What is the market they are trying to reach to? The mouthy selfish middle classes? The ones who feed the Daily Mail and all the right wing crap it propagates.
So why aren't working class people getting angrier? Why don't people force the parties to look at what they want instead and make the idea of altering policies to reach out to these groups a viable option? Parties won't risk moving their policies to the left if there isn't any indication that people will get out to vote, so they have to keep pleasing the voters - the middle classes. It's chicken and egg in a way. The working class voters see 3 parties that all look the same and give up and stay at home.
When people don't get out and vote we run a higher risk of the far right gaining seats and once we start trotting off down that route, we'll have a hard time turning it around. Ad astra per aspera
Labour have been forced to shift to the right or they wouldn't have been able to stay in Government
Is this, strictly speaking, true?
I'm not a Brit (obviously) but if memory serves Thatcher got nowhere near 50% in her first election, and the real story for Labour was that it split apart, thus handing a crushing victory to thatcher the second time around. she actually got less votes after argentina than before it thanks to "moderate" labourites who destroyed the party because their guy didn't win.
easy to facilitate a shit to the right when you've been stabbed in the back. Fai de bèn a Bertrand, te lou rendra en cagant
the rest of europe got a left-wing make-over around then, we had a real left government in france (at least at first) and also in spain if memory isn't failing me in my dotage.
britain get's its one chance at seeing proper socialism in an electorally legitimite guise and i guess the lily-livered crowd couldn't handle it.
i think it's genetic, and explains a lot about amerika, too. Fai de bèn a Bertrand, te lou rendra en cagant
to facilitate a shit to the right
You mean: to bring in Tony Blair? ;)
It's reasonably well ingrained. So Labour had to change tack somewhat to provide a means of framing their policies in a way that would attract those leaning to the right but unhappy with the Tories and not totally repel the traditional Labour voters.
I am bitterly disappointed that Labour moved so far away from their roots in carrying on with chunks of Thatcher's agenda - given the length of time in Government, the policies and implementation of them should have been able to shift back towards the left. There has been time to reverse some of that rhetoric but it hasn't been done in England. Tony Blair was a master of persuasion which saw him come in on landslide win. He could have used that to convince the public to shift their way of thinking back to the left and in doing so encouraged the working classes to have faith in Labour and keep turning out to vote.
I don't see how the reversal of the damage the tories did could have been achieved by keeping a hard left line from the beginning - in England anyway. In Wales (and Scotland) the Left were stronger in a more traditional way, certainly for Wales with a strong history of the Labour movement, unions and the legacy of coal mining and heavy industry. As such through devolution we do have a socialist Government here, with progressive social policies.
I have a friend who thinks Tony Blair is great, he really admires him and I just can't see it. He thinks Tony Blair was pragmatic in dealing with the legacy Thatcher left. I think he sold the Party out. Ad astra per aspera
That is a choice, the other obvious one would have been to move to the left and focusing on getting out the vote. If you prioritise staying in power over what you can achieve, triangulation can be a succesful strategy. If you prioritise changes it generally is not.
From the voter perspective, if you vote even though there is no candidate that represents your interests, you show that your vote is for free, the party in question does not have to move one iota to get it. Withholding your vote until you get a good enough candidate is a strategy, albeit a chicken race one. (And in chicken races crashes happen.)
Smaller parties on the side of major parties often play the role of keeping people voting and pulling the agenda. Organisations (churches, unions, etc) play a big role in groups voting as a group and thus being more clear on their demands for voting as well as delivering the votes more effectively. I am under the impression that Thatcher did a lot to kill labor unins? A vote for PES is a vote for EPP! A vote for EPP is a vote for PES! Support the coalition, vote EPP-PES in 2009!
Yes Thatcher really trampled on the unions, they lost a lot of power through plenty of anti-union legislation. Ad astra per aspera
The mouthy selfish middle classes?
Yep.
In Wales:
So why aren't working class people getting angrier?
Because they believe they're part of the mouthy middle classes.
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