Paul Krugman: Labour's Dead Center
Good article about the collapse of the moderate left in the UK.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/14/opinion/paul-krugman-labours-dead-center.html?smid=fb-share&_r=0
But I wont try to get into that game. What I want to do instead is talk about one crucial piece of background to the Corbyn surge the implosion of Labours moderates. On economic policy, in particular, the striking thing about the leadership contest was that every candidate other than Mr. Corbyn essentially supported the Conservative governments austerity policies.
Worse, they all implicitly accepted the bogus justification for those policies, in effect pleading guilty to policy crimes that Labour did not, in fact, commit. If you want a U.S. analogy, its as if all the leading candidates for the Democratic nomination in 2004 had gone around declaring, We were weak on national security, and 9/11 was our fault. Would we have been surprised if Democratic primary voters had turned to a candidate who rejected that canard, whatever other views he or she held?
Beyond that, however, Labours political establishment seems to lack all conviction, for reasons I dont fully understand. And this means that the Corbyn upset isnt about a sudden left turn on the part of Labour supporters. Its mainly about the strange, sad moral and intellectual collapse of Labour moderates.
fasttense
(17,301 posts)The earth is slowly becoming uninhabitable because a few very rich men want to get richer. The US supposed liberal president is pushing a fascist treaty for America that will turn over even more wealth and power to the same rich men who are killing the planet. And that is the supposed moderate stance.
Ask Obama and he will tell you he is a democrtic president who thinks he's more like an old style RepubliCON. He's no leftist, he's no revolutionary. He's a moderate. And the moderates are the ones pushing austerity, neoliberal, trickle down, capitalist destruction. If we keep the course set out by moderates like Obama and the current British Labour party we will all end up poor and suffering on a lifeless planet. That is the course set out by our moderates. It's now very conservative and radical to be a moderate because you have to close your eyes to so much reality.
djean111
(14,255 posts)T_i_B
(14,749 posts)Jeremy Corbyn's opponents all advocated 3rd way triangulation politics, which people have increasingly become tired of.
CTyankee
(63,912 posts)PATRICK
(12,228 posts)has not been too different. The two stolen presidential elections and some midterms saw them accepting a lot of the lying memes about the voters and polls rather than question the process and the media. Much of leadership even when it was starting to get tough about contracts and negotiations and union building still accept the meme about the extreme left and right, the changing times, the need to find support in both parties. It took absolute beating over the head to finally to leadership to admit that anyone voting GOP is simply voting for the destruction of their entire way of life. Still, a chunk of the membership is obsessed with "Reagan Dem" idiocy(based on playing the stock market with their thrift plans) or moral sidetracking, lunatic Fox things, even past military indoctrination into being just pro-GOP anti-Dem.
Political pragmatism? Duped loyalty to the system? General public brainwashing? Generally tied to the failing money system(as are many lefty political parties)? Too poor or too rich to want to- or be able to- fight? The richer and more established the longer the fall back to the mad dog fighting spirit it takes to combat persistent evil- over which there has been no absolute victory yet. Just another inner wall of delusions to scale which we become too tired or too satisfied to do.