Monday 11 July 2016

Quantitative and Qualitative

Theresa May is economically to the left of three quarters of the Parliamentary Labour Party, having adopted the People's Quantitative Easing that was ridiculed last year by Yvette Cooper.

If Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell were removed, then this would be Conservative policy, but no longer Labour policy.

Likewise, if Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell were removed, then the Budget surplus for the sake of a Budget surplus, always taxing more than was spent, would be Labour policy, but no longer Conservative policy.

10 comments:

  1. Get on with it and merge the two parties. They'd be much happier together.

    Genuine conservatives can then go elsewhere.

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    1. In the sense that you mean, there simply aren't any, or far too few to sustain a national political party. UKIP is quietly dying, too. In fact, it is quite noisily dying. It is just that this is a very noisy time.

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    2. They'd still vote Tory, that's what they do.

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  2. On the contrary, over half of current Tory MPs supported Leave, roughly the same proportion that voted against "gay marriage." The basis for a new party-in alliance with others outside Parliament-is there.

    It's a disgrace-and a completely unsustainable situation in a Parliamentary democracy-that 52% of voters have no major Parliamentary party to speak for them.

    That can't go on.

    And in the Leave and Remain campaigns we saw the ghosts of two new rival parties begin to emerge.

    No wonder the turnout was far higher than at any General Election since 1992.

    And no wonder 17.5 million people voted for a campaign led entirely by UKIP and the Tory Right.

    The support for a new Rightwing party is there.

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    1. Illiterate stuff. Those two issues exist outside party politics altogether, and the idea of the areas that swung it for Leave voting for anything any vaguely on the Right is too hilarious for words. Well, unless it was the Labour Party, of course. But that is a whole other story.

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  3. It's a completely circular argument to say it "exists outside party politics"-that's precisely because there's no major party inside party politics that represents the majority of British voters!

    They voted for a campaign led entirely by the Tory Right and swing votes can't decide anything without the millions of others (mainly Tory and UKIP voters) who voted Leave. 56% of Tory voters vs just 40% of Labour voters.

    They collectively form the basis for a new party that could unite them.

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    1. And those 56 per cent will all vote for Theresa May. Can you see where this is going?

      What matters is control of the big two parties. The Tories have settled that one, and, even if not without pain, Labour soon will, too.

      If anything could ever break that, then it would be the dispossessed Corbyn movement, the popular political phenomenon of the last 40 years, at least. It is certainly not going to be the Tory Right, of all things.

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  4. The issue of leaving the EU doesn't exist outside party politics because neither party supports it. Neither party supports it because it exists outside party politics. Basic stuff.

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  5. What EU referendum? Who even remembers it? You are right about the Corbyn phenomenon, though. Inside or outside the Labour Party and that is now up to the Labour Party.

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    1. Quite.

      Liam Fox and Michael Gove have lost no time in forgetting that there ever was a referendum.

      But then, to the people who always wanted it, merely holding it was the end in itself. That has happened, so they have no remaining reasons, so to speak, to be politically active at all.

      Meanwhile, in the world of the real thing, a second Corbyn Summer is already under way.

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