h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Nor did Edward Heath press for 42 day detention with out trial - a ban on public demonstration ~ a national ID card scheme ~ a database recording where every passport holder travels ~ or become complicit in torture of inncent civilians.

All good left wing values there ?

"Further to the right socially? I didn't see Edward Heath pushing for the legalisation of gay marriage, banning Fox Hunting, (admittedly ill-thought-out) Religious Hate laws to protect minorities or a Freedom of Information Act."

The ban on fox hunting is a socially illiberal act. It's reduction in personal freedom. It is authoritarian, not liberal.
The Racial and Religious Hatred Act is also move to the right and authoritarian and you say in protects minorities others would argue it curbs freedom of expression, a provision of the Human Rights Act.

Also gay marriage does not exist, we have civil partnerships. A fudge in the positive direction, but discretely not same-sex marriage.

And in recent weeks we have seen just how meaningful the Freedom of Information Act is in practice.


"As for economics, Labour were just following the concensus in 1997 as the pre-Thatcher tories did."

And? Do you not recognise that required a very dramatic shift to right?

"Blair's "third way" was about harnessing market economics for the public good whereas, for Thatcherites, it was always about self-interest."

And? Whatever you personal perspective on the virtuosity of the motivations does not change the nature of the shift from left to right. Or the current consequences of the implementation "principles lead regulation" which was move further right than anything in a pre-Thatcher manifesto.

"Also, it's a bit of a myth that the postwar Conservatives were happy with the welfare/mixed-economy concensus, plenty of conservatives wanted a return to the "profit motive" but it was considered too risky to shake-up the concensus."

And? That some conservatives were unhappy with the unwillingness/impotence in the face of the requirement to tackle the an over-nationalised economy doesn't alter the scale of the move to the right under Thatcher or the observable fact that New Labour manifestos have not sat on where Thatcher lay but furthered the trend.

"Also, don't forget that Labour introduced the minimum wage and increased public spending on things like the NHS in their second term. A "rightwing" government wouldn't have done these things."

An economically right-wing government committed to practicing the ideology may not have. But the BNP would have. That's National Socialism for you. Authoritarian is both ways.

Cherry picking policies that support what you want to believe doesn't alter the content of the manifestos of the parties or broader policy decisions taken by the governments of the last 40 years, regardless of you imagine to be the good intentions and malign desires of the varous party memberships.

The Lib Dems have moved to the right as well.

<> That's what I was alluding to earlier. The list of policies I posted were all from Hitler's original manifesto. The main substantive differences between Nazism and Communism was racism and nationalism.

Stalin's communism was not lacking in racism or nationalism.

>The ban on fox hunting is a socially illiberal act. It's reduction in personal freedom. It is authoritarian, not liberal.

Yes, it is authoritarian, I agree. No, it's not liberal. But the left is not libertarian any more than the right is (although a lot of leftwing and rightwing people keep pretending their side is and the other side isn't).

>Also gay marriage does not exist, we have civil partnerships. A fudge in the positive direction, but discretely not same-sex marriage.

That's a case of sematics. Under Labour gay rights have increased dramatically. This is, unquestionably, a leftist move. A genuinely rightwing government would not have done this.

>And? Do you not recognise that required a very dramatic shift to right?

I think Labour did shift to the right under Blair, that's undeniable, but that's not the same as becoming rightwing. The Conservatives have shifted to the left under Cameron but they're not a leftwing party and Cameron is not leftwing (although angry Telegraph-reading types beg to differ if the internet is to be believed).

Also, don't mistake accepting a concensus with what the internal party actually thinks. Do you imagine that following the implementation of the postwar consensus the Tory party really shifted to the left en-mass or do you think the leadership accepted the concensus and tried to fit it into "conservative" values?

"And? Whatever you personal perspective on the virtuosity of the motivations does not change the nature of the shift from left to right."

But the "virtuosity of the motivations" is *what matters*. It's what distinguishes a leftwing from a rightwing party. Labour's philosophy was that by continuing the post-Thatcher concensus it could be harnessed to pay for the public good. That was horribly wrong, as it turned out, and I never particularly brought it even at the time. But that doesn't make it "rightwing".

"Cherry picking policies that support what you want to believe doesn't alter the content of the manifestos of the parties or broader policy decisions taken by the governments of the last 40 years"

You seem to be looking at this in purely economic terms, I'm saying that apart from a few instances (1945, 1979) the parties will generally run with an economic concensus in the post-war years but their running with it doesn't change their outlook on other things. Labour improved gay rights dramatically, banned foxhunting, increased public spending on the welfare state. These are not things a rightwing government does. They did "move to the right" (on economic grounds) because they had to - they'd tried sticking to their pre-1979 guns on the issue and it made them unpopular.

> The main substantive differences between Nazism and Communism was racism and nationalism.

You might as well say "all that divides capitalists and socialists is the issue of how much money people are paid". The differing ideas on race and national groups pretty-much defined every single reason the Nazis and Communists hated and feared each other. And that's before we get to the issue of economy.

The Communists believed in bringing-about a class war and a revolution leading to a "socialist" stage and ending in a classless, stateless utopia. The Fascists were actively working to prevent this, encouraging "class co-operation". There were still obvious class distinctions in Fascists states. Businesspeople feared the Communists but Hitler and Mussolinni had considerable support amongst industrialists in their own countries (indeed Hitler had actively wooed German capitalists, he'd actively eliminated the economically-statist Strasserists in the Nazi party because they threatened his relationship with German businesses and the middle classes).

It would be truer to say "all the Nazis and Communists had in common was that they liked bossing people about and hated opposition".

>The list of policies I posted were all from Hitler's original manifesto

Which was intended to be all things to all men. Hitler promised the German working class social justice at the same time as promising the German industrialists he would make them rich, promising the Christians he'd fight "godless" communists and promising the middle classes that he'd protect them from those frightful reds who wanted to steal their property.

"Nor did Edward Heath press for 42 day detention with out trial - a ban on public demonstration ~ a national ID card scheme ~ a database recording where every passport holder travels ~ or become complicit in torture of inncent civilians.

All good left wing values there ?"

All illiberal and authoritarian but that's not the same as "rightwing". The far-left Hugo Chavez, for example, is similarly authoritarian.