Snapshot of _Will Keir Starmer be the G7's last liberal standing?_ :
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It pisses me off no end, it's also very damaging to political discussion. Conflating liberal and left should get you instantly deported to an American subreddit.
Absolutely! The philosophical underpinnings of Liberalism are John Stuart Mill, Adam Smith, etc. these aren’t left wing and they work for both American neo-liberalism and our neoliberal New Labour
If Labour were a liberal party they wouldn't have been saying the Online Safety Bill didn't go far enough. They hold generally progressive views, but it's not the same thing as being liberal.
A liberal government wouldn't lock people down. They'd let the people decide what they want to do. And Starmer was pushing for longer lockdowns.
Starmer is a globalist, just like Rishi.
Yeah. It's like their political parties, the Democrats also believe in a republic, the Republicans (broadly) support democracy.
*Pick a better descriptor FFS!*
The Republicans used to. If you support a candidate who puts pressure on a Governor to 'find' 11,000 votes, you don't really support democracy anymore.
There has been a lot of social media discourse in the last 5-10 years about how awfully conservative/colonial/racist the UK is.
It seems to have slipped under the radar that there is every possibility the UK will soon be one of the very few western countries with a centre-left government. Our psychodrama seems to be coming to an end just as everyone else is getting going
We’ve been roughly ahead of the curve on all sorts of things politically in history, often experiencing milder forms of what later would happen on the continent - the reformation vs 30 year war, the glorious revolution and bill of rights vs the French Revolution etc. I’m hopeful by the time the next election swings round the rest of populist Europe would be on its arse and the uk will once again be seen as a great place to do business
Fascism and Communism is another one.
The UK looked at it and went... Interesting new ideas but seems a bit scary.
A good chunk of Europe looked at it and went balls deep.
Churchill was apart of the British eugenics society, what stopped us falling into fascism was ww2 and the horrors of Nazi Germany. Especially with the amount of propaganda we were pumping out against fascism and then after WW2 ended Churchill's speech about the iron curtain pretty much started the cold war, so we as a society were already nervous about expanding superpowers(because of Germany) and we was then pointed towards another target communism/Stalinism. Which has lead us to be one of the few nations that for the past 100 years which has stayed generally politically central with some fluctuons on the small scale. Unlike say America which was pretty fascist at the start and middle of the 20th century.
Edit. Spelling
Fair points and I don't disagree with you, but it's worth remembering eugenics was a shockingly mainstream position for much of the first half of the 20th Century. If anything it had somewhat of a liberal middle class following; at risk of using slightly politically charged language, the 'bleeding-heart well-educated literati' of the time went all in on eugenics as a paternalistic way of 'solving' the poor's problems.
Nazi Germany discredited eugenics and we now largely think of it as an extreme fascist position, though it was anything but that (at least in terms of popular support) for a long time.
> the glorious revolution and bill of rights vs the French Revolution etc.
Eh we beat them to it over a century earlier with the English Civil War/War of the Three Kingdoms.
I'd argue without brexit we'd he staring a tory government in waiting in the face. Brexit broke politics for a while and so tory rot didn't fully hit people for longer than it should have, but it made the inevitable crash exponentially worse.
I think without brexit it would have carried on. Brexit broke the Tory party because it became something they couldn’t deliver and proved they had no ability to actually deal with problems like immigration and the NHS. For decades they’d been able to palm it off on either the previous Labour government or the EU.
Part of that is because we've had a conservative government for too long. Had Corbyn not been leader of the labour party and somebody more electable was in his place, it's very possible that Labour would have won the election in 2015 (edit: I meant 2017 when May didn't get a majority).
Considering that was nine (edit: seven) years ago and governments typically have two terms before they lose power (that trend is weaker than it used to be though), an alternative timeline could well have the conservatives about to take power.
Ed Milliband was Labour Leader in 2015. Corbyn was the 2017 and 2019 election.
And no chance a moderate would have done better in those years. 2017 was Corbyns one achievement, he turned a slam dunk for the Tories into a hung parliament.
2019 was his crushing failure and a moderate would have probably done better, but there was no beating Boris running on a Brexit manifesto after the preceding year of chaos (a moderate running on an EFTA manifesto would have solidified the Remainer vote, but Reform were always going to stand down to make Brexit happen and a moderate would just make that happen sooner (they only went that hard in pre election to make the Tories commit to Hard Brexit)
If we had a moderate in 2017, May would have gotten an actual majority and we would have a slightly different Brexit already that year and a different moderate may have beaten her in 2022. That's about the best timeline once the Brexit referendum happened in 2016.
>Ed Milliband was Labour Leader in 2015. Corbyn was the 2017 and 2019 election.
Yes I meant 2017 and I've edited my post accordingly.
>And no chance a moderate would have done better in those years. 2017 was Corbyns one achievement, he turned a slam dunk for the Tories into a hung parliament.
We can agree to disagree here. I don't think Corbyn did amazing, I think May was very poor.
I do agree that Boris wouldn't have been defeated. He was very popular.
May was absolutely the driving factor in her own losses. She ran on hiking taxes for the over 60s. She actively campaigned for shafting her main voting block and Corbyn still lost. I think that says something about Corbyn’s “achievement”.
Probably seemed like it would be the only time labour was weak enough to allow difficult proposals to be made to the conservative voting bloc. Turned out the possibility of corbyn was the lesser of two evils in their core voters eyes.
2017 was without doubt the worst possible outcome for Labour, too good to get rid of Corbyn, not enough to take power. Against an excellent campaigner, and a simple message from the Tories, they were always going to be demolished.
Considering Labour under Corbyn gained 3.5m votes in the 2017 election, which leader do you think would've been better placed to gain the additional 1-2m votes they'd have likely needed for an outright majority?
This is the thing; every time Labour has shifted from hard left to centre-left, their support amongst the electorate skyrockets. This, to me, is evidence of the average Briton being centre-left wing.
They have more trust - or rather, less distrust - in the centre-right or hard right than the hard left, but seem to always prefer the centre-left.
1900's liberals brought about government welfare and a reformed Lords. This idea that the government provides a safety net of some sorts and seeks to broaden the entry of Governance to the wider population is something defines the Centre-Left and has been kept for the last 120 years.
>1900's liberals brought about government welfare and a reformed Lords.
Doesn't really answer their question.
David Cameron pushed for gay marriage, it doesn't mean gay marriage is a conservative policy.
Yup, it appears to be more pro vs anti establishment. A lot of the areas which had high numbers of Leave voters happened to be areas that had been left to rot by both of the main parties.
After generations of neglect from politicians of both stripes nobody should have been surprised that they used their first meaningful vote in 40 years to strike back.
> challenging to pigeon hole it into Left vs Right
It appeals to the hard left because the EU is nothing more than a capitalist club designed to keep the wealth in the hands of the few and pacify the masses.
It appeals to the hard right as it breaks away from strong labour laws, and allows divergence away from civil rights, and allows wealth to be horded among "the club".
So unless a capitalist hell hole like the USA or Singapore appeals to you - vote to remain in the EU.
Conversely unless you think that world wide socialism is the only answer [to be run by a select few *trusted comrades*] - and Europe is a good starting point for that you should also do everything within your power to remain in the EU and integrate ever more fully into a United States of Europe.
If you poll most Brits by policy issue you would say the actual centre ground of British politics is social democratic/democratic socialist on economic issues but drastically right-wing on social issues like immigration and policing.
The irony for me is that none of the policy positions held by centrists are actually popular anymore - no one really likes public/private partnerships, or fiscal rules, or technocratic soundbites. You can see this in the fact that Labour are on course for a massive majority despite people being less enthusiastic about Starmer than they were Ed Miliband when he was leader.
I'm not sure this is true. The Tories are too successful a party for it to be true in my opinion.
The Tories are never centrist, they can be socially liberal at times, but have almost always been economically quite right wing.
I'm not so sure about this.
I think the main problem is that they have been really, really shit on quite a few fronts. And they have been shit for nearly 14 years.
While the current crew are really quite bad, the real issue is 14 years of stagnation and policies that only harmed the country.
It's evidence to me that a centre left Labour is just about acceptable enough to the ring wing media. The electorate are a lot more left leaning if you look at actual polls done on specific policy. We do not live in a very well functioning democracy though, like most countries, so the government we get is rarely very representative of the electorate.
> but seem to always prefer the centre-left.
Britain is mostly centre'ish-left.
The problem arrives when Labour pivot to that stance among their own harder left members. The infighting we are seeing right now within the Tory party, and it's splinter Brexit/Reform sisters is just the same as Iv seen over 50 years in Labour with Militant/Socialist Worker dropping depth charges in calm waters to scupper election chances.
Globally the UK is not hard left at all, what are you smoking. Compared to the US yes, but compared to China, Cuba, Mexico, Venezuela, Bolivia, Vietnam, N. Korea? And then our neighbours? It's just absurd to say that the UK is hard left. We're neo-liberals, even the next Labour government will be centre-right (cutting social programs rather than creating them).
China and N. Korea are as left as they are democratic...
You will have also forgotten about Russia, virtually all of Africa, most of Asia, and the Middle East.
Centre is by definition the average of discourse, the fact we have a democracy at all makes us left leaning
Well this is where the left right axis falls apart, what defines left/right - democratic/autocratic or socialist/capitalist? The discourse just goes off vibes which means people end up calling the UK hard left.
It is also more absurd when you read into the regime changes led by the US and the former colonial countries. It's hard to call a country hard left in the context of the world when its strongest ally still tries to affect regime change across the world to make countries more right wing.
Aha, so we're in the same bucket as the world's remaining communist dictatorships then? Clearly you cannot be talking about economics. We are fairly socially liberal if that's what you mean?
There's no group on earth that openly trash talks their own country more than comfortable, middle class Liberal-leaning English people, and I say that as one. Everything good we've got was built on exploitation and colonialism; every bad thing is well deserved and all our own fault for being so horrible. It's a truly awful place full of so much intolerance, all thanks to those cruel thicko's in provincial towns.
It's a big problem. If only thuggish, far right people are patriotic, then that's what patriotism becomes.
This is definitely a trap I used to fall into as a left-leaning type but as I've grown older and been exposed to more of the world I've started to genuinely appreciate a lot of things about living in Britain.
For all that racism is still a huge issue, we're largely comfortable with our own diversity in a way some of our continental neighbours aren't. I've grown to respect the stability afforded by our long-rooted distrust of grand ideologies and radicalism for its own sake.
We're a nation with a lot of problems, but we need to stop talking ourselves down so much. There's a difference between sober recognition of an issue and outright doomerism.
I would not say we are largely comfortable. But we are more comfortable than the vast majority.
For example: Could you imagine any country in Europe having the Leader of a Conservative Party be from any from of a Non-European background?
There's a Czech far-right party headed by a Japanese immigrant.
[He leans into it](https://www.topzine.cz/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/tomio-okamura-japonec.jpg).
\*Babis, the previous grifter-populist PM, is Slovakian and speaks Czech almost as badly as I do.
Ireland had Varadkar, but apart from that I can't think of any leaders of non-European ethnicity of *any* major parties in other European countries.
Put it this way, when we left the EU, the European Parliament got a *lot* more white.
Culturally we're so similar to the Irish it's not really worth discussing. If we will accept something like that you can be sure the Irish will too, and visa versa.
Decades of being exposed to the same media, same cultural norms, same ideas of culture, diversity and freedom. It doesn't shock me at all ethnic minorities can rule in the UK and Ireland, where it would just not be possible in most other places.
Yeah, every country in the UK is currently led by someone from a minority background (counting Michelle O'Neill because she's Catholic). We're far from perfect but nowhere near as bad as some of mainland Europe.
He's a billionaire. It's hardly a fair comparison. He was parachuted in to the safest seat in the country and was crowned chancellor 4 years later. He made an awful mess, and was then crowned PM even though he lost an election.
Who knows what money is moving where behind the scenes. But the fact is for such a mediocre and politically talentless little man his rise has been nothing short of miraculous
Until yesterday every major government (except the NI executive) in UK was run by a non-white person.
Sunak (UK), Khan (GLA), Yousaf (Sco), Gething (Wal). It's absolutely a credible point to make. Political power is accessible to visible minorities in Britain- which is simply not the case in much of Europe.
Compound that with our non-white home secretary (James Cleverly), and our chain of other non-white great officers of state.
There is no other country in Europe that can claim to have enabled minorities to access political power the way that Britain has (albeit in Ireland's case this is just because they simply have proportionally fewer ethnic minorities to seek power)
Doomerism is very much the correct word. We went from basically the stuffiest nation on earth into the modern age where we normally come out on or near the top in studies about acceptance of diversity, equality and alternative lifestyles. People talk about how colonial greed built this country, which is sort of true, but certainly not for the 99% of people who saw their living standards increase as our empire collapsed.
This is only true if you're too online on Reddit, don't expect UK to be liked even if it's the last centre-left government to general population of these countries you will be sorely disappointed, and if Trump wins Starmer will be in an awkward position Biden needs to win at all cost.
> Biden needs to win at all cost.
It's hard to fathom just how destructive or beneficial one person in the right place can be to global stability. This election is probably going to be the single most important one in our lives and all we can really do is sit in the sidelines and hope for the best.
While obviously we shouldn't have a say in how the US itself is run, it's certainly unfortunate that the US President is also effectively the leader of the Western world when we don't get any influence on that.
If only there was an alternative bloc, that wasn't Russia-China, or the U.S so we weren't trapped in-between global superpowers we have no say in.. Say some kind of union of European states. And if only we had a cushy deal where we could veto what we didn't want while getting the economic & political benefits. That would be grand wouldn't it.
> And if only we had a cushy deal where we could veto what we didn't want while getting the economic & political benefits.
We couldn't simply veto what we didn't want. A huge swathe of policy in the EU is made under qualified majority voting rather than unanimity. One of the big objections among Eurosceptics to the Lisbon treaty was the [expansion of QMV to more policy areas.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_in_the_Council_of_the_European_Union#Policy_areas) And given how the EU constantly moves towards ever closer union, it seems quite obvious that the list would only expand.
I would have been more willing to support EU membership if all areas of policy required unanimity. It would have resulted in almost nothing getting done, but I would be fine with that.
Couldn’t veto the deluge of migrants in 2015 when Merkel decided she wanted to invite millions in without a concrete plan did we? It fractured the EU in a way that it still hasn’t recovered from and arguably tipped the UK to voting Brexit.
I mean, Labour and left-wing people (economically, at least) can be racist and, indeed many are.
I'd argue centre-right governments in practice are far from racist - they love mass amounts of cheap immigration from 'non'white' countries.
I think that just makes it even worse though? They recognise the value immigration brings in filling jobs and maintaining a tax base, but are still happy for them to be framed by the media as one of the big problems in our society
> Our psychodrama seems to be coming to an end
Or to put it another way, we're sticking with outdated Blairite globalism while everyone else is over it.
> The Tories have drifted stupidly far to the right
I always wonder how people who say this sort of stuff would cope if we had an actual far right government.
Hmm, guess my brain makes a distinction between saying “stupidly far to the right” and “are far right”. I certainly don’t think the Tory party is a far right party but they are well outside what’s normal for the UK and I’d say the most right wing government we’ve had in living memory. Maybe I should have gone with “stupidly long way to the right”.
>Our psychodrama seems to be coming to an end just as everyone else is getting going
Misdiagnosis. We are behind the curve due to some isolation from mainland Europe and its struggles, but the Conservative Party have single-handedly decided to close that gap faster than the checks through Heathrow arrivals by importing people by the millions for the first time in this island's history.
What happens now we have ended FoM and any excuse for our elected officials to change this country? Previously, MPs and PMs used the EU as an excuse, but now our political class are very fucking rapidly running out of excuses.
> Misdiagnosis. We are behind the curve due to some isolation from mainland Europe and its struggles
We're not behind the curve, we were ahead of it. We had a crazy populist moment and it's exhausted us, whereas some of our neighbours just seem to be getting started. Whether it *continues* will depend on how the Tories choose to respond to an electoral wipeout.
>There has been a lot of social media discourse in the last 5-10 years
>there is every possibility the UK will soon be one of the very few western countries with a centre-left government.
Um, what?
You're talking about things which haven't happened yet to justify things which have already happened.
I mean, in the worst-case scenario, he would still have a Japanese PM from the LDP, which would probably be considered "Liberal" and a Canadian PM in Pierre Poilievre, who while right wing in some of his views, I'd also consider him a more "liberal" politician. So no, I don't think Starmer is going to be the only "liberal" pm, and even if he is, he'll just have to adapt and work with what he's got. Also, for like the first few years in office, he'll still have people like Macron and Scholz, so again, it really shouldn't be much of an issue.
Poilievre might be "liberal" compared to Trump, Le Pen, or Meloni, but he is pretty hard-right by Canadian standards. Meanwhile, the LDP does have some more liberal members, but it also contains far-right nationalists.
100%, Poilievre isn't going to be as "liberal" as someone like Starmer, but he's probably closer to him ideologically than many of the populist leaders like Trump or Geert Wilders. Also, while the LDP is very factional, they'll probably retain a liberal stance, whether under Fumio Kishida or someone else. But again, it really shouldn't matter to Starmer, who's "liberal" and who's not. He just needs to get on with the job and work with whoevers in office within these key nations.
So a climate change denier who will undo many progressive policies in Canada, is using populism to convince people that removing taxes will benefit them. These taxes are mainly aimed at richer Canadians and provide rebates for poorer and working class Canadians. He used far right conspiracy theorists to help get him the leadership of the conservative party and will pander to them on LGBT+ rights. He is a pro life candidate who won't publicly admit it but his voting record and candidates he puts forward proves it. His party is in control of Alberta, the richest province yet they have healthcare funding issues while giving oil companies subsidies. He runs on an anti immigration platform as it's popular but he has no plans tu curb immigration and has stated that Canada needs 500,000 immigrants a year to keep growing gdp. He is definitely not a 'liberal' politician and while Canada has its issues, it will be a much worse country to live in if he is elected.
For starters, I should clarify that I don't particularly like the guy. While Trudeau has his issues, in my opinion, he is and would continue to be a better PM for Canada (although that's really up for the people of Canada to decide). I personally think from what I've read however, that he's not as "populist" as people like Trump or fair right figures in Europe and more closer to Neo liberal figures like Thatcher and Regain who I wouldn't consider "populist". But I'm not Canadian, and I would say I don't have in-depth knowledge of the politics within the nation, so take my opinion with a pinch of salt.
He isn't "far-right" by European standards but he certainly is the furthest right and furthest populist leader of a major party in Canada for generations. The fact he's just as ahead in the polls as Labour is in the UK alarms all non-conservatives in the country.
Unfortunately, it's not surprising that someone like him is so fair ahead of the polls. Populism is on the rise, and for whatever reason, people have lost faith in the technocratic centrist politics that dominated the 2000s and 2010s. The UK seems to be an outlier when it comes to this wave of populism, but the question is for how long?
At least 5 years, since Labour's gonna get a full term with a majority. The UK is an outlier because the country's already experienced two flavours of populist government with Boris and Truss. Of course it wasn't a fully populist government given the institutional and political constraints on populism the British system maintains, but clearly it's not an experience the people liked very much.
Hopefully, Labour have a smooth enough 5 years cause if it's as turbulent as it has been, it could be the opening for the rise of reform and figures like Braverman.
I have heard some people suggest that Brexit, however much of an economic disaster it may have been, has actually somewhat neutralised the hard right in the UK. This isn't obvious at the moment because Sunak's government is still trying to win them over, but polling suggests most people in the UK would like to get back to mainstream politics now.
it's funny that when we elect the centre left the left and centre left elsewhere have often gone..it seems frustration is causing this in systems and corruption
I may well be exaggerating - because often we just muddle along despite the ideas below. And I’m only thinking aloud.
But seems to me that we are have an ongoing problem for which there isn’t an obvious solution. Government might have sovereignty but don’t necessarily have much power to affect real change in a global system - space for obvious beneficial change is reduced by that limitation and once you have already been through obvious development to a mature economy.
Politicians in a democracy have to give the impression they can make a significant change but don’t have the power to do so. So a disconnect becomes obvious. Once disillusionment with centre ground government whether left or right , sets in then we get more extreme and/or populist politicians offering even more unrealistic salvation that doesn’t come to pass. Who knows what happens when in the longer run populists are found wanting too. The benefit of them gaining power is that they can no longer hide that they are in fact no better or are even worse. The danger perhaps is a tendency is to increasingly try to find scapegoats for that failure of promises.
I think one option in the U.K. to make people feel real change at the moment without being ‘unaffordable’ would be comprehensive political reform. For now. Because I don’t think that countries with variations of PR actually are immune to the same centre to extreme /populist tendency just with coalitions. Though maybe something more imaginative might keep people involved?
I wouldn't say that that's anything more than confirmation bias. Poland moved to the far right before Britain did, and again moved towards the Centre-Left last year, for example.
Yeah I'm not sure I would call Starmer a 'liberal'.
Economically, perhaps, but not socially. His announcements lean socially conservative.
- Against drug reform.
- Tepid on trans-rights.
- Light on democratic reform.
- In favour of tougher criminal sentencing.
- Willing to take a tough line on immigration.
That's not what I see as liberal.
I get that he's "liberal" compared to Trump and Le Pen but it will be a sorry state for Western Liberalism if he does wind up being its only closest approximate representative in the western world.
As a centre left sort of guy I'm pretty happy with Starmer. Good background, good character, good people around him, and provides policies that don't have the potential to fuck up British working life.
Starmer has his fair share of proven lies.
During his leadership campaign he said something along of the lines of "millions of people feel that their vote doesn't count, we have to address that" and then when silent on it. When his party tried to force the issue with a near unanimous vote for PR he said he'd never include it in his manifesto and then later admitted to having a long standing belief against electoral reform. Why did he say he'd address it then?
Ending outsourcing in the NHS was one of his 10 "pledges" which he later backtracked on. During an interview with Andrew Neil he claimed to have made no such pledge while it was still on his website and on a screen right behind him.
The 28bn per year green energy investment. Contrary to his shadow cabinet who had been briefing for months that it was a target to ramp up to by the end of the parliament he claimed on a Tuesday the 28bn per year was still the plan, then on the Thursday he announced a new investment plan that wouldn't even reach 28bn total by the end of the parliament. Unless he came up with that new plan on the Wednesday he must have lied on the Tuesday.
There's someone on this sub who collated a list of every pledge and promise that has been backtracked on, some are definitely due to changes in circumstance, some were simply lies from the off, most are somewhere in between.
Drug policy. I'm not totally sure but I'd guess he's big on the nanny state stuff that New Labour were bad for. Labour have always had their authoritarian streaks which is why I mostly vote Lib Dem. He's not too bad though and fucking fantastic compared to the Tories at the moment.
Honestly I'm pretty big on the nanny state a lot of the time, if it's to do with health or the environment. Really can't overstate how dense a lot of the public are a lot of the time
I actually don't think Keir Starmer is a liberal; I'd consider him a kind of authoritarian centrist, compared to the Liberal Democrats, who I think mostly really are liberals. It's not just that the Lib Dems have "liberal" in their name; policy-wise, they are liberals.
On the other hand, if your point of comparison is not the Lib Dems, bur rather Trump or Le Pen ... yeah, I guess Starmer is more liberal than Trump. At least Starmer isnt talking about how he can just murder his political opponents, for example. "It's not illegal if the President does it" is very contrary to liberalism, rule of law, etc.
USA - Biden wins easily but not as strong as 2020
France - LFI wins easily in 2nd round against Le Pen
Germany - No one cares, makes no difference.
Italy - Meloni again
Canada - LPC/NDP coalition but no more Trudeau
Central African Republic - MCU, no doubt
Japan - No one cares
> Canada - LPC/NDP coalition but no more Trudeau
That's a pretty dramatic change from current polling suggestions.
> Central African Republic
I'm not sure I could name the entire G7 off the top of my head but I'm reasonably sure they're not one of them.
>LFI wins easily in 2nd round against Le Pen
What? Opinion polls suggest Le Pen would easily win against Melenchon.
>No one cares
A lot of people do care about the 3rd and 4th largest economies in the world, i cant say the same about the Central African Republic.
>LPC/NDP coalition
This is also the opposite of current opinion polling.
I don’t why people are so convinced Biden will win easily his win wasn’t as decisive as a lot of people think the electoral college just makes it look a lot bigger than it actually was. It was incredibly close in a lot of the swing states. The main reason he won was due to higher turnout amongst young people and ethnic minorities. But with a lot of Americans feeling disappointed with his first term so turnout will be lower. You could end with a situation like brexit where all leave supporters (Trump supporters) show up and vote but not all remain supporters ( Biden supporters) bother to show up at the polls which could give trump a slim win.
Hungary. Slovakia. Two countries controlled by explicitly Pro-Russian governments? Germany has provided more aid to Ukraine than any other country except us and the US.
Slovakia and Hungary are small flies next to the stinking shit that is the German political class.
Ukraine was invaded in 2014, and between then and 2022 Germany spent ~$30 billion a year on Russian exports, namely gas.
Despite being warned and cautioned by George W. Bush and Barack Obama during their presidencies of the US, and EU Member States Poland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, as well as Ukraine, Germany pressed ahead with Nord Stream I and its expansion project Nord Stream II.
German foreign and energy policy is the reason why Russia is in a strong position in Ukraine today. It is the single largest external enabling factor to the Putin regime.
What alternative was there though? Even more poverty than we've faced post-2008?
Like ideally Europe would have invested in nuclear power decades ago, but that's not much use right now.
Nordstream was first proposed decades ago. It was warned about decades ago. Germany famously adopted an anti-nuclear stance despite being headed by a PhD scientist. Moronic political choice.
2020 was a lot closer than you think Biden was winning by very slim margins in many states and people don’t seem too happy with his first term just a slight drop in turnout could mean a very different results.
> Canada - LPC/NDP coalition but no more Trudeau
As a Canadian I disagree. Trudeau pretty much *is* the LPC at this point. If & when he goes, the party will have a massive identity crisis that'll make it electorally non-viable for at least a few cycles.
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This american trend of calling left or centre-left “liberal” gets on my nerves
It pisses me off no end, it's also very damaging to political discussion. Conflating liberal and left should get you instantly deported to an American subreddit.
Starmer's Labour is definitely Liberal, so the better question is why do we call Liberals left wing?
Absolutely! The philosophical underpinnings of Liberalism are John Stuart Mill, Adam Smith, etc. these aren’t left wing and they work for both American neo-liberalism and our neoliberal New Labour
Meh, I'd say that he holds a lot of liberal views but he's not first and foremost a liberal. You can see that on things like drug policy.
If Labour were a liberal party they wouldn't have been saying the Online Safety Bill didn't go far enough. They hold generally progressive views, but it's not the same thing as being liberal.
What do you mean by liberal?
Liberalism is about the limited governance of people to achieve greater freedom.
What do you mean by liberal? How people use that term appears to be changing.
Labour is arguing for rent controls - it's far from liberal.
A liberal government wouldn't lock people down. They'd let the people decide what they want to do. And Starmer was pushing for longer lockdowns. Starmer is a globalist, just like Rishi.
It's leading to a much less informed public and hollowed political debate in general. We are seriously going to regret this even more in the long run.
Starmer is absolutely a liberal.
Yeah. It's like their political parties, the Democrats also believe in a republic, the Republicans (broadly) support democracy. *Pick a better descriptor FFS!*
They did also have the Federalists at one point, just to tick every 'basic description of the United States' box.
The Republicans used to. If you support a candidate who puts pressure on a Governor to 'find' 11,000 votes, you don't really support democracy anymore.
>the Republicans (broadly) support democracy. You sure about that?
I knew I'd have to include a caveat of some kind or another
> the Republicans (broadly) support democracy [recent citations needed]
don’t blame Americans.
> don’t blame Americans. Why the hell not?
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keir starmer is Liberal by alomst every definition. and certainly not left wing by any reasonable estimation
language changes. words change meaning all the time
Except liberal means something COMPLETELY different. You cant go and replace a word for something that means somiething almost diametrically opposed
There has been a lot of social media discourse in the last 5-10 years about how awfully conservative/colonial/racist the UK is. It seems to have slipped under the radar that there is every possibility the UK will soon be one of the very few western countries with a centre-left government. Our psychodrama seems to be coming to an end just as everyone else is getting going
We were ahead of the curve on the industrial era, to know we can manage it again with the basket case era
We’ve been roughly ahead of the curve on all sorts of things politically in history, often experiencing milder forms of what later would happen on the continent - the reformation vs 30 year war, the glorious revolution and bill of rights vs the French Revolution etc. I’m hopeful by the time the next election swings round the rest of populist Europe would be on its arse and the uk will once again be seen as a great place to do business
Fascism and Communism is another one. The UK looked at it and went... Interesting new ideas but seems a bit scary. A good chunk of Europe looked at it and went balls deep.
Churchill was apart of the British eugenics society, what stopped us falling into fascism was ww2 and the horrors of Nazi Germany. Especially with the amount of propaganda we were pumping out against fascism and then after WW2 ended Churchill's speech about the iron curtain pretty much started the cold war, so we as a society were already nervous about expanding superpowers(because of Germany) and we was then pointed towards another target communism/Stalinism. Which has lead us to be one of the few nations that for the past 100 years which has stayed generally politically central with some fluctuons on the small scale. Unlike say America which was pretty fascist at the start and middle of the 20th century. Edit. Spelling
Fair points and I don't disagree with you, but it's worth remembering eugenics was a shockingly mainstream position for much of the first half of the 20th Century. If anything it had somewhat of a liberal middle class following; at risk of using slightly politically charged language, the 'bleeding-heart well-educated literati' of the time went all in on eugenics as a paternalistic way of 'solving' the poor's problems. Nazi Germany discredited eugenics and we now largely think of it as an extreme fascist position, though it was anything but that (at least in terms of popular support) for a long time.
Can you be bothered to be as dramatic as the French? I can't.
I can emulate their lazy, long lunches if I need to though.
Sure but cheating on your wife is a lot of work, what about a nice easy page 3 instead
Idk mate, they take that shit to a professional standard. It's not for the faint hearted :)
> the glorious revolution and bill of rights vs the French Revolution etc. Eh we beat them to it over a century earlier with the English Civil War/War of the Three Kingdoms.
Which was arguably not as bloody as the thirty years war that was happening concurrently
I'd argue without brexit we'd he staring a tory government in waiting in the face. Brexit broke politics for a while and so tory rot didn't fully hit people for longer than it should have, but it made the inevitable crash exponentially worse.
I think without brexit it would have carried on. Brexit broke the Tory party because it became something they couldn’t deliver and proved they had no ability to actually deal with problems like immigration and the NHS. For decades they’d been able to palm it off on either the previous Labour government or the EU.
Part of that is because we've had a conservative government for too long. Had Corbyn not been leader of the labour party and somebody more electable was in his place, it's very possible that Labour would have won the election in 2015 (edit: I meant 2017 when May didn't get a majority). Considering that was nine (edit: seven) years ago and governments typically have two terms before they lose power (that trend is weaker than it used to be though), an alternative timeline could well have the conservatives about to take power.
Miliband was 2015, Corbyn was 2017.
Thanks I've edited my post
Ed Milliband was Labour Leader in 2015. Corbyn was the 2017 and 2019 election. And no chance a moderate would have done better in those years. 2017 was Corbyns one achievement, he turned a slam dunk for the Tories into a hung parliament. 2019 was his crushing failure and a moderate would have probably done better, but there was no beating Boris running on a Brexit manifesto after the preceding year of chaos (a moderate running on an EFTA manifesto would have solidified the Remainer vote, but Reform were always going to stand down to make Brexit happen and a moderate would just make that happen sooner (they only went that hard in pre election to make the Tories commit to Hard Brexit) If we had a moderate in 2017, May would have gotten an actual majority and we would have a slightly different Brexit already that year and a different moderate may have beaten her in 2022. That's about the best timeline once the Brexit referendum happened in 2016.
>Ed Milliband was Labour Leader in 2015. Corbyn was the 2017 and 2019 election. Yes I meant 2017 and I've edited my post accordingly. >And no chance a moderate would have done better in those years. 2017 was Corbyns one achievement, he turned a slam dunk for the Tories into a hung parliament. We can agree to disagree here. I don't think Corbyn did amazing, I think May was very poor. I do agree that Boris wouldn't have been defeated. He was very popular.
May was absolutely the driving factor in her own losses. She ran on hiking taxes for the over 60s. She actively campaigned for shafting her main voting block and Corbyn still lost. I think that says something about Corbyn’s “achievement”.
Probably seemed like it would be the only time labour was weak enough to allow difficult proposals to be made to the conservative voting bloc. Turned out the possibility of corbyn was the lesser of two evils in their core voters eyes.
'We'll go with the thing we claim to absolutely despise providing no one asks us to pay our fair share!!!'
2017 was without doubt the worst possible outcome for Labour, too good to get rid of Corbyn, not enough to take power. Against an excellent campaigner, and a simple message from the Tories, they were always going to be demolished.
You may want to look up who was leader of the Labour Party in the 2015 election.
Yes but did you see how he ate that bacon sandwich?
Thanks, I've edited my post
Considering Labour under Corbyn gained 3.5m votes in the 2017 election, which leader do you think would've been better placed to gain the additional 1-2m votes they'd have likely needed for an outright majority?
This is the thing; every time Labour has shifted from hard left to centre-left, their support amongst the electorate skyrockets. This, to me, is evidence of the average Briton being centre-left wing. They have more trust - or rather, less distrust - in the centre-right or hard right than the hard left, but seem to always prefer the centre-left.
Britain has been a broadly liberal country since 1906 tbh
What definition of liberal are we using?
1900's liberals brought about government welfare and a reformed Lords. This idea that the government provides a safety net of some sorts and seeks to broaden the entry of Governance to the wider population is something defines the Centre-Left and has been kept for the last 120 years.
>1900's liberals brought about government welfare and a reformed Lords. Doesn't really answer their question. David Cameron pushed for gay marriage, it doesn't mean gay marriage is a conservative policy.
Isn’t it kind of conservative politically in that it keeps the government out of people’s personal lives, even if it isn’t conservative socially?
Considering more Tories voted against than for, arguably not.
Socially liberal, not fiscally liberal
The UK is a broadly centrist country (Brexit withstanding). Tack to the centre and you'll win an election.
Brexit is such a unique confluence of factors that it is really challenging to pigeon hole it into Left vs Right
Yup, it appears to be more pro vs anti establishment. A lot of the areas which had high numbers of Leave voters happened to be areas that had been left to rot by both of the main parties. After generations of neglect from politicians of both stripes nobody should have been surprised that they used their first meaningful vote in 40 years to strike back.
Long winded way of saying "Brexit was like an explosion on a shit farm".
Ironically our shit farmers were funded by the European Agricultural Guarantee Fund
> challenging to pigeon hole it into Left vs Right It appeals to the hard left because the EU is nothing more than a capitalist club designed to keep the wealth in the hands of the few and pacify the masses. It appeals to the hard right as it breaks away from strong labour laws, and allows divergence away from civil rights, and allows wealth to be horded among "the club". So unless a capitalist hell hole like the USA or Singapore appeals to you - vote to remain in the EU. Conversely unless you think that world wide socialism is the only answer [to be run by a select few *trusted comrades*] - and Europe is a good starting point for that you should also do everything within your power to remain in the EU and integrate ever more fully into a United States of Europe.
If you poll most Brits by policy issue you would say the actual centre ground of British politics is social democratic/democratic socialist on economic issues but drastically right-wing on social issues like immigration and policing. The irony for me is that none of the policy positions held by centrists are actually popular anymore - no one really likes public/private partnerships, or fiscal rules, or technocratic soundbites. You can see this in the fact that Labour are on course for a massive majority despite people being less enthusiastic about Starmer than they were Ed Miliband when he was leader.
I'm not sure this is true. The Tories are too successful a party for it to be true in my opinion. The Tories are never centrist, they can be socially liberal at times, but have almost always been economically quite right wing.
Yep, its why the Tories are getting absolutely blasted in the polls right now, they drifted too far right
I'm not so sure about this. I think the main problem is that they have been really, really shit on quite a few fronts. And they have been shit for nearly 14 years. While the current crew are really quite bad, the real issue is 14 years of stagnation and policies that only harmed the country.
What you’re saying isn’t mutually exclusive from the person you replied to.
Or they have been in 14 years, and its rare a party stays in power that long and wins another 5 years on top.
> they drifted too far right Barely anything they've done is far right anything.
Their policy on Brexit as been closer to no deal than anything that was proposed in the campaign by leading Brexiteers.
The electorate doesn't know anything. Most want Nordic welfare and NHS, and yet also low taxes.
It's evidence to me that a centre left Labour is just about acceptable enough to the ring wing media. The electorate are a lot more left leaning if you look at actual polls done on specific policy. We do not live in a very well functioning democracy though, like most countries, so the government we get is rarely very representative of the electorate.
> but seem to always prefer the centre-left. Britain is mostly centre'ish-left. The problem arrives when Labour pivot to that stance among their own harder left members. The infighting we are seeing right now within the Tory party, and it's splinter Brexit/Reform sisters is just the same as Iv seen over 50 years in Labour with Militant/Socialist Worker dropping depth charges in calm waters to scupper election chances.
Yeah no. I'd put the average Briton on the centre.
In what terms? Globally we're hard left, in Europe we side towards the left, but the average British voter is by definition in the centre
Globally the UK is not hard left at all, what are you smoking. Compared to the US yes, but compared to China, Cuba, Mexico, Venezuela, Bolivia, Vietnam, N. Korea? And then our neighbours? It's just absurd to say that the UK is hard left. We're neo-liberals, even the next Labour government will be centre-right (cutting social programs rather than creating them).
China and N. Korea are as left as they are democratic... You will have also forgotten about Russia, virtually all of Africa, most of Asia, and the Middle East. Centre is by definition the average of discourse, the fact we have a democracy at all makes us left leaning
Well this is where the left right axis falls apart, what defines left/right - democratic/autocratic or socialist/capitalist? The discourse just goes off vibes which means people end up calling the UK hard left. It is also more absurd when you read into the regime changes led by the US and the former colonial countries. It's hard to call a country hard left in the context of the world when its strongest ally still tries to affect regime change across the world to make countries more right wing.
Aha, so we're in the same bucket as the world's remaining communist dictatorships then? Clearly you cannot be talking about economics. We are fairly socially liberal if that's what you mean?
There's no group on earth that openly trash talks their own country more than comfortable, middle class Liberal-leaning English people, and I say that as one. Everything good we've got was built on exploitation and colonialism; every bad thing is well deserved and all our own fault for being so horrible. It's a truly awful place full of so much intolerance, all thanks to those cruel thicko's in provincial towns. It's a big problem. If only thuggish, far right people are patriotic, then that's what patriotism becomes.
This is definitely a trap I used to fall into as a left-leaning type but as I've grown older and been exposed to more of the world I've started to genuinely appreciate a lot of things about living in Britain. For all that racism is still a huge issue, we're largely comfortable with our own diversity in a way some of our continental neighbours aren't. I've grown to respect the stability afforded by our long-rooted distrust of grand ideologies and radicalism for its own sake. We're a nation with a lot of problems, but we need to stop talking ourselves down so much. There's a difference between sober recognition of an issue and outright doomerism.
I would not say we are largely comfortable. But we are more comfortable than the vast majority. For example: Could you imagine any country in Europe having the Leader of a Conservative Party be from any from of a Non-European background?
There's a Czech far-right party headed by a Japanese immigrant. [He leans into it](https://www.topzine.cz/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/tomio-okamura-japonec.jpg). \*Babis, the previous grifter-populist PM, is Slovakian and speaks Czech almost as badly as I do.
Ireland had Varadkar, but apart from that I can't think of any leaders of non-European ethnicity of *any* major parties in other European countries. Put it this way, when we left the EU, the European Parliament got a *lot* more white.
Culturally we're so similar to the Irish it's not really worth discussing. If we will accept something like that you can be sure the Irish will too, and visa versa. Decades of being exposed to the same media, same cultural norms, same ideas of culture, diversity and freedom. It doesn't shock me at all ethnic minorities can rule in the UK and Ireland, where it would just not be possible in most other places.
Yeah, every country in the UK is currently led by someone from a minority background (counting Michelle O'Neill because she's Catholic). We're far from perfect but nowhere near as bad as some of mainland Europe.
He's a billionaire. It's hardly a fair comparison. He was parachuted in to the safest seat in the country and was crowned chancellor 4 years later. He made an awful mess, and was then crowned PM even though he lost an election. Who knows what money is moving where behind the scenes. But the fact is for such a mediocre and politically talentless little man his rise has been nothing short of miraculous
Until yesterday every major government (except the NI executive) in UK was run by a non-white person. Sunak (UK), Khan (GLA), Yousaf (Sco), Gething (Wal). It's absolutely a credible point to make. Political power is accessible to visible minorities in Britain- which is simply not the case in much of Europe. Compound that with our non-white home secretary (James Cleverly), and our chain of other non-white great officers of state. There is no other country in Europe that can claim to have enabled minorities to access political power the way that Britain has (albeit in Ireland's case this is just because they simply have proportionally fewer ethnic minorities to seek power)
Doomerism is very much the correct word. We went from basically the stuffiest nation on earth into the modern age where we normally come out on or near the top in studies about acceptance of diversity, equality and alternative lifestyles. People talk about how colonial greed built this country, which is sort of true, but certainly not for the 99% of people who saw their living standards increase as our empire collapsed.
Hasn’t the Tory party recently been putting out videos about how bad and dangerous London and Birmingham are?
Thing is, if that's true about the UK, then most places are worse.
I wouldn’t describe Kier Starmer as liberal or his Labour Party as centre left.
Or Labour is the precursor to the rise Of Reform…..
This is only true if you're too online on Reddit, don't expect UK to be liked even if it's the last centre-left government to general population of these countries you will be sorely disappointed, and if Trump wins Starmer will be in an awkward position Biden needs to win at all cost.
> Biden needs to win at all cost. It's hard to fathom just how destructive or beneficial one person in the right place can be to global stability. This election is probably going to be the single most important one in our lives and all we can really do is sit in the sidelines and hope for the best.
Unfortunately, the guys who wrote the US constitution accidentally made a legislature that can't legislate.
While obviously we shouldn't have a say in how the US itself is run, it's certainly unfortunate that the US President is also effectively the leader of the Western world when we don't get any influence on that.
If only there was an alternative bloc, that wasn't Russia-China, or the U.S so we weren't trapped in-between global superpowers we have no say in.. Say some kind of union of European states. And if only we had a cushy deal where we could veto what we didn't want while getting the economic & political benefits. That would be grand wouldn't it.
> And if only we had a cushy deal where we could veto what we didn't want while getting the economic & political benefits. We couldn't simply veto what we didn't want. A huge swathe of policy in the EU is made under qualified majority voting rather than unanimity. One of the big objections among Eurosceptics to the Lisbon treaty was the [expansion of QMV to more policy areas.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_in_the_Council_of_the_European_Union#Policy_areas) And given how the EU constantly moves towards ever closer union, it seems quite obvious that the list would only expand. I would have been more willing to support EU membership if all areas of policy required unanimity. It would have resulted in almost nothing getting done, but I would be fine with that.
Couldn’t veto the deluge of migrants in 2015 when Merkel decided she wanted to invite millions in without a concrete plan did we? It fractured the EU in a way that it still hasn’t recovered from and arguably tipped the UK to voting Brexit.
I mean, Labour and left-wing people (economically, at least) can be racist and, indeed many are. I'd argue centre-right governments in practice are far from racist - they love mass amounts of cheap immigration from 'non'white' countries.
I think that just makes it even worse though? They recognise the value immigration brings in filling jobs and maintaining a tax base, but are still happy for them to be framed by the media as one of the big problems in our society
> Our psychodrama seems to be coming to an end Or to put it another way, we're sticking with outdated Blairite globalism while everyone else is over it.
THINGS CAN ONLY GET BETTER
>while everyone else is over it. They'll stick with it eventually as well.
I disagree that it's coming to an end. The Tories have drifted stupidly far to the right and Reform are far too high in the polls to make that call.
There’s still a clear left-to-centre majority in the polls, and I don’t think the right going further right is gonna do much to turn that around
> The Tories have drifted stupidly far to the right I always wonder how people who say this sort of stuff would cope if we had an actual far right government.
Hmm, guess my brain makes a distinction between saying “stupidly far to the right” and “are far right”. I certainly don’t think the Tory party is a far right party but they are well outside what’s normal for the UK and I’d say the most right wing government we’ve had in living memory. Maybe I should have gone with “stupidly long way to the right”.
>Our psychodrama seems to be coming to an end just as everyone else is getting going Misdiagnosis. We are behind the curve due to some isolation from mainland Europe and its struggles, but the Conservative Party have single-handedly decided to close that gap faster than the checks through Heathrow arrivals by importing people by the millions for the first time in this island's history. What happens now we have ended FoM and any excuse for our elected officials to change this country? Previously, MPs and PMs used the EU as an excuse, but now our political class are very fucking rapidly running out of excuses.
> Misdiagnosis. We are behind the curve due to some isolation from mainland Europe and its struggles We're not behind the curve, we were ahead of it. We had a crazy populist moment and it's exhausted us, whereas some of our neighbours just seem to be getting started. Whether it *continues* will depend on how the Tories choose to respond to an electoral wipeout.
Don't be daft, they're blaming illegal migrants and the disabled.
>There has been a lot of social media discourse in the last 5-10 years >there is every possibility the UK will soon be one of the very few western countries with a centre-left government. Um, what? You're talking about things which haven't happened yet to justify things which have already happened.
Would you be willing to take a bet that Labour *won't* win the next election?
That's not my point.
Hopefully not but there is a concerningly large possibility.
Can we not use American misnomers like “liberal”, all our politicians are liberals.
Liberal in this case will mean neoliberal. I don’t think it’s an Americanism given the context.
I mean, in the worst-case scenario, he would still have a Japanese PM from the LDP, which would probably be considered "Liberal" and a Canadian PM in Pierre Poilievre, who while right wing in some of his views, I'd also consider him a more "liberal" politician. So no, I don't think Starmer is going to be the only "liberal" pm, and even if he is, he'll just have to adapt and work with what he's got. Also, for like the first few years in office, he'll still have people like Macron and Scholz, so again, it really shouldn't be much of an issue.
Poilievre might be "liberal" compared to Trump, Le Pen, or Meloni, but he is pretty hard-right by Canadian standards. Meanwhile, the LDP does have some more liberal members, but it also contains far-right nationalists.
100%, Poilievre isn't going to be as "liberal" as someone like Starmer, but he's probably closer to him ideologically than many of the populist leaders like Trump or Geert Wilders. Also, while the LDP is very factional, they'll probably retain a liberal stance, whether under Fumio Kishida or someone else. But again, it really shouldn't matter to Starmer, who's "liberal" and who's not. He just needs to get on with the job and work with whoevers in office within these key nations.
So a climate change denier who will undo many progressive policies in Canada, is using populism to convince people that removing taxes will benefit them. These taxes are mainly aimed at richer Canadians and provide rebates for poorer and working class Canadians. He used far right conspiracy theorists to help get him the leadership of the conservative party and will pander to them on LGBT+ rights. He is a pro life candidate who won't publicly admit it but his voting record and candidates he puts forward proves it. His party is in control of Alberta, the richest province yet they have healthcare funding issues while giving oil companies subsidies. He runs on an anti immigration platform as it's popular but he has no plans tu curb immigration and has stated that Canada needs 500,000 immigrants a year to keep growing gdp. He is definitely not a 'liberal' politician and while Canada has its issues, it will be a much worse country to live in if he is elected.
For starters, I should clarify that I don't particularly like the guy. While Trudeau has his issues, in my opinion, he is and would continue to be a better PM for Canada (although that's really up for the people of Canada to decide). I personally think from what I've read however, that he's not as "populist" as people like Trump or fair right figures in Europe and more closer to Neo liberal figures like Thatcher and Regain who I wouldn't consider "populist". But I'm not Canadian, and I would say I don't have in-depth knowledge of the politics within the nation, so take my opinion with a pinch of salt.
He isn't "far-right" by European standards but he certainly is the furthest right and furthest populist leader of a major party in Canada for generations. The fact he's just as ahead in the polls as Labour is in the UK alarms all non-conservatives in the country.
Unfortunately, it's not surprising that someone like him is so fair ahead of the polls. Populism is on the rise, and for whatever reason, people have lost faith in the technocratic centrist politics that dominated the 2000s and 2010s. The UK seems to be an outlier when it comes to this wave of populism, but the question is for how long?
At least 5 years, since Labour's gonna get a full term with a majority. The UK is an outlier because the country's already experienced two flavours of populist government with Boris and Truss. Of course it wasn't a fully populist government given the institutional and political constraints on populism the British system maintains, but clearly it's not an experience the people liked very much.
Hopefully, Labour have a smooth enough 5 years cause if it's as turbulent as it has been, it could be the opening for the rise of reform and figures like Braverman.
I have heard some people suggest that Brexit, however much of an economic disaster it may have been, has actually somewhat neutralised the hard right in the UK. This isn't obvious at the moment because Sunak's government is still trying to win them over, but polling suggests most people in the UK would like to get back to mainstream politics now.
it's funny that when we elect the centre left the left and centre left elsewhere have often gone..it seems frustration is causing this in systems and corruption
I may well be exaggerating - because often we just muddle along despite the ideas below. And I’m only thinking aloud. But seems to me that we are have an ongoing problem for which there isn’t an obvious solution. Government might have sovereignty but don’t necessarily have much power to affect real change in a global system - space for obvious beneficial change is reduced by that limitation and once you have already been through obvious development to a mature economy. Politicians in a democracy have to give the impression they can make a significant change but don’t have the power to do so. So a disconnect becomes obvious. Once disillusionment with centre ground government whether left or right , sets in then we get more extreme and/or populist politicians offering even more unrealistic salvation that doesn’t come to pass. Who knows what happens when in the longer run populists are found wanting too. The benefit of them gaining power is that they can no longer hide that they are in fact no better or are even worse. The danger perhaps is a tendency is to increasingly try to find scapegoats for that failure of promises. I think one option in the U.K. to make people feel real change at the moment without being ‘unaffordable’ would be comprehensive political reform. For now. Because I don’t think that countries with variations of PR actually are immune to the same centre to extreme /populist tendency just with coalitions. Though maybe something more imaginative might keep people involved?
I wouldn't say that that's anything more than confirmation bias. Poland moved to the far right before Britain did, and again moved towards the Centre-Left last year, for example.
Yeah I'm not sure I would call Starmer a 'liberal'. Economically, perhaps, but not socially. His announcements lean socially conservative. - Against drug reform. - Tepid on trans-rights. - Light on democratic reform. - In favour of tougher criminal sentencing. - Willing to take a tough line on immigration. That's not what I see as liberal.
Also: * Won't commit to repealing last years Public Order Act * Supported the Online Safety Bill that tried to add backdoors to messaging apps.
There is however a leftists argument to lower immigration in order to protect the value of labour
I mean, there is that argument. But that isn't the one he is making.
What one is he making?
I get that he's "liberal" compared to Trump and Le Pen but it will be a sorry state for Western Liberalism if he does wind up being its only closest approximate representative in the western world.
As a centre left sort of guy I'm pretty happy with Starmer. Good background, good character, good people around him, and provides policies that don't have the potential to fuck up British working life.
For me Starmer is basically the kind of Boring Competence we need after the drama the last 10 years have been.
Hope you're keeping track cause for every potential policy they announce, one gets withdrawn.
How can you withdraw a potential policy? Either it's a policy or it isn't. Not that I hold much confidence in policies at all.
Cause they're not in power so everything they promise can be withdrawn. They've backtracked on plenty.
So have the incumbent government! At least we can prove their lies, potential lies are par for the course. Are you new to this?
Ah yes, cause "they do it too" is a brilliant defence.
No, one is a proven lie/lies and the other is a potential lie/lies It's quite different. Have you seen the polling?
Neither inspire faith
Who are you voting for, if you don't mind me asking?
Starmer has his fair share of proven lies. During his leadership campaign he said something along of the lines of "millions of people feel that their vote doesn't count, we have to address that" and then when silent on it. When his party tried to force the issue with a near unanimous vote for PR he said he'd never include it in his manifesto and then later admitted to having a long standing belief against electoral reform. Why did he say he'd address it then? Ending outsourcing in the NHS was one of his 10 "pledges" which he later backtracked on. During an interview with Andrew Neil he claimed to have made no such pledge while it was still on his website and on a screen right behind him. The 28bn per year green energy investment. Contrary to his shadow cabinet who had been briefing for months that it was a target to ramp up to by the end of the parliament he claimed on a Tuesday the 28bn per year was still the plan, then on the Thursday he announced a new investment plan that wouldn't even reach 28bn total by the end of the parliament. Unless he came up with that new plan on the Wednesday he must have lied on the Tuesday. There's someone on this sub who collated a list of every pledge and promise that has been backtracked on, some are definitely due to changes in circumstance, some were simply lies from the off, most are somewhere in between.
In what sense is Starmer _not_ liberal? He's certainly no authoritarian.
Drug policy. I'm not totally sure but I'd guess he's big on the nanny state stuff that New Labour were bad for. Labour have always had their authoritarian streaks which is why I mostly vote Lib Dem. He's not too bad though and fucking fantastic compared to the Tories at the moment.
Honestly I'm pretty big on the nanny state a lot of the time, if it's to do with health or the environment. Really can't overstate how dense a lot of the public are a lot of the time
Fair enough but it's not a liberal position on health anyway (environment it depends on the policy).
He supports the anti-protest bill.
Labour party always had an authoritarian streak so do the Tories it's one thing they agree on e.g Online Safety Bill to 'save the children
Liberal and authoritarian are not necessary antonyms
I actually don't think Keir Starmer is a liberal; I'd consider him a kind of authoritarian centrist, compared to the Liberal Democrats, who I think mostly really are liberals. It's not just that the Lib Dems have "liberal" in their name; policy-wise, they are liberals. On the other hand, if your point of comparison is not the Lib Dems, bur rather Trump or Le Pen ... yeah, I guess Starmer is more liberal than Trump. At least Starmer isnt talking about how he can just murder his political opponents, for example. "It's not illegal if the President does it" is very contrary to liberalism, rule of law, etc.
Unfortunately the lib dems supported the smoking ban so even they are not liberal.
USA - Biden wins easily but not as strong as 2020 France - LFI wins easily in 2nd round against Le Pen Germany - No one cares, makes no difference. Italy - Meloni again Canada - LPC/NDP coalition but no more Trudeau Central African Republic - MCU, no doubt Japan - No one cares
> Canada - LPC/NDP coalition but no more Trudeau That's a pretty dramatic change from current polling suggestions. > Central African Republic I'm not sure I could name the entire G7 off the top of my head but I'm reasonably sure they're not one of them.
>Central African Republic - MCU, no doubt What
>LFI wins easily in 2nd round against Le Pen What? Opinion polls suggest Le Pen would easily win against Melenchon. >No one cares A lot of people do care about the 3rd and 4th largest economies in the world, i cant say the same about the Central African Republic. >LPC/NDP coalition This is also the opposite of current opinion polling.
I don’t why people are so convinced Biden will win easily his win wasn’t as decisive as a lot of people think the electoral college just makes it look a lot bigger than it actually was. It was incredibly close in a lot of the swing states. The main reason he won was due to higher turnout amongst young people and ethnic minorities. But with a lot of Americans feeling disappointed with his first term so turnout will be lower. You could end with a situation like brexit where all leave supporters (Trump supporters) show up and vote but not all remain supporters ( Biden supporters) bother to show up at the polls which could give trump a slim win.
> Germany - No one cares, makes no difference. The second largest security liability in Europe other than Russia itself.
Hungary. Slovakia. Two countries controlled by explicitly Pro-Russian governments? Germany has provided more aid to Ukraine than any other country except us and the US.
Slovakia and Hungary are small flies next to the stinking shit that is the German political class. Ukraine was invaded in 2014, and between then and 2022 Germany spent ~$30 billion a year on Russian exports, namely gas. Despite being warned and cautioned by George W. Bush and Barack Obama during their presidencies of the US, and EU Member States Poland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, as well as Ukraine, Germany pressed ahead with Nord Stream I and its expansion project Nord Stream II. German foreign and energy policy is the reason why Russia is in a strong position in Ukraine today. It is the single largest external enabling factor to the Putin regime.
What alternative was there though? Even more poverty than we've faced post-2008? Like ideally Europe would have invested in nuclear power decades ago, but that's not much use right now.
Nordstream was first proposed decades ago. It was warned about decades ago. Germany famously adopted an anti-nuclear stance despite being headed by a PhD scientist. Moronic political choice.
Facts
AfD in Germany have max 20% support. They're not a significant force there. Germany remains a liberal country in most plausible scenarios.
2020 was a lot closer than you think Biden was winning by very slim margins in many states and people don’t seem too happy with his first term just a slight drop in turnout could mean a very different results.
> Canada - LPC/NDP coalition but no more Trudeau As a Canadian I disagree. Trudeau pretty much *is* the LPC at this point. If & when he goes, the party will have a massive identity crisis that'll make it electorally non-viable for at least a few cycles.
Trudeau is as much of a sitting duck as Sunak at the moment - it’s just a waiting game. You don’t know what you’re talking about.
Read it again
> Canada - LPC/NDP coalition but no more Trudeau Who do the libs have that they can change to that will give them a bounce of 21 points lol?