UK parties

[andrewducker]

I was asked for an overview of the major political parties in the UK. This is a vague stab. Would those more politically aware people than I please point out the stupid mistakes I've made.

Conservatives are the right-wing part of the rich and those who think that the poor deserve to be so poor because they're all lazy scum. Which puts them slightly to the left of the Democrats, on the American scale, as they (nowadays) don't actually believe that homosexuals should all be put in camps.

Labour _used_ to be the party of the unions, ranging from those who believe in fairness on the wishy-washy side to full-blown communist types on the hard-line side. They've moved a long way right since then, at least fiscally. Nowadays they believe that the market (properly regulated, of course) is the answer to most things. I'm largely with them on that, but they do seem to have turned it into dogma rather than being pragmatic about it. This has lost them a lot of support.

Liberal Democrats are the people who believe that people should be allowed to make their own decisions, that cannabis and prostitution should be legalised, that strong government isn't the answer. They were also the only major party to say that taxes needed to go _up_ at the last election, because they recognised that the NHS was in urgent need of more cash. Think of them as socially liberal and economically supportive (if not fully redistributive).

My sympathies lie with the liberals

Comments

[green-amber.livejournal.com]

How can libertarians, of whateer shade, be left wing? The essence of the credo is that people should be equally free to do what they want to do ("formal equality") and government should interfere to the least amount possible. hence right to bear arms, not to pay taxes, private medicine and (depending how far you go) prisons and armies and fire brigades and all the rest of the lunacy.

"Left wing" in all its shapes is about believing that some people are weaker - economically, mentally, physically, emotionally - than others and that as we all share the same society there is a role for the state to protect the weaker from the stronger, and even up the gap ("result equality") - usually tho not invariably by taxing the stronger, and/or encouraging the amrket to take on/generate the money for the protective role (ie New labour.) I cannot in my right (or left :) mind see how libertarianism can get anywhere near left wing.

[green-amber.livejournal.com]

Just to add to that , supporting legalisation of soft drugs is not intrinsically (or actually at all) "left wing". It is "progressive" or "liberal" in our cant, and "libertarian" in US cant, in that it prefers to give people freedom to make a choice whether it's bad for them or not, rather than being paternalistic. It just so happens that it tends to be wishy washy liberals/labourites in the UK who also support dope decriminalisation :)

[heron61.livejournal.com]

How can libertarians, of whatever shade, be left wing?

Back in the 50s-early 70s, libertarian was effectively a somewhat more respectable (mostly because it was unknown) word for anarchist, and I would argue that most anarchists are left-wing, then again my own politics wavers between socialism and anarcho-communism. The linkage between libertarianism and capitalism came later. Most anarchist strongly believe that any form of rational and humane anarchy is incompatible with capitalism, just as I would argue that any rational and humane system of government (or ungovernment) is incompatible with capitalism.
Today, such libertarian are often called libertarian socialists, a term that makes no sense from the conventional (right-wing) libertarian persecutive.

The history of anarchy in the US is fascinating stuff, check out the anarchy FAQ.