basic question about British politics and their three biggest parties

I don't know much about this subject, I admit. But I watched the three-way "debate" on C-SPAN Sunday night, and from what I saw, I very much would vote for the Liberal Democrat MP for my area, if I lived in the UK.

Going in, I thought that the Liberal Democrat would be more "liberal" in the very old sense of the word, more conservative than I would like, but sensible, rational. I figured they would be the "third-way" alternative.

My expectations were turned on their head after I watched the presentation.

Impressions after watching the program (am I on the right track?):

The Conservative Party, the Tories, are best compared to the Republicans. They favor lower taxes on the rich, even at the expense of the needy, but at least they don't concoct lies at every turn, in order to justify insane schemes. They are what Republicans would be if Republicans were not inveterate liars. They suck, but not as much as U.S. Republicans.

Gordon Brown, the Labour Party PM, seems the quintessential "go-along to get-along" DLC type that is willing to sell out major party convictions to hang on to power, yet he is still a lot better than a Tory. Sounds a lot like Bill Clinton.

Nick Clegg, the Liberal Democrats leader, sounded almost totally sane and reasonable, like a true Democrat would if we had any left, verging on the Green Party agenda.

Just about all I know about the three candidates and parties came from the 90-minute program I watched on C-SPAN the other night. Am I on the right track?

It seems to me that just about everything about British politics is better than the American version.

Gone are the days when Labour was proud to be a Socialist party. Brown is not the best Labour's had to offer for a long time. Blair was a Tory in a red tie. Cameron is a clown and would be a disaster.

they have been around for a quite a bit - they merged with the UK Social Democratic Party a while back to form what they are now - one of the founders Shirley Williams was my MP - a large part of the 'young' vote will go to them -

Something no one would have suggested when the campaign first started. Now there is a remote possibility.

Which left them as the more left wing party. However, Nick Clegg has been moving the party rightwards since he became Lib Dem leader.

http://www.politicalcompass.org/ukparties2010

The Labour positions given are those of the leadership and their manifesto - you'll still find Labour members and individual MPs well to the left, and less authoritarian, than that.

Though bear in mind that's just those guy's opinions of them. I think it is true there's a fair distance, economically, between the Green party (US or UK) and the Lib Dems, but I wouldn't say there's so much between the Lib Dems and the SNP or Plaid Cymru (the Scottish and Welsh nationalist parties) as Political Compass shows - I'd move them all closer to the centre of the economic spectrum.

and a comparison with 2008 US presidential candidates:

http://www.politicalcompass.org.nyud.net:8080/images/usprimaries_2008.png
http://www.politicalcompass.org/uselection2008

So, by their definitions, the Lib Dems are a cross between Dennis Kucinich and Mike Gravel. Or, maybe more accurately, economically about the same as Obama, but on the civil liberties etc. scale on a par with Kucinich.

Also, their plot of how they think the parties have shifted over time:
http://www.politicalcompass.org.nyud.net:8080/images/enPartiesTime.gif

:wow:

So yes, there is a reasonable argument that Labour is more authoritarian.

The Tories basically govern about where Obama is governing now. Yes ideologically they are probably further to the right than Obama, but realistically they can't govern there in the UK (just as Obama can't govern as far to the left as he'd probably like to here).

I met a conservative MP once. I asked him if his party had nutjobs who deny man-made global warming like the Republicans do. He said that there's probably one or two, but that's about it. He also noted that he thinks the UK's public financing of elections is much better than what we have in America. And again, this guy was a conservative.

On global warming, the current Tory leadership is convinced it's man-made; but they do have many at the lower levels who think it isn't happening at all, or that it's a left-wing scare story. For instance:

Who all think global warming is a marxist conspiracy from top to bottom!

It does have strict spending limits per constituency but not so strict limits for the national campaign. Also tv advertising is not allowed - the adverts are restricted to party political broadcasts (5 minutes before or after the main news programmes on terrestrial tv).

In US politics, the libertarians want to move power to a more authoritarian group.

because there are 'left libertarians', to whom civil liberties and a tolerant society are important. There's an argument that just 'liberal' could be used, but that suffers from the same problem in that, in US politics, it has been more commonly used to mean economically left (which it doesn't, in European politics).

In fact "Libertarian" was originally a synonym of Anarchism.

But that is no rules survival of the fittest, like having no regulations and no laws.

Although in truth it is law of the jungle, and anyone with power will step in and set up law of the gun, or a fake government to set up laws of control once there is no social system setting laws that most people agree with.


Someone will always make rules, getting rid of government just moves that role to someone else.

The Tories have had to soften their stance on social issues in recent years - in fact they've been struggling to find a point since 1997, and are only doing well now by default.

Gordon Brown actually seemed like a solid progressive when he was Chancellor, with some properly redistributive moves under his belt (eg a 10% income tax band), but once he became PM appeared to have no clue what to do about it or why he ever wanted the job, and made some downright strange decisions (eg, scrapping the 10% income tax band that he introduced as chancellor in the first place). As he result he's appealed to neither right, left nor middle.

Labour from 1997 to 2001 were quite radical - Scottish and Welsh devolution, reform of the House of Lords, minimum wage (seems hard to believe now we never had one before), but lost their way completely thereafter, especially with Iraq and the long-threatened ID cards.

The Lib Dems have always had the luxury of not being serious contenders for government, so it will be interesting to see how many of their policies will survive a spell in government if that happens - they're not offering anything as dramatic as even Labour were in 1997, IMO.

but couldn't.

but no one in UK politics is any where near as lunatic as the Republican Party.

UK politics are completely messed up at the moment.

The Labour Party used to be a Socialist Party but they dropped socialism under Tony Blair and became at best a social democratic party. They moved further to the right than the Conservatives on issues of "law and order" and civil liberties so as not to be seen as "soft on crime". As a result they have also passed some of the most draconian measures on crime ever. Labour under Gordon Brown also doubled taxes for the lowest paid while on the other hand allowed the City of Londonto become an inland tax haven for the mega rich which helped in many ways to bring down the US economy. (Nice of him).

The New Labour lot still exist. They are the likes of Mandleson. Brown is more old Labour but has a lot of New Labour in his Cabinet.

Consider New Labour to be people like Evan Bayh.
Consider Labour to be Obama.
Consider old Labour to be Bernie Sanders.

The Conservatives are right of centre but they never adopted the authoritarian aspects of the Republican right. During the youth battles of the 80' where they could have made a break the religious right were driven out by libertarians (not the teabagger types who call themselves libertarians in the US) and "tory wets", (who were ideologically opposed to Thatcher. The divisions between the libertarians and the wets still exist although neither faction would call themselves that.

Consider the Tories (Conservatives) to be like John McCain on the right and again Evan Bayh on their more left wing side.

The Conservative Party factions seem to like fighting over European issues that do not exist and will not be issues that they actually would have to decide on (such as British membership of the Euro).

One difference between the Republicans and the Conservatives is that the Conservatives are the only Party who have promised in their manifesto to protect the National health Service budget from all of the lovely cuts to come.

The choice between Labour and the Conservatives was really not a good choice. Both were offering cuts and more cuts.

The Liberal Democrats are a merger of somewhat classical liberals who are essentially Social Democrats and the more left wing Liberal Party. No one really considered them a prospect for Government, however the televised debates have given them a new impetus and people have discovered that they may actually like them.

The Liberal Democrats are promising to lower taxes on the poor and raise taxes on larger businesses and the rich.

They are also promising to roll back some of the authoritarian legislation passed by New Labour in the name of "anti terror" laws.

I'll be watching, on the sixth of May, with much interest. :hi:

2008 John McCain is way too far right for the Tories. McCain when he's being challenged by Hayworth is well ummm....

welfare, etc. It seems that huge parts of the country have lived in public housing or on the dole at some point...Liz Windsor , J.K. Rowling, Susan Boyle, have all been on the dole. Liz is on a welfare work program.

Remember, Britain exported their Puritans to North America and their criminals to Australia. How smart was that? VERY.

:rofl: