Mastodawn

Solar🌄Garden Mar 2

@2legged Did I just read that right?

" The hair’s breadth that appeared to separate the two progressive options – a split vote that might have enabled a Reform victory – turned out to be a chasm."

Regressive/retrogressive ≠ progressive

... compared again near the end of the article:

"most striking is that all traditional parties were beaten by two insurgents taking 70 per cent of the vote"

the political roots of GPUK go back more than 50 yrs!

sorry, yet another edit - but a redeeming one to quote the end of the article

"Perhaps a prime minister for whom the bell tolls... might pause to wonder how it came to be that a plumber who speaks of the value of hard work and equal treatment came to stand for a party other than the party of organised labour. He might even consider [his refusal to] reform the unrepresentative and capricious electoral system, now that his party is unlikely to be its beneficiary."

#GortonAndDenton

@wavesculptor No you didn't read it right.

1/ The apparent hairs breadth split was between Green and Labour, both progressive to some degree.

2/ The Greens have been around for fifty years, but were marginal until recently, and ignored in every one of the 87 by-elections they had contsted. Their highest vote share in any previous by-election was 10.2%. They got four times that in #GortonAndDenton

Solar🌄Garden Mar 2

@2legged The only way I can reconcile this is still that the UK Government isn't representative of the Labour Party.

@wavesculptor That would be the correct reading.

The Labour Party membership is broadly leftish-of-centre, tho often only mildly so. It is not strongly progressive, but it is progressive.

But the Labour leadership was captured in the 1990s by a rightwing cabal, which in various forms has held the leadership ever since, apart from 2015–20. The post 2020 leadership is rightwing, designed by a Fine Gaeler with a lot of dirty tricks and dark money.

Reg Mar 2

@2legged

*was.

Labour's current membership is split between Establishment liberals, centrist careerists and a handful of head-scratching socialists wondering wtf is going on.

@ReggieHere That's a fair summary.

But it's also a reminder to all of us to clarify how we use these much-abused terms.

I used a minimalist meaning of "progressive", to include people who are at least broadly against starving their fellow humans, and broadly in favour of social and economic equality.

But it's entirely fair to note that
1/ 1950s Conservatives had similar values, but did not see themselves as progressive
2/ Starmer is about ten million miles to the right of that

Good call. Socially liberal conservatives have always made up a decent proportion of Tory votes.

The biggest difference on the progressive left is between social and economic liberals (Tories, LibDems, Labour), and social liberals who reject economic liberalism (Greens).

@ReggieHere @wavesculptor True. But both #RedTories and #BlueTories are rapidly shedding any trace of social liberalism.

Reg Mar 2

@2legged

Yes, and it's a massive mistake premised on a level of religious fundamentalism that simply doesn't exist to the same degree in the UK as it does in the USA.

@ReggieHere I hope you are right, Reg.

But it seems to me that social hatred can be a very powerful tool tool, even without religion.

As Kris Kristofferson wrote:

"Cause everybody's gotta have somebody to look down on
Prove they can feel better than at any time they please
Someone doin' somethin' dirty, decent folks can frown on".

Just look at how the the christofascist campaign to split the T out of the LGBT has become a near-religious fervour in sectors of the UK.

It does seem that way currently, and the smaller the minority the less chance that the target audience has any personal experience to invalidate the fascists' claims.