The month is April 2010. The location is Joe’s Bar in the Guild. A lively debate is taking place over four pints of beer.
“So you’re trying to tell me that the Conservatives are anti-poor, anti-gay, anti-women, anti-public services.”
“Basically, yeah.”
“Well then you’re full of **** because I heard Cameron’s speech on the NHS and he says he’s gonna protect it! They haven’t mentioned anything about punishing the poor either, you’re just making that up, cos we’re all in this together. And they have gay front-benchers, and JUST in case you’ve forgotten Thatcher was a woman.”
How many times have we experienced this rebuttal? This battle for hearts and minds, with us hungover in scruffy jeans on one side and Cameron’s big air-brushed face on the other?
And how many people came back to us over the following months and said “Mate, I’m sorry, if I’d known they were gonna cut my cousin’s benefits I wouldn’t have voted for them.”
But by then it’s too late. We need a shorthand, to unpick all the rhetoric, all the speeches, all the elaborate policies with questionable motives. Left and Right.
To say that a party is right wing is to know its history. Its history of opposing measures for the greater equality of gender, race and sexuality. Its financial backers in big business, its think tanks and advisers comprising the bigoted, the religiously extreme, the regressive. Its instincts to offload responsibility, make a profit, and favour choice over health and happiness. How it will respond in a crisis, where its priorities will lie, what it wants to achieve and the kind of country it’ll leave behind as its legacy.
Right wing and left wing speak for themselves.
And once you understand the divide you can read between the lines of speeches, because you know the place they are coming from in the first place. Ed Miliband declaring that he’s not in the pockets of Unite isn’t going to scare the Unions because they also know that they share a common, left wing, goal with Ed to defend workers against cuts. Whereas Cameron promising not to include the NHS in his cuts was a plea to those old enough to remember the last Tory government for another chance.
Right wing and left wing are more important than election promises. Years after everyone has forgotten that speech that leader made at conference the backbone of the party is still the same, and will react to each new problem in an essentially typical way. Giving credit to the Tories for cutting child benefit for the relatively wealthy is to silently acknowledge that it’s a surprise, that it’s essentially out of character, that it’s even a little bit left wing, because the true right-wing instinct would be to just scrap it altogether.
But that would make them unelectable.
Suzy
The centre ground of British politics has also lurched massively to the right in recent years. To be “radical and reforming” by slashing the welfare state and privatising public services is neither left wing nor compassionate, whilst being conservative with a small ‘c’ by fighting to keep these cherished services (or at least the principle of them) is not right wing.
I don’t think fighting to keep universal benefits is right wing! I meant that by not scrapping benefits altogether they’re moving to the left (or moving to the centre) of where they once were.
So Ed Miliband defending child benefit for millionaires whats that? Don’t dillude yourself that this is some moral crusade its simply playing politics and electioneering to woo the middle/upper classes. Cameron is doing what is RIGHT even if it offends his own voters (the majority of whom will be affected by the child benefit changes). Milibland on the other hand is putting party interest before national interest by declaring that he opposes the Conservatives cutting child benefit for the wealthy.
I for one am delighted that the public have seen through him already (if the post conference polls are anything to go by. After a conference dominated by gloomy messages of cuts and impending pain guess what? The Tories poll rating went up 3%. Labours? Down 3. Some honeymoon period Ed. Incidently while we are on the subject of “left” vs “right” you rrrrrreeaaalllyyy ought to look at New Labours record before you dare declare them “left” wing.
You can’t really regard a single poll to signifying “the end” of Ed Milibands honeymoon period, (frankly it hasn’t even started yet) you need to look at the average Dan, which according the UK polling report website has Labour and the Tories dead level on 39% with Lib Dems on 13%.
And so millionares we are taking it away from? So if you were a single parent or a couple with only 1 person working that earned £45k you would just miss out, but if there is a couple each earning say, £40k each respectively, they would still get it, if anything, the opposite is going to happen contare to what your saying.
Im not an entrenched party liner, I recognise the flaw in the proposals. But I prefer the direction of the coalitions policy which is to take it *away* from higher earner who don’t need it. Of course there is a flaw in that if a couple each earn higher salaries jusy shy of the £45k threshold then *technically* they can keep their benefit which is admittedly wrong and Im sure will be address once the new changes take effect. BUT Labours policy on the other hand of “universal” child benefit even for people earning not just 45k but in excess of that is ridiculous and far too costly at this time. Surely you would agree that people earning that much do not warrant state benefits?
Or are you leashed to your party line?
I’m proudly right on the party line with this one. Any erosion of the welfare state is regressive. It’s a slippery slope. Ed’s “squeezed middle” are very unlikely to continue to support the welfare state now that they’re entirely excluded from gaining anything by it.
Let’s not get into an argument on millionaires, because among Tory MPs, PPCs, peers, backers and supporters you can count many many more than will ever be involved with Labour. Also… inheritance tax?
You didn’t like New Labour? Oh man, I never knew that! You really ought to tell us more often. I hope steady Ed is more to your taste.
I didn’t like New Labour? I count Tony Blair as one of my political icons lol