all suffer from a similar ailing - selling out to the Third Way. How come that this zeitgeist is present in so many countries?
Nomad:
Is it simply the failure of social-democratic echelons that forget whom they are meant to represent? Labourers have become lower (middle) class, but the Labour party has already moved on to upper class...?
I didn't think the middle classes (which most UKanians don't identify themselves as anyway) were who a labour party was supposed to fight for
Now, lately the Social Liberals and the Social Democrats are nearly indistinguishable in policy though they remain distinguishable in which social network (or "base") they represent. En un viejo país ineficiente, algo así como España entre dos guerras civiles, poseer una casa y poca hacienda y memoria ninguna. -- Gil de Biedma
Labourers have become lower (middle) class, but the Labour party has already moved on to upper class...?
Note the parentheses. I wanted the focus on the lower class and with bits of lower middle class. I meant the same thing what you're writing.
When policies of Social Democrats shift closer to that of the Liberals, the Overton Window is at work. It only means Social Democrats represent their base in name only.
Brown wasn't interested in any of that. He didn't smile for the camera. He wasn't policy-lite, bobbling along on a froth of publicity. He wouldn't co-operate.
So his very stodginess made him a problem to be derided. And no insult was worse than "Old Labour". Even Prescott, who really was old labour, had to be protected from that slur. keep to the Fen Causeway
Isn't that the definition of Zeitgeist?
Once the labourers become middle class they lose their class consciousness and become individualistic. Pandering to "middle class concerns" tends to result in regressive policies, for some reason.
The 'middle class' is a largely rhetorical category in Anglo-American politics.
Used to be that middle class meant you had some economic power, some economic independence - professionals, successful small business and so on - and working class meant you depended on a boss to pay you.
Still, it is at least on the medium term suicidal for social democratic parties to practice actual middle class politics that negatively affect labour, like, say, labour market flexibilisation and union-busting policies. Or cutting the top income bracket tax rate below 50%.
That should have been obvious, but the third way social democrats seem to have practiced a wilful blindness to longer term political economy.
