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

What do people think? Has the Left, as a credible main stream force in UK government given up and is out of ideas?

I recorded a podcast the other week with Compass a left wing pressure group that was quite interesting but I wondered has the left just ceded too much ground to be relevant any longer?

FB

Here is the podcast http://bit.ly/cpcHje or search cwu youth on iTunes

I think the Left in the UK has been fed over by New Labour. I think part of the huge disappointment with NL is that many people who voted for them in 1997 wanted a social democracy type country, not the Tory-Lite effort we got.

As a force, it's certainly dormant at the moment, but I think these things move in cycles and the right-wing wave has peaked. How the Left will come back is pretty uncertain though.

I read The Spirit Level recently, which shows that increased equality is better for rich societies than economic growth. This should be at the centre of the Left's ideas: 'Hey guys, we *know* what works for societies, and it's equality. More economic growth is killing the planet, and with no benefit for us as well.'

Cultural Hegemongy (Gramsci), innit. Certain viewpoints become accepted as the Truth of their times. To take a point...it is accepted by all parties that we must balance the books with swingeing public sector cuts. Anyone who suggests the other alternative - increased taxation - is exluded from the debate. (salthough Livingstone has recently called said, in echoes of Healey, 'Tax [the rich] until their pips squeak.'

In short - Yes - the maistream Left (what there is of it) does seem to have succumbed to The Prevailing Wisdom. Don't mean it's wrong, though.

Question is - what to do about it?

The Spirit Level?

Is that a book or a magazine?

FB

Scrambled...

>>is excluded from the debate. (salthough Livingstone has recently said, in echoes of Healey, 'Tax [the rich] until their pips squeak.'

One thing is for sure the tendancy for the left to fragmenting into millions of "Peoples Front of Judea" factions makes it very hard to organise...

I am hated by most of the left factions in my union, but it amazes me how many of them there are....

FB

The left has not given up. Only today, I heard a Conservative politician promising to turn the NHS into a worker's co-operative.



PP

For my then until we get electoral reform nothing can change....

Though that is a topic for another thread me thinks....

FB

Well if we pin our hopes on PR, we're f**d.

*But*...what were the origins of the Left? Did the Chartists have PR? Could influening the existing parties work? Gnawing away at the Cultural Hegemony, if you like.

Unlikely, I admit...but there are *some* areas in which the nation has moved leftwards (some gains - albit fragile - on the racism and homophobia fronts). What is needed, however, is ways of advancing the thinking on the important issue: It's The Economy, Stupid.

Tobin taxes could be a good place to start...

The Spirit Level's a book.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Spirit-Level-Societies-Almost-Always/dp/1846140390

It shows lots of stats comparing things like mental health, life expectancy, murder rates and so on, and shows that the more unequal a society is, the worse these (and other) problems are. I think they were going to call it 'Evidence-based Politics', but they changed their minds for some reason.

Interstingly, I heard both Ken Livingstone and Michael Gove mention it recently.

Actually, one way the pendulum is swinging back will be energy, for two reasons I think.

The first is Peak Oil, which will definitely have happened by 2020 and might have happened already. When there are shortages of oil (as opposed to merely high prices), then govts are not going to let the market decide on whether the lights stay on. It's simply too important. I think 20 years ago 90% of oil production was in private sector hands (I'd bet a fair bit in partnership with national govts though). Today, something like 75% of oil production is in publicly-owned control.

The second is the transition to renewable energy sources. The infrastructure requirements will be in the tens of billions, which is too much for any single firm. And it'd be a bit weird for the govt (ie, us) to pay for all the infrastructure and then let private companies gain all the rewards. Another thing would be that local councils and community groups are going to own a lot of wind turbines, solar panels and micro-hydro sites, and will be selling the electricity to the national grid (and storing it for them too).

I think there's a bit of a sea-change going on already, but it won't really be apparent for a while.

Sounds interesting.

There arel ots of forms of electoral reform EtB. But IMHO FTP distorts the public policy agenda because the constituency of voters who can actually influence elections (swing voters in swing seats) means that the entire political discourse is narrowly focussed on "Mondeo Man" or whatever his 2010 equivilant.

FB

Public sector cuts.

Last week,The Economist advised the president of Spain to reduce the public spend on pensions and aids to people out of work.
So those are the recipes? To infringe more damage to the weaker ones?
That´s the truth of our times, as you say Ed, the old truth spread by the liberal prophets as the Economist.
They also say that we must change our productive system. Yes, hun, we know, we have already started. The Economist forgets that the "brick boom", the wild speculation about lands for construction started in 1996 with the conservative goverment, socialists come to power in 2004. It´s true that they have lacked prevision, but... who was so sure about what was going to happen a few years later?

On the other hand the Spanish bank system hasn´t been shitted as the rest of European banks. I think that´s important to say.

I don´t like those advices of the economist or the Financial Times´ catastrophic analysis of the Spanish economy(analisys that was modified last week) I don´t think there´s any conspiration at all, just the old liberal paternalist style of "we have the truth"

I hope that all the social advances we have had with this current goverment can resist those kind advices.

<>

It should be a rallying point for the Left: even richer people are better off when societies are more equal. Dear god, the kind of society the Left wants is the best. Why isn't it being trumpeted from every corner?

sorry, it´s not infringe (damage), but inflict what I meant.
they sound similar in Spanish.

Because the Received Wisdom comes back that it's naive idealism, that only Free Market Capitalism can give us what we want. Say that often enough and people start to believe it.

'The bigger the lie the more people will believe it' - J Goebbels.

We wouldn't normally talk about the banks being 'shitted' either...we'd say 'f****ed up'...but we get what you meant.

One of the points made in the podcast was that we are living in a utopia, but it is the utopia of the right not ours...

FB

thanks, I know that sometimes I "inflict" on you the pain of reading my use of English.

to the question of Pedro:


Because the Received Wisdom also says that the weaker ones have what they deserve, they are guilty of their situation. It can be true in some cases, but not always.