Sunday 5 May 2013

Gathering The Tribes

The ConservativeHome website recently ran a series (see here) on 10 “Lost Tribes” of British politics.

Under Ed Miliband, Labour is the party that can unite the Christian Democrats that far more British people are than realise it, the Labour Left, the paleo-Socialists given a voice by Neil Clark, the paleoconservatives who are not the same as the American ones, and the people attracted to the Red Tory and Blue Labour projects.

Unite us against the undying Tory wets, the pro-austerity Blairites, the warmongering liberal interventionists, the High Liberal pure technocrats, and the “libertarian” anarcho-capitalists.

That can be done. Labour defined itself by uniting trade unionists, co-operators, wider mutualists, Radical Liberals, Tory populists, Guild Socialists, Christian Socialists, Social Catholics, and Chestertonian Distributists, among others. Labour needs to revisit them all. It is doing so.

In and by doing so, it must fight every seat as if it were a knife-edge marginal. Where Labour is in third place or below, or where it is in a distant second place, then it might dispense with any requirement that prospective nominees be party members, although they would of course have to join if they were selected.

Provided that they had been registered voters within the constituency’s then boundaries for at least 15 years, and were recommended to the Constituency Labour Party by the public signatures of at least five per cent of the voters.

By these among other means, Labour could bring in those of Christian Democratic, Labour Left, paleo-Socialist, paleoconservative and postliberal minds, while removing the Tory wets, the Blairites, the liberal interventionists, the High Liberals and the anarcho-capitalists who had thought that they were in for life.

5 comments:

  1. With the Tory wet/Blairite/liberal interventionist/High Liberal/anarcho-capitalist threat to take back this seat killed off by this week's county council result. A safe MP "of Christian Democratic, Labour Left, paleo-Socialist, paleoconservative and postliberal minds" needs a primed successor of the same minds.

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  2. But who and where is she?

    There is time yet, of course. But not limitless time. She needs to be identified and, as you say, primed.

    But anyway, this post is not really about that.

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  3. "...the paleo-Socialists given a voice by Neil Clark..."

    I have always thought he looks like Fred Flintstone.

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  4. Do not blaspheme the Great Man.

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  5. I don't know how much this is true for the United Kingdom, but in the U.S. our political tribes are heavily based upon regional differences.

    From what I have read about British politics, outside of the South and the City of London especially, the people of Great Britain are probably more Old Labour/One–Nation Tory than the mainstream journalists would have us believe.

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