General News/Current Affairs Thread

Opinion piece suggests the SNP aren't as left wing as imagined

James Bloodworth said:
Despite Nicola Sturgeon’s anti-austerity bombast, on tax and spending there is little difference in attitudes in England and Scotland when it comes to cuts.According to the very recent British Social Attitudes Survey, a third (36.4 percent) of voters in England and Wales want tax and spending to rise, compared with 43.8 per cent of Scots — a 7 percent difference, but not a yawning chasm.

Even UKIP policies to cut overseas aid, reduce immigration and barrel down on benefits claimants are backed by a majority of Scots, according to a massive survey commissioned last year by Dundee University. Half of respondents to the same survey wanted to see inheritance tax abolished and believed local families should get first dibs on social housing.

Were Scotland to be the nest of progressive politics it is made out to be, you would expect Labour to have done better there when it has tacked to the left. The party’s lowest share of the vote, however, came in 1983 (35.1 per cent), when its manifesto was written by none other than the late Tony Benn, left-wing bete-noire of the Daily Mail. Conversely, the party’s most impressive results in recent years came in 1997 (45.6 per cent) and 2001 (43.3 per cent), under the leadership of revisionist sell-out Tony Blair.

“Left-wing Scotland” is a myth that is fed by the myth of a left-wing SNP. The SNP’s progressive platform is for many Labour activists the inspiration for throwing off the shackles of Blairism south of the border. The scrapping of up-front tuition fees for (largely middle class) university students and the abolition of NHS prescription charges have all helped to reinforce the message that, given the chance, the SNP would build a Scandinavian-style social democracy stretching from Hadrian’s Wall to John o’ Groats.

The facts suggest otherwise: For all the rhetoric, the substance of SNP policy betrays a level of pragmatism that would warm the heart of any Blairite. Scotland under the SNP has slashed away at corporation tax and mooted a Tory-style welfare cap. The SNP have also done little to reduce inequality, and the leadership’s economic sympathies lie firmly with Ireland and the ultra-low tax regime lionised by British Chancellor George Osborne as a “shining example of the art of the possible in economic policy-making”.
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I still think "some left wing policies which benefit ordinary people" (like tuition fees and prescription charges mentioned in the article) is better than "no left wing policies which benefit ordinary people".

It's not really surprising the SNP aren't as left wing as Militant, because those sorts of policies don't win elections in the UK. Their social policies are still further to the left than any of the other major parties. Although he mentions majority opinions, we live in a FPTP system where the will of the majority is not necessarily represented. Which can be either good or bad, depending on your view of majority opinion.

I also don't really think there's anything "right wing" about wanting benefits caps and local people to have priority over social housing. It's a lie of the right and their press allies that the left is a haven of benefits "scroungers" and open door immigration. Personally I think the government should be providing for people by actively creating jobs and building its own social housing, if they did that I'd be more than happy for them to do away with most benefits and we wouldn't have this "dey took oor jerbs" mentality when it comes to immigration. Hell, I'd provide all forms of contraception free on the NHS and scrap child benefit entirely to discourage people from creating more people who aren't really needed (but then I don't believe in economic growth as a positive thing, a lot of people do). There was a good article I'll try to dig out about how most jobs are just pointless paper-pushing or could be done as well as, if not better, by machine.
 
Not been following closely but that Corbyn guy seems to be getting a right mauling in the media. But he seems like a pretty good guy to be honest. Why does everyone (except labour voters, but including the labour party) hate him so? For having a heart of gold? Man
 
vashdaman said:
Not been following closely but that Corbyn guy seems to be getting a right mauling in the media. But he seems like a pretty good guy to be honest. Why does everyone (except labour voters, but including the labour party) hate him so? For having a heart of gold? Man
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Disclaimer: I know nothing about politics.

My understanding is that Corbyn is very left wing. The Labour party believe they need someone more central to win back votes from the Tories. True Labour supporters want someone further to the left because that is where their ideals are. Possibly Labour supporters believe a leader much further to the left will invigorate the youth vote.

General disillusionment with the status quo of politics in western countries of late has bred interest in looking further to the left or right for solutions. UKIP exists for those much more interested in the right but there isn't really much to choose from on the left so perhaps the supporters are not wrong. The question is which will result in a bigger vote? further to the right to attract some current Tory voters or further to the left to attract new voters. It's a gamble either way but a lot in the Labour party have shown where they think they need to go.

Personally I'd love to see Labour take a clear stand for the left - if only to provide a cohesive argument against the far right parties like UKIP.
 
vashdaman said:
Why does everyone (except labour voters, but including the labour party) hate him so?
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You said it yourself - he's getting a right mauling in the media.

There are essentially three kinds of powerful people (at least where religion has no power, and until we reach the singularity and machines become more powerful than anyone). Corporations, Politicians and the Media. The corporations and media work in tandem to protect their interests, especially given that media itself is now a very profitable industry. Their interests broadly include deregulation to the point they can do whatever they like, privatization of public services (so they can make a profit off them) low corporate tax and essentially transferring as much wealth as possible to them and away from everybody else. The corporations buy the politicians, the media promote the politicians the corporations have bought and savage the ones they haven't been able to.

Corbyn is not owned by the corporations, so they're trying to destroy him, usually by purposefully misrepresenting his views and statements and attempting to frame them in such a way that "reasonable people wouldn't agree with him". The best thing anyone can do at this point is learn to filter out bias from news sources, because unbiased ones don't exist, they're all using language designed to manipulate you into agreeing with them and they're doing so at the behest of people who are serving their own interests, not those of their readers or viewers.
 
Corbyn is not actually that left wing, it's just that everyone else has lurched so far to the right that he seems extremely left in comparison. The Labour Party somehow genuinely believe that they need to be more right wing to attract Tory voters. But if people want right wing policies, they'll just vote Tory anyway, not some pale imitation. And they don't understand that the reason they were slaughtered in Scotland is that most ex Labour supporters up here feel that the Labour party has deserted them, not that they're not right wing enough. It's no wonder that so many people don't bother to vote when all you have to choose from is Tories, Red Tories, Yellow Tory wannabes, and purple extreme Tories. At least in Scotland we have the SNP as a contrast, whatever you might feel about Scottish independence.
 
The SNP are neither here nor there - they float around and capitalise on perceived public attitudes. Their leaders play the game so well that mud just won't stick to them and legitimate, factual critiques of their economic plans or their record in government (especially in education, which is shocking) seem to be greeted by a collective shrug and a 'meh'. Part of this is because the opposition parties have long treated Hollyrood as a second tier of politics and sent their most talented members down south to Westminister, so what we're left with is a bunch who couldn't inspire a drowning man to swim ashore.

Onto Corbyn, the parliamentary Labour party's problem with him is that he won't win an election. And if you won't win an election, whatever else you say is largely irrelevant. Personally, I'm not convinced that he has absolutely no hope but he's certainly got an uphill battle. Having watched too many of these Labour leadership debates, he comes across less of a left wing candidate for a post-New Labour era than he does someone who wants to return to pre-New Labour politics. Renationalisation? Reopening coal mines in the 2020s? Raising £5bn from 50% tax rate, when £3.5bn is mathematically the maximum you could get - assuming that none of the rich people decide to leave? 'People's Quantitative Easing'?

I'd be very surprised if Corbyn would win a leadership contest if he were up against better opposition - Chuka Umunna would done a far better job of galvanising the Blairites than has Liz Kendall and Stella Creasy and Dan Jarvis could be ones to watch for the future. His success is down to that, Labour's dodgy new electoral system and disillusionment with politics* - there's no doubt that he provides an alternative, but whether it is the right alternative at the right time?

*Owing to the electoral system - First Past the Post - more than any other factor. Regardless of what you think of UKIP (I detest just about everything about them), it doesn't seem right that they can come third with over a million votes and only get a single seat while the SNP get 56.
 
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