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[–] 26 points 9 months ago (1 child)

The same can be said to their Democrat counterparts across the pond.

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  • [–] 3 points 9 months ago

    Or MSZP in Hungary. The SZ was supposed to mean szocialista (socialist), best we got were Blairite/Clintonite shit imported. That party was so bad the far-right called health care privatization "communism" in response to them.

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  • [–] 4 points 9 months ago

    So they rather lose the war than one fight? Fine with me.

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  • [–] 2 points 9 months ago

    It all went bad with Tony Blair and 'new labour'

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  • 41 comments in c/uk_politics@feddit.uk view that post
    [–] 31 points 9 months ago (23 children)

    This is how the US ended up fascist.

    The population continued to move to the left, the leftish party would only court the right. The further right party won.

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  • [–] 8 points 9 months ago (21 children)

    Evidently the whole population didn't move left because he won his second term with a popular majority.

    I can understand parties triangulate because the center are where most of the reliable voters are. As you go further out both left and right it gets harder to maintain an electoral c coalition.

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  • [–] 17 points 9 months ago* (19 children)

    Only if you make the assumption of a unimodal distribution of voters does that logic hold.

    And that assumption clearly hasn't held. It's a convenient but wrong assumption that voters follow a left to right distribution centered on a mean. But it's not realistic and never has been.

    People are complex and their motivations are complex, which results in a peaky, multidimensional distribution along separate often orthogonal axis.

    If you try and target a "center of mass" in this scenario, you'll often hit a void of policy positions no one particularly likes, empty space.

    It's like if 50 percent of voter want to go to Brussels, and 50 percent want to go to Paris and you propose Rancourt as a compromise solution, you get no one's vote because no one asked for that.

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  • [–] 1 point 9 months ago* (18 children)

    But... doesn't that multimodal distribution of topics/ethics still resolve to a unimodal Red/Blue vote in the end? In the end, it was an overall red-shift no?

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  • [–] 14 points 9 months ago (17 children)

    No. When looking at a shadow of a bird flying, you can't understand how the bird is really moving.

    In this case, the "centre-left" isn't engaging on the issues that people face day to day. The right parties engage with them, but give fascist solutions. The fact that the problem is acknowledged attracts some people. Others it pushes to not vote. It looks like the population is moving right, but it actually that the electorate isn't representable by the options available.

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  • [–] 4 points 9 months ago (6 children)

    but it actually that the electorate isn’t representable by the options available.

    Bring on direct democracy. If our representives don't represent us, we should get rid of the position.

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  • [–] 2 points 9 months ago (5 children)

    Personally I'd like better representation.

    The problem with direct democracy is that you can't expect everyone to be knowledgeable on every topic whilst they go on living their normal life. A full time representative can spend time researching, or having advisors research. In theory they could be better informed than the public.

    They're not, but in theory they could be.

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  • [–] 3 points 9 months ago* (1 child)

    No elected representative can ever be knowledgeable on every subject that they have to address, either. Most legislators are trained as lawyers because lawyers have to be good at faking it.

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  • [–] 1 point 9 months ago

    No, it's because lawyers can be expected to know how laws work. You kind of want that from someone who writes laws.

    Which actually points to how the EU is structured. The unelected bureaucrats of the European Commission are in fact lawyers selected by each of the member states, they are selected on merit for their skill and they write the proposed EU regulations. These are then voted on by the democratically elected representatives of the European Parliament. The goal being to have professionals write functional laws but ultimately have them put in force through democratic means.

    Still, the major problem with the EU is the way represntatives behave and are voted for. People all too easily neglect voting in the EU, or vote for joke/sensationalist parties that are even less likely to actually represent the people.

    Frankly, I think for better or worse a direct democracy would do away with these issues. People might not know about every matter, but they'll certainly feel the consequence - and they won't be able to hide behind their representative screwing things up, it will be their own fault. They'll learn soon enough and there'll be much more accountability all round.

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  • [–] 3 points 9 months ago (2 children)

    But in practice they aren't. In practice a represntative is swayed by people with money to go against the people they represent.

    There would be little to no opportunity for that in a direct democracy. Lobbyists can't bribe everyone, it wouldn't be cost effective. Meanwhile people will have no choice but to educate themselves, as they'll feel the effects of their votes directly and won't be able to hide behind the (sometime inevitable) betrayal of the person they voted for. Even if people are lied to and convinced to vote another way, there's a huge difference between "You lied to me and didn't do what you said you'd do" and "You lied to me and got me to do something I didn't want to do", and generally there should be more accountability.

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  • [–] 1 point 9 months ago (1 child)

    You'd be at the whim of every social media fad. Musk and Bezos would set the agenda even more than today.

    Hard disagree.

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  • [–] 2 points 9 months ago

    Musk and Bezos and others all operate on getting key people on their side. With these key people, they take the reigns of power. Under a direct democracy, the key people is everyone - Musk and others can't sway everyone, and it would be much harder for them to get the critical mass needed to achieve what they do now.

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  • [–] 3 points 9 months ago (6 children)

    But you can clearly sense that the bird is flapping, because that is the one feature from the handful that is represented strongest in the shadow.

    The working poor worried about their jobs is a frequent point every election and xenophobia is a cultural trait that has only recently been carpeted over these last few decades.

    Both sides did try to appeal to this either in a "we'll guarantee your livelihood with taxes and welfare" or "we'll guarantee your livelihood by (aggressively) reducing foreign labour". The messages were there, but the media spun one narrative far better and the masses readily swallowed it, giving in to their latent fears. To me, that's a clear right-shift

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  • [–] 6 points 9 months ago (5 children)

    I think that still fits in with what @wewbull@feddit.uk is saying. There is a right shift in votes because of extensive promotion by the media, which acknowledges the problem but offers a fascist solution, which is picked up by some voters. However other voters are disenfranchised and end up not voting. The overall shift in votes is to the right but the population itself is not right wing, the votes are not representative of the population because those who disagree don't vote for alternatives and instead don't vote at all.

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  • [–] 4 points 9 months ago (3 children)

    Oh that's fair, I didn't really consider the ones who did not vote

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  • [–] 3 points 9 months ago

    There's also a relentless propaganda effort to convince voters to abstain from voting unless there's a party that exactly matches their views in every aspect of the party's manifesto. If they fail one narrow single-issue purity test, of if their leader looks funny while eating a sandwich: game over.

    If both the major parties are wrong on an issue, I ask which one is more likely to do a U-turn. You can never have everything in a democracy. But then, in an authoritarian system, you'll probably get nothing but a boot in the face. Some people might think those are somehow equivalent. I don't.

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  • [–] 3 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (2 children)

    The fact that the problem is acknowledged attracts some people.

    The "problems" the fascists claim to address are often fabricated by, or exacerbated by, the very same fascists. Small boats: irrelevant. Sharia-law-controlled no-go zones: fiction. Immigrants taking yer jerbs: a malicious lie. And the underlying reality is that all those "issues" are racist dogwhistles.

    It's a fallacy to assert that gullible, low-information, brainwashed voters believe what they do because of legitimate grievances. They parrot what they're told, and don't have the critical thinking abilities needed to realise that they're being manipulated.

    Fascists don't get in by telling the truth on behalf of underserved groups. That's their narrative, but like all fascist narratives, it's a self-serving lie.

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  • [–] 2 points 9 months ago*

    novara used to be great on resonance fm but they've really been scraping the barrel the last couple of years with conspiracy fantasists and clowns like piker, whose methods they now seem to have adopted because populism

    also this is a midterm government that it getting through the unpopular stuff and haven't wheeled out their election winning policies

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  • [–] 6 points 9 months ago (1 child)

    Thoughts on these comments from Labour MPs? Source.

    One MP [said] if Burnham "acts like a team player he'd be valuable". But they cautioned: "If he's a grandstanding dickhead the melodrama will be a pain in the arse."

    Another MP:

    the country would never forgive us for doing exactly what the Tories did in changing leaders

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  • [–] 1 point 9 months ago

    Re: the 2nd quote, I can definitely see it being a problem if Labour can't remind the electorate about Tory chaos (without being accused of hipocracy). Optimistically, Tory chaos rhetoric has two functions: alleviates "buyer's remorse" in people who voted Labour; and it throws more mud at the toxic Tory brand, driving their voters to Reform. If they can deploy it properly then they'll get another majority as the right's vote is split within constituencies, leaving the Labour candidate as the winner under our FPTP system.

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  • [–] 14 points 9 months ago (6 children)

    It's still amazing that the labour government is refusing to court the left. Labour. What a weird fucking world.

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  • [–] 10 points 9 months ago (5 children)

    For some bizarre reason they have decided that they need to appeal to reform voters as if they would ever vote for anyone else. Labour strategist are clearly terrible.

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  • [–] 8 points 9 months ago (3 children)

    Sounds like the DNC in the US

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  • [–] 6 points 9 months ago (1 child)

    The purpose of a system is what it does.

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  • [–] 1 point 9 months ago

    I said this from the start, there was never any chance for Burnham to become a Labour MP as he is so clearly an automatic threat to Starmer. It's just like BoJo all over again, they can't be having anyone effective in the party, as that would ruin the fun.

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  • [–] 1 point 9 months ago (4 children)

    IMO the issue is that Tony Blair so comprehensively changed politics that parties can't win elections in the UK anymore from a leftwing platform. The alternative is that the government/Starmer are sitting there being told that a leftward move is significantly more popular than their current platform, and that they are - suicidally - ignoring that evidence due to ideology.

    How would one square the implicit suggestion that Starmer is taking bold ideological stances with the fact that the one thing everyone agrees about him is he lacks a clear ideology?

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  • [–] 6 points 9 months ago (2 children)

    parties can’t win elections in the UK anymore from a leftwing platform

    How would we know? Which party with more than a couple of percentage points of the vote has actually run an even slightly leftwing campaign since Blair and Brown? The only one I can think of is Corbyn, and he was sabotaged by his own MPs and the party apparatchiks who would (somewhat like the article) rather lose than allow anyone with even vaguely leftist policies to win.

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    5 comments in c/pravda_news@news.abolish.capital view that post
    [–] 3 points 9 months ago (4 children)

    Ok I'm not too knowledgeable in UK politics, but isn't the labour party à leftist party?

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  • [–] 7 points 9 months ago*

    No. They used to be, but rebranded in the 90s to New Labour and changed one of their founding principles of seeking common ownership of the means of production, thereby no longer being a leftist party.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clause_IV

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Labour

    They follow what is referred to as the Third Way. Not socialism, but capitalism light. This was established under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown from 1997 to 2010 and has continued under Keir Starmer since 2024.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Way

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Premiership_of_Keir_Starmer

    Starmer's third way is a bit different from Blair's. They pretend to be socialist at times, unlike Blair, and have returned to the old name of just Labour instead of New Labour. Some nationalisation has happened, but this is more becuase of necessity and political pragmatism than leftist principles. They're a duplicitous party, which performs token amounts of progressivism and bigs it up in their marketing while simultaneously taking a conservative stance the majority of the time. Put simply, they're a right wing party which pretends to be left to gain the public's support.

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  • [–] 5 points 9 months ago (2 children)

    Hmmmm they kinda motioned they were for a long time. Personally they just had different messaging whilst keeping people down. But then when a socialist that lived in a council house came along they didn’t like him. They actually really like businessmen and keeping people in poverty the people in poverty think labour look after them.

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  • [–] 6 points 9 months ago (1 child)

    Ah so it's the labour party in the sense that they make people work more for less. 

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  • [–] 3 points 9 months ago

    Not entirely. They supported many regions that lost their local industries say steelworks. And perpetuated benefits etc for many generations. Many thought it was a great life and celebrated labour. They went from the working man’s party. To the down and out party. Post Blair They kinda split. They dejected Corbyn and the uber socialist in favour of the centre, as most pollies have become have started to look after the rich.

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  • 1 comment in c/uk_leftists@feddit.uk view that post
    [–] 2 points 9 months ago

    Then, in what sense are they “Labour”?

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