A comment on one of yesterday's posts suggests that my social conservatism is not the "usual" definition of the Left? Really? "Usual" where, exactly?
Not within the post-Blairite Labour Party, for a start. It is quite apparent who has
won in the end when Christian Concern, which used to be called Action for Biblical Witness to Our
Nation, is linking approvingly to the latest speech by Diane Abbott, and
is sharing it via Facebook and Twitter. Abbott is a Shadow Minister, unlike plenty of people whom one could mention.
I have just been followed on Twitter by Andrew Jordan, the President of Arthur Scargill's Socialist Labour Party, which beats the BNP and the English Democrats whenever it fights the same ward as either or both, and which beats the BNP in the elections to the Scottish and Welsh devolved bodies, all the while holding the line squarely against the EU and all its works.
On his Twitter profile, before mentioning that he is "Marxist in political ideology" (we'll have to work on him), he describes himself as "Catholic in faith". But first of all, he points out that he is 24 years old. That is four years younger than even Owen Jones.
On his Twitter profile, before mentioning that he is "Marxist in political ideology" (we'll have to work on him), he describes himself as "Catholic in faith". But first of all, he points out that he is 24 years old. That is four years younger than even Owen Jones.
We are the future.
The only Pentecostal pastor in Parliament is a Shadow Minister, Gavin Shuker. Threatened to resign if there was not a free vote on gay marriage because fully intends to vote against. Co-op MP, naturally. Only elected in 2010, but then only born in 1981. We are the future all right.
ReplyDeleteI know, before you say it, that Shuker is white
ReplyDeleteBut thank you for the handle on which to hang the point that in parts of London, and possibly elsewhere, Labour and Respect are now engaged in a kind of bidding war in order to sign up the pastors of the black churches as council candidates.
And then, soon enough, as parliamentary candidates.
A return to Movement's roots, of course.
"usual where, exactly"
ReplyDeletePretty much everywhere except this blog and the Morning Star.
Do you honestly think that when, say Melanie Phillips or Peter Hitchens attack "leftists" they are referring to your version of the Left-or to the social liberals who are the New Left?
In the nicest possible way, who asked them? It is not for them to define the Left.
ReplyDelete"Everywhere except the present Labour front bench," more like it. And the 2010 Labour intake. And the bulk of the Labour vote even before its large and rapid expansion, still ongoing, in the present Parliament, never mind once that has been taken into account.
The present Labour front bench aren't social liberals?
ReplyDeleteHow many of the Labour front bench will vote join the Tory back-benchers in voting against gay marriage or to lower the abortion limit?
Only three Labour MP's even signed the letter opposing it.
And, regarding the Labour core vote, that's actually wrong.
Polls consistently show that Tory voters have more socially conservative (and eurosceptic) than voters for either of the other two parties.
I'll happily send you the poll data if you like.
I have not been a Sixth Former for a very long time.
ReplyDeleteThe present Labour front bench aren't social liberals?
Depends how you define these things. But not all of them, no. Any more than on the other side.
George Osborne's voting record on abortion is horrendous. David Cameron is the first Prime Minister, ever, to seek redefine legal marriage in order to extend it to same-sex couples. And so on.
When, exactly, did something like Christian Concern last link favourably to any utterance of a member of the present Government? The couldn't stand the Thatcher and Major Governments, either.
How many of the Labour front bench will vote join the Tory back-benchers in voting against gay marriage or to lower the abortion limit?
That question is phrased incorrectly, based on an assumption which does not hold, namely that "the Tory backbenchers" are of such views. Most of them are not. The Chairman and the Secretary of the All-Party Pro-Life Group are both Labour MPs.
Only three Labour MP's even signed the letter opposing it.
So what? Do you think that that was why a free vote was granted? For the sake of three people? Or even of the 12 sometimes cited?
At least a third of the Labour MPs who vote in favour of Second Reading will be doing so in the full knowledge that the Bill will never reach Third Reading, which it won't. And even at Second Reading, check the list of convenient absentees on the Labour side. The next Labour Government will go absolutely nowhere near this issue.
And, regarding the Labour core vote, that's actually wrong.
How would you, of all people, possibly know that? And whom do you have in mind? Catholics? Muslims? Attendees at black churches?
Core Tory voters will vote for any old rubbish with the right accent, and people who speak like that are in practice the most extreme social liberals imaginable, as well as being entirely responsible for this country's embroilment in the EU.
When those voters have religion, as they often do, then it is overwhelmingly C of E, with everything that that generally entails.
All professions to the contrary in opinion polls need to be seen in that context: if they really did feel as they claim to, then they would not vote Conservative.
Increasingly, of course, they don't. They vote for the party that cleaned up at last year's local elections (winning Chipping Norton, for example), which is going to clean up at this year's, and which is going to clean up at next year's European Elections. The ward by ward results speak for themselves.
Is that the Ukip one, it looks like him? Interesting to see him vigorously defending the Tories. Which party does he think introduced abortion up to birth, and can he name the Prime Minister at the time? Here's a clue, she also signed the Single European Act.
ReplyDeleteYears ago, I remember mentioning the Conservatives to one of this country's best-known pro-life and pro-family activists. She all but spat with contempt: "I spent 18 years campaigning against them."
ReplyDeleteAs, indeed, she had done, and most especially against Margaret Thatcher, the abomination of whose name in such circles is matched only by the abomination of the name of Tony Blair.
A traditional Catholic, my interlocutor's only objection to Labour was that "it used to be based on Methodism, but it isn't anymore."
And now, the party against whom she fought so valiantly for 18 years is back with a vengeance. Whereas Labour is more based on Methodism and other such tendencies than at any time in a good 20 years.
""the Tory backbenchers" are of such views. Most of them are not"
ReplyDeleteThen how come 120 of them have written open letters to their constituents opposing it (even though it's Government policy) and how come more Tories signed the published letter opposing it, than any other party (even though they are the ones in Government...where's the opposition?)
And how come Peter Bone, one of the most outspoken opponents of gay marriage in Parliament, said that "over half" the party agrees with him, in private.
If David Cameron, and gay marriage, represent mainstream Tory opinion, how come he has caused over 50% of Tory activists to resign?
If the core Labour vote is as you describe, how come Labour-supporting newspapers that commission polls of the electorate, find that Tory voters are the most socially conservative and eurosceptic than either Lib Dem or Labour voters?
How come readers of the Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph (Tory papers) are more socially conservative and eurosceptic than readers of any Lib Dem or Labour-supporting papers?
None of these facts fit your prejudices. but that doesn't make them wrong.
If you have to ask those sorts of questions, then there is not really any point answering them. Oh, well, we were all young once.
ReplyDeleteOne thing that I will say is this: if half of Conservative activists really have resigned over same-sex "marriage", then Cameron is well and truly in his party's mainstream now, even if he wasn't before.
Which he was, though. He put up for Leader as a socially liberal Europhile, and he beat the socially conservative Eurosceptic by more than two to one. A very high proportion of those who voted for David Davis will since have died.
Cameron is the socially liberal, Europhile Leader of a socially liberal, Europhile party from top to bottom. As everyone has always known.
None of the evidence you provide for your claims comes close to justifying them.
ReplyDeleteIf the evidence that the Tories are liberal is that David Cameron won a leadership contest, then the Labour Party must be socially liberal since it chose and retained a socially liberal leader for over a decade and a half?
Cameron didn't win because he was liberal (as anyone with a clue would tell you)-he won because the party thought he was their only chance of getting elected-same with Tony Blair.
The "europhile from top to bottom" party that's just become the first European Government to promise its electorate a vote on withdrawing from the EU?
Whether the promise is a fraud or not (I believe it is) the very fact Cameron had to make it, and Miliband didn't, tells us which of party is more eurosceptic.
Cameron was only making that promise to appease his eurosceptic voters and MP's.
Miliband doesn't need to appease such people, as his party doesn't have enough of them to matter.
Where to begin?
ReplyDeleteYou are right, he doesn't need to appease them...
Correct.
ReplyDeleteThat's also why it's former Tory voters who make up the bulk of UKIP voters...Britain's only mainstream party that is committed to EU withdrawal.
Exactly the opposite. Labour voters do not go over to UKIP because they do not need to.
ReplyDeleteHeaven knows what would happen to UKIP if they ever did. You wouldn't like it. You wouldn't like it one little bit. According to Ken Bell, it is already happening in places, but from the Hard Left rather than from the Labour middle. Expect fireworks.
The Greens, for all their many faults, are in favour of withdrawal from the EU. They also have a Commons seat. Imagine that. A Commons seat. That is what makes a party "mainstream".
At the very least, such a status does not derive from advocating policies wildly out of step with public opinion as held by the Loony Righties who control UKIP and whose position you express on, especially, economic matters.
Tomorrow's polls show UKIP support down and Conservative support up by the same amount. Well behind Labour, but Cameron does seem, for now, to have prevented his party's disaster in 2015 from turning into its catastrophe. No more than that, though.
Your party, on the other hand, would still have had no seats either way. "Mainstream," indeed! What happens when someone asks you what else you stand for? Be grateful that that is never going to happen.
Thanks for this post-it was unintentionally very amusing. I've only just stopped laughing, actually.
ReplyDeleteYes, Labour voters aren't going to UKIP because Ed has such a sound policy on the EU.
How's the fantasy going over at the party that wobbles around between "we don't want a referendum" or "we're not sure"?
You know, the one whose leader sounded like a train crash interviewed on Today-and whose official immigration policy is (don't laugh) to enforce a minimum wage.
That's literally it.
Please, please, if you have any influence at all over at Labour HQ, don't let Miliband out, unscripted, again will you?
Amateurish doesn't sum it up-his Jokers Party can't even agree on their policies IN OPPOSITION (are they for or against an EU referendum?; what exactly will they do about immigration?; sorry, nobody can quite work it out.
We, on the other hand, hold the only principled position-EU withdrawal and a freeze on immigration (which is only possible with EU withdrawal.
We're happy to leave you and the Greens in fantasy land.
I am not a member of any political party.
ReplyDeleteBut if you mean Labour, then its permanent and increasingly unassailable poll lead speaks for itself.
Whereas Cameron has only had to say the word "referendum" (he said precious little else) and UKIP has dropped four points in as many days.
There were not enough Conservative voters to win a General Election last time. But all that you want to do is to capture perhaps a quarter, at a push a third, of those.
Yet you expect to be taken with any sort of seriousness even if you had any realistic hope of that. Which you haven't.
The future? I don't think so.
ReplyDeleteFor a start, feminists and much of the Left have opposed sexualisation of children for a long time and see it as primarily linked to the commercial activities of capitalism.
In terms of gay rights, there is little left to be won - the vast majority of Labour MP's (including the 2010 intake) will vote for gay marriage, and then it will be a case of ensuring that the legislation which exists is applied.
Ed Miliband is an atheist, and is hardly about to introduce some sort of right wing theocracy. Neither is he going to oppose retaining membership of the EU.
It is true, though, to note that the Tories have sometimes been more bark than bite, but certainly there are social liberals amongst their number, notably George Osborne, who supports a woman's right to choose, and gay equality.
But he is in a minority in his party - whereas they are the mainstream views of Labour, with a few fringe dinosaurs opposing that stance
Feminists, many of whom do indeed do sterling work on these issues, have not been opposed to these things for anything as long as the churches have been. The coalescence of the two, very similar, critiques does at last seem to be happening. Not before time.
ReplyDeleteMy friend was once going to write his post-doc on it, but he went on to greater things beyond academia. When he enters Parliament, then he should return to it from there. Evidently, he will find that plenty of people in the place are already well-advanced in the field.
That Bill will never reach Third Reading in this Parliament, or the floor of the House in the next one because it has proved too hot to handle, and everybody knows it.
Miliband is a kind of pro-faith atheist, there are lot of them in New Old Labour. The resistance comes from Old New Labour, and that is on the way out.
He doesn't believe in God. But he believes in religious organisations as communitarian moral and cultural tradition-bearers, and as doers of local good works accordingly. He is therefore interested in what they have to say, and he wants them on board.
That is once again the top of the Labour Party these days, as outside a few parts of London it was always the activist base, the wider membership and the wider Labour electorate: an alliance of people who believe in God and people who at least believe in religion, at least for other people less sophisticated than themselves.
Miliband is also surrounded by those who would not weep to leave the EU. In any case, a referendum on staying in as renegotiated to Cameron's satisfaction, or else pulling out, gives Labour only one option, and it is not the Cameron option. Watch that space.
Cameron has driven out the socially conservative wing of his own party, and probably a lot of the Eurosceptics as well. He sits well within the mainstream that he has therefore created. If it was not already there. He has never hidden his views, and he was overwhelmingly elected Leader on the basis of them.
You keep repeating the falsehood that Cameron was elected on the basis of socially liberal views. Not so.
ReplyDeleteObviously, Davies was my ideal candidate, but Cameron was actually elected on a platform of acknowledging marriage in the tax system (and was attacked for it by Gordon Brown, who had abolished the tax allowance for marriage in 2000) abolishing the Human Rights Act and restricting immigration which had swelled to 4 million in 10 years, under Labour.
The fact he went back on all of these promises (apart from his promise to have a referendum on any future EU treaty) doesn't remove from the fact he was elected on the basis of those socially-conservative promises.
But, yes, I agree he's driven the social conservatives away from his inner circle (Davis saved him the trouble by resigning before the election).
Your other contributor's point, though, was that there are far more such social conservatives who oppose gay marriage in the Tories than there are in the Labour Party.
And a free vote would show that up very clearly. The majority of votes against would come from the Tories-I'm happy to bet you on that one!!
Oh, there is no doubt about that. But it is all academic. This Bill is never going to reach Third Reading,e everyone voting for it knows that, and a good - I really do mean a good - third of the Labour MPs who will be voting for it are perfectly happy that they know it.
ReplyDeleteTheir votes in favour will be pure gesture politics. Like a good third of the Conservative votes against. In any event, far more Conservatives are going to vote for it than against it. Cameron represents his party's mainstream. That was how and why he won the Leadership.
People pretending otherwise are like people who whinged that "Blair would never have become Leader if we had known," or people who whinge that "We only voted for a free trade area in 1975." Should have learned to read, then. Or at the very least bothered to do some reading, and some simple listening.