There’s no money left so the left is collapsing

[Super Nova]

This article was such a pleasure to read. Enjoy.

Uk centric... but relevant.

There is no money to be a leftie anymore. A failed ideology primarily because they could not be trusted with the purse string and pissed it all up against the wall in the good times.

There’s no money left so the left is collapsing

Published at 12:01AM, June 25 2015

Look across the world and left-wing parties are out of favour. It’s the chance for compassionate conservatism to move in

The “acid, amnesty and abortion” agenda sank the presidential candidacy of George McGovern in 1972. Acid stood for tolerance of drugs; the amnesty for Vietnam war dodgers; abortion for women’s reproductive rights.

Fast forward to today and the campaigns have changed but the basic themes haven’t: freedom to use recreational drugs; opposition to war; and equality for minorities — whether women, homosexuals or “people of colour”. The left’s great hope for four decades has been that the McGovern coalition that couldn’t win then would be victorious by now, when so many more voters are immigrants, single mums, university educated and environmentally aware.

The left just needed one big thing to happen. The more traditional and poorer members of its coalition had to be willing to cohabit with the new, rights-orientated activists. In last year’s Stephen Beresford film Pride, we had a vision of how it was meant to work out. Lesbian and gay activists from metropolitan London travelled to the most traditional of Welsh colliery villages during the depths of the 1984 miners’ strike. After some initial scepticism from some of the miners the film becomes a festival of left-wing kumbaya. They stand together on the picket lines. They dance together. The wives of the miners play with their gay allies’ sex toys. It’s great entertainment but is there any pot of political gold at the end of the left’s rainbow coalition other than on the silver screen? Last month’s election result suggests not.

Labour’s coalition has fallen apart: Scottish heartlands defected to the SNP, the economic casualties of globalisation to Ukip, progressive students to the Greens, “Blairite Tories” to David Cameron. Over forty years the McGovern coalition hasn’t grown in size, but grown apart. And no wonder. While the left has ensured that the “acid, amnesty and abortion” wing has prospered, it has not delivered much for anyone else. Whereas gay equality has advanced in leaps and bounds since the era portrayed in Pride, blue-collar groups like the miners have been humbled as economic, political and social forces. Manufacturing industry declined as much under Blair as Thatcher — partly because of environmental policies that motivate the ideas class that runs the Labour party but were devastating for the semi-skilled.

Labour’s priorities have been repeatedly warped. It invited a scale of immigration that has depressed the wages of its poorest supporters. Its unpopular all-women shortlists resulted in union and political toadies being parachuted into seats at the expense of local working class activists. Its constant pandering to its traditional Scottish heartland has started to rankle with northern England. Although Edinburgh, Glasgow and Dundee are, on average, richer than Manchester, Leeds or Hull, the latter receive less Treasury cash than the former. It’s not even a bribe for which there has been much gratitude. The Scottish jury gave it a 56 to 3 negative verdict on election day.

Bribery with taxpayers’ money was always intended to provide the glue to keep the rainbow coalition together but there is no money for glue any more. The Blairites, who are so ready to lecture the rest of their party, seem to forget that they were lucky to be in power when coffers were overflowing. The Blair-Brown years were characterised by a replacement of manufacturing jobs with public sector jobs. That’s a trick that can’t be repeated after you have built up one of the largest deficits in Europe. And austerity isn’t going away. Rising healthcare and pension bills plus downward global pressure on tax-raising powers mean that Labour will not be able to spend its way to electoral unity for many years to come.

The Conservatives meanwhile aren’t waiting passively for Labour’s coalition to fracture. George Osborne, who is a close student of Richard Nixon — the man McGovern hated and lost to — is ready to drive wedge after wedge into Labour’s coalition. Labour has already been outflanked by the Tories when it comes to investing in northern infrastructure and in championing tax cuts for the low-paid.

The fracturing of the left is not just a British phenomenon and that is what makes it so significant. The defeat of Denmark’s left-wing government last week means that Sweden is the only Scandinavian country without a right-wing government. Scandinavia lost to the left? It’s like Labour losing Scotland.

The left has also suffered heavy defeats in Germany, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and Poland in recent years. Where it has won power — notably in France — it has flopped. Even Barack Obama’s ratings have collapsed. One recent opinion poll found him less popular than George W Bush.

If the Republicans want to win the White House next year (they are already more dominant in the rest of American government than at any time for a century) they must remove the last thing that unites successful left-wing coalitions: hatred. Hatred of Margaret Thatcher united the miners and the gay rights activists in Pride. Just as nothing messes with your enemies’ minds as much as forgiving them, nothing messes with the left-wing mind as much as a compassionate conservative. Indoctrinated within social media bubbles into believing that everything right-wing comes from the devil, they can’t understand a right-winger who embraces tax cuts for the poor or a cause like gay marriage.

The left are there for the taking — if America’s conservatives fight with their hearts as well as their minds.

http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/opinion/c ... 479135.ece

[J o h n S m i t h]

Sure, very relevant, if you are brain dead

it's an opinion piece from a conservative party activist and a former speach writer to two conservative Party leaders, you may as well ask Corey Bernardi for his opinion

[Neferti]

Sure, very relevant, if you are brain dead

it's an opinion piece from a conservative party activist and a former speach writer to two conservative Party leaders, you may as well ask Corey Bernardi for his opinion

So, your leftard antenna says it is INCORRECT?

[J o h n S m i t h]

Sure, very relevant, if you are brain dead

it's an opinion piece from a conservative party activist and a former speach writer to two conservative Party leaders, you may as well ask Corey Bernardi for his opinion

So, your leftard antenna says it is INCORRECT?

I'm saying it's a lot of spin by a staunch conservative. Are you saying it is correct?

[Neferti]

Sure, very relevant, if you are brain dead

it's an opinion piece from a conservative party activist and a former speach writer to two conservative Party leaders, you may as well ask Corey Bernardi for his opinion

So, your leftard antenna says it is INCORRECT?

I'm saying it's a lot of spin by a staunch conservative. Are you saying it is correct?

Of course not. I am trying to encourage people to actually post interesting stuff to "discuss" rather than schoolyard language.

[J o h n S m i t h]

Sure, very relevant, if you are brain dead

it's an opinion piece from a conservative party activist and a former speach writer to two conservative Party leaders, you may as well ask Corey Bernardi for his opinion

So, your leftard antenna says it is INCORRECT?

I'm saying it's a lot of spin by a staunch conservative. Are you saying it is correct?

Of course not. I am trying to encourage people to actually post interesting stuff to "discuss" rather than schoolyard language.

how'd that work out for you?

[Super Nova]

Smithy,

For me it is simple.

When I was young... I was left leaning... as I travelled through life I see labour waste money on buying votes from a large minority that feel they are entitled to a living. As I travel the world and realize how lucky we are I further realise how we have evolved a system that will fail eventually because capitalism cannot fund all socialist objectives. We should look after the very bottom of our society but the lower middle classes need to get on with it themselves.

So I progressively am leaning more conservative every year I travel through life.

If there is no money... there is no money. It is simple.

[J o h n S m i t h]

Smithy,

For me it is simple.

When I was young... I was left leaning... as I travelled through life I see labour waste money on buying votes from a large minority that feel they are entitled to a living. As I travel the world and realize how lucky we are I further realise how we have evolved a system that will fail eventually because capitalism cannot fund all socialist objectives. We should look after the very bottom of our society but the lower middle classes need to get on with it themselves.

So I progressively am leaning more conservative every year I travel through life.

If there is no money... there is no money. It is simple.

capitalism cannot fund socialist objectives? I like that, it rolls of your tongue.........

How about socialism funding capitalist objectives?

[Super Nova]

Smithy,

For me it is simple.

When I was young... I was left leaning... as I travelled through life I see labour waste money on buying votes from a large minority that feel they are entitled to a living. As I travel the world and realize how lucky we are I further realise how we have evolved a system that will fail eventually because capitalism cannot fund all socialist objectives. We should look after the very bottom of our society but the lower middle classes need to get on with it themselves.

So I progressively am leaning more conservative every year I travel through life.

If there is no money... there is no money. It is simple.

capitalism cannot fund socialist objectives? I like that, it rolls of your tongue.........

How about socialism funding capitalist objectives?

Smithy,

If you have nothing to say.... admit it.

We have since WWI based on the new social contract moved away from the objective of the state providing a safety need to a welfare state funded by those that work to support those that do not. It is capitalism funding socialism.

[J o h n S m i t h]

of course socialism funds capitalism, are you deliberately being obtuse? ... tell me, when the GFC hit, who had to bail out the banks?

If capitalism were left to its own devices the outcome of the GFC would have been much much worse globally. Just like anything else in life, the key is moderation, a little of this and a little of that ... to much of one or not enough of the other and it will fail. NO system will survive long term on it's own. Capitalism is the grease that keeps the wheel turning, socialism is the safety brake that stop capitalism from crashing