"Adopting rightwing policies on issues such as immigration and the economy does not help centre-left parties win votes, according to new analysis of European electoral and polling data."
"..the analysis shows that centre-left parties promising, for example, to be tough on immigration or public spending are unlikely to attract potential voters on the right, and risk alienating existing progressive supporters."
Will they cut this shit then?
Inevitable eejit in the replies describing folk who aren't in the centre as "extremists" 🤡
And this is the problem with this notion of left and right as a spectrum, in the uk the traditional left has indulged in anti-immigration and climate denialist rhetoric in recent years because it meant jobs for british people, is this left wing?
Can't we instead have a coherent vision of what we want society to look like?
@sue
Centrists can't even say why they think the centre position is good, because it would concede that policies have to be measurably good.
They don't want that, in case say the evidence supported democratic socialism but there are literal nazis running around, so the "centre" is miles to the right of all the measurably good policies.
@sue Best I can figure is that there are voters who used to vote Labour (or other center-left party) who don't anymore, and in their minds winning means getting those people back.
But sometimes those people voted Labour out of a very small-minded idea of whom should benefit from Labour policies, and there are plenty of other people ready to vote Labour if they're actually courted.
@MichaelTBacon @sue like all the people who joined to support Corbyn and have since left?
It does seem odd that the lesson they learned from that wasn't "let's try and be more about supporting the workers and not the bosses". I think they sometimes forget where their name came from.
@sue In the parallel moves in US politics I put a lot of weight on the success of the right's decades long trend to normalize the despicable. And it's further evidence that in many ways to two parties are really just side of the same coin.
I used to hope that a more parliamentary form of government would be less vulnerable to two-party takeover, but I now think that's naïve. It's simplistic, but I relate a lot of evil outcomes to the two-party system here.
Very interesting article. Thank you for posting. Makes sense too because often we know these talking points are total bullshit. So adopting the policies doesn't actually pull people over. They just want to hate immigrants. There is no pulling them over without being a racist Nazi. 🤷
Sue Smith
Pete Alex Harris🦡🕸️🌲/∞🪐∫
Michael Bacon
craignicol
cori
aismallard
Gurre Vildskägg
Shane Celis
Jonathan