Quote Mintball="Mintball"As the anecdote I posted earlier illustrated, it's not rational thinking - it's gut politics. And anyone with a brain cell would not have any respect for so wing that works on the basis of: 'oh, I'll completely duck a point and just come out with a bit of dumbs hit rhetoric instead'.
And as has been pointed out, it's largely disenchanted Conservative right wingers switching - so hardly likely to be considering the entire spectrum of political options on a ballot paper.
Going back to Standee's point: two things.
First: I'm not sure that anyone really knows that the middle ground is any more. That could arguably be because of 30-odd years of neo-liberalism, which for many, doesn't fit within the old political certainties. Labour moved to the right to become electable, ditching, for instance, Clause 4 on public ownership, which, in effect, said that it was no longer a socialist party; the Conservatives moved to the right to try to become electable - and failed - and then have moved to some socially liberal positions in an effort to distance themselves from being 'the nasty party'.
One of the elements behind UKIP's current position is serious anger about equal marriage. I think that's actually an ideal illustration of a number of things - not least how far many in society, from across the mainstream political spectrum, have moved on social issues in just a generation. Which itself also suggests that 'the middle ground' has shifted, certainly on social attitudes.
I think that this is also born out by the point I raised a while back, that someone had done research showing just how many politicians, from across the mainstream spectrum, had done exactly the same course at exactly the same institution, reflecting a very limited range of political, philosophical and economic ideas across that same spectrum. It's part of the reason that there is actually little to differentiate between the main parties on the big issues at present - which inevitably offers opportunities (whether taken or not) by parties further to either side of the spectrum.
But there's another factor at play too. And that is the media.
I can't remember, off the top of my head, who it was, the other day, who wrote a piece asserting that, if the 1970s had seen the question being asked 'who really runs the country' as one about the power of the trades unions, then the same question today produces a different answer, in big finance and the bulk of the mainstream media. And for the latter, blaming 'Europe' for everything Is a delightfully useful and effective tactic - and I would not, for a moment, suggest that the EU is anything other than, at best, a deeply flawed political institution, but part of the problem the is the way that Europe and the political institutions of the EU have become conflated.
In conjunction with that, and perhaps in part because of widespread disillusionment with the state of domestic politics in 'the middle', we have seen an increasing militaristic culture growing over the last decade, and with that goes increased patriotism/nationalism, cultures that themselves are also added to by issues around a variety of subjects including immigration and perceptions of a culture under attack, multiculturalism v integration and so on. Again, there are legitimate questions, but the way in which the most successful newspapers in the UK present these is rather more one-sided - and again, it distracts from what is happening economically, which is a continued neo-liberal agenda, pursed with ever greater rigour as the last 30 years have passed.
In summary, I think that the point about a middle ground is a good one, but the shifting sands of domestic mainstay politics, and the influences of the mass of the media, mean it's far from a simple one, and certainly is not a question of there being some sort of old-fashioned left cabal running the roost.'"
What seems more and more evident to me is that the economic crash was invented by the financial sector, which in turn has given more power to those in the financial sector by placing them in high up positions in governments, particularly in Europe, to ensure that a financial crash wont happen again. Most took their own money out as it started to slide and have bunged it back in at the bottom.
All the while, UK politicians bend over and do whatever banks tell them to - give them some free money, implement new regulations which fall way short of the recommendations.
This love in between politicians and banks seems to benefit only themselves. But, the clever bit is that the parties can have a little argument about whether the new regulations are correct, amongst other such important matters, which makes it look like they stand on opposing sides and makes the public take sides.
We're more bothered about arguing a cause for our chosen political party (whether we know which politician is standing for our area or not) that we completely miss the politics. We fight for our parties because we feel like we should, and we do it for them for free. We do it because it is engrained into our perception of politics. How many times have we seen on here the phrase "I've always voted ..."? A good example of this was the recent police commissioners elections. I spoke to so many people that voted for a party instead of voting for a candidate. Many people simply didn’t know who was standing and couldn’t be bothered finding out. It was far easier to just tick the same box as usual.
The people we are voting for (in the majority) are career politicians. They decided they would be a politician foremost and picked a political party where available. They are not actually bothered about policy or making a difference. Policies are manufactured to create an illusion to the electorate that they are actually voting for something - a good example is the Tories referendum on the EU.
We are unfortunately all guilty of party politics, and there is not really an obvious solution. Luckily we have been kept busy with a financial crash, operation yew tree is having a good go at keeping us occupied as well.
