anyway, then I'd be with you. However I don't. Corbyn is a Communist playing at being a socialist. Pure and simple. As such he believes that the end justifies the means and he will lie constantly to get there. The fact that everyone thinks he's honourable is, to me, frankly quite interesting.

To quote my, once communist card carrying, brother in law, "you've moved further to the left as you have got older". He's right too, in my younger years I was quite dominated by my military family and company owning family upbringing. However my BIL doesn't see what I see so clearly. That he has moved much further to the right as he has become much richer and owns his own property.

Corbyn has several more years to continue stepping on the crank with the golf shoes and will continue to do that. The most interesting part is that the centre left Labour voters see Corbyn more clearly than the Centre right conservatives do. And they will vote that clarity at the next election.

The press and the Labour establishment will also continue to undermine Corbyn and, by association, the entire Labour movement.

I can't say I'll be spinning cartwheels because I won't. But I won't mourn it either. Whilst I like a good opposition to keep the parliamentary party sharp, I believe that cockroaches need to be stood on. I'll take the consequences of a poor parliamentary party performance as a cost.

[Workingman]

The problem I have is with conflating Corbyn with Labour - the party.

He is not the party, he is one man, OK there are others of like mind, but because of Militant in the 70s there are now checks and balances in place to keep some sort of control over any extremists.

If the word "radical" is going to be used then the most radical politician and party leader in modern times was Margaret thatcher. There was no controlling her, quite the opposite. During her time as leader of the Conservatives she took the party much further to the right than it is today. Doing that paved the way for Blair and Labour to move to the centre ground in preparation to take control. It was Thatcher who gifted Blair his run of election victories, but make no mistake, there were plenty of Labour voters who were not comfortable with its new political position. Blair won on the back of disaffected Tory voters.

Corbyn might be a closet communists and, yes, he is positioning the Labour party further to the left, but I am not going to write them off. There are millions of small 's' socialists out there who are at least willing to listen to what is being said. There could yet be a shock for the Conservatives come 2020.

[Suff]

Could be true, Corbyn might appeal to many disaffected voters. Then again, I firmly believe that Blair was thought of as a soft option to the Tories. Those voters won't come back for a Labour party veering to the left.

There's another point now too. So long as Labour keep up this love affair with the EU, the voters are not going to vote for Labour so they can try and water down that vote. It was in the Northern heartlands that Labour voters voted to leave and it will be a Tory government that takes us out. Until that little bit of reality is worked out of the system, no amount of "veering to the left" is going to play against it very well. Not without Corbyn standing up and standing against the EU and, remember, he's a committed outer who campaigned to stay in. In other words he lied for party expediency.

An interesting statistic. Neither Blair nor Maggie ever lost an election. Also I firmly believe that it was Major who buried the Tories and let in Blair. Not Maggie. I was one of those who changed their vote and voted him out so I have a good memory of why I did that. I would not have done it to Maggie, of that I'm sure.

It's going to be an interesting ride, of that I'm sure. Come 2020 I don't expect to be surprised. Just don't be surprised when Corbyn refuses to go!

I might like to see a resurgence in the Lib Dems in that case. Just not into government, I don't want to go back in the EU....

[Workingman]

Major buried the Tories because he was not strong enough to drag his politicians back to the centre Maggie moved them away from. He was a weak and not widely supported leader, in the country and parliament, replacing a very strong one. So was Brown with Blair.

You might be right about Tory voters who went to Labour under Blair not wanting to go with Corbyn's Labour, but if they are not died in the wool Tories, as many aren't, they could go to the next best centrist option, the LibDems, if the Tories go too far right; like it or not they do have options

Theresa May is going to have to be very careful of the path she chooses to walk between now and 2020.