Comments on: On the road to paradise

By: Phil

Phil — Fri, 13 May 2005 19:59:41 +0000

Daniel – I disagree with your argument in at least three separate ways! Rather than write an inordinately long comment, I’ll put something up on my blog & flag it up here – watch this space.

Ben – heartily concur. Labour were lucky this time that it was only the Lib Dems on their left[ish] flank[s]

dearie – stop that, you’ll go blind.

By: Ben P

Ben P — Fri, 13 May 2005 19:00:19 +0000

First off, why does the Labour Party continue to put up with this. To me, it seems clear that Blair has moved well beyond modernization and is basically trying to make the Labour Party into a New Conservative Party. Forget New Labour, try the New Conservatives. Its becoming almost Orwellian how they try to justify this outright conservative putsch as being “within the best of the Labour Party’s traditions.”

It seems a bit rich when Reid et al try to complain about backbenchers are trying to “subvert the will of the electorate” when it seems quite clear to me that New Labour has tried to subvert the will of the party’s voters and membership. At what point does this become unacceptable enough? Does the party really think it needs Blair anymore? Whats the point of having Blair anyway at this point? Frankly, if I were on the left in Britain, the Tories are starting look like a better bet at this point – depending on who they choose to lead them of course. Howard wasn’t that man, but I think the Tories could actually win the next election by outflanking Labour to the left.

Ben P

By: Daniel Rees

Daniel Rees — Fri, 13 May 2005 10:30:24 +0000

I am not sure why you signal this as such a shift to the ‘right’ on grounds of social-order. It is this government that introduced Anti-Social Behaviour Orders, and so if there is such as shift to the ‘right’, it must have already taken place.

It is also worth remembering that the traditional economic ‘right-left’ cleavage is outdated in focusing on a privatisation/nationalisation debate. It is more important to consider the equity-efficiency tradeoffs inherent in political decisions. There is considerable ground to suggest that the government’s education policy, for example, is a shift towards a more equitable distribution relative to the legacy of Major’s Conservatives. Barr (1999)* notes how five times as much was spent on students from middle-class backgrounds than children from working-class backgrounds in the higher education sector, but middle-class parents paid far less than five times as much in taxation. In this respect, forcing students from middle-class backgrounds to pay a higher proportion of university fees is a shift towards the ‘left’, relative to the Major government.

So, what we have under Labour is an acceptance of the merits of the market mechanism, not because the market is inherently moral, but because it is the best way of achieving ‘social justice’.

*Barr, Nicholas (1999). Economics of the Welfare State.

By: dearieme

dearieme — Fri, 13 May 2005 09:50:06 +0000

If you need to consider three different meanings of Left vs. Right, doesn’t that mean that you really need to think in 3 dimensions, adopting suitable terminology,rather than restricting yourself to 1 dimension? Alternatively, you could remove ambiguity by using Left in its original, French Revolution sense:-

Demolish the old order, above all a Monarchy that rules (rather than reigns), an Aristocracy (with political and economic privileges), and the Church.
Kill many of the members of that old order, their children and remoter relatives.
Declare war on your neighbours to spread the revolution. Invade some of them.
Introduce industrialised killing of enemy captives.
Turn on your colleagues and kill many of them too.

Adopt also oscillatory policies: enfranchise women and then disenfranchise them; free the slaves and then re-enslave them.

Perhaps that’s not what you mean by Left?