this post was submitted on 31 Mar 2024
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UK Politics

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General Discussion for politics in the UK.
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[–] fine_sandy_bottom@discuss.tchncs.de 21 points 7 months ago (3 children)

I don't know anything about UK politics but it's common enough in any country to say "all parties are too conservative" while in fact one of them is clearly less-so than the others.

[–] echodot@feddit.uk 8 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

People say that Labour are like the Tories but they're not at all like the Tories. People say this basically want the Labour Party to be the socialist workers party. There wouldn't be happy with anything else.

[–] Dippy@beehaw.org 2 points 7 months ago

Listen, you and I both know damn well that a lot of them would still say thats too conservative and that they should stay home

[–] porous_grey_matter@lemmy.ml 6 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (3 children)

That's true but the labour party is far more conservative than ever before in its history, and is still squarely "conservative" even if less so than the others. They still want to privatise the NHS even more, for example, a.right wing position which will cause a lot of suffering and cost many lives. Just because they're not fully fascist doesn't mean you can't criticise them for being too conservative.

[–] echodot@feddit.uk 4 points 7 months ago (1 children)

That is absolutely not true what are you on about. Is absolutely no evidence they want to privatize the NHS unless of course you want to actually point to some evidence

[–] porous_grey_matter@lemmy.ml 2 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/jan/25/keir-starmers-private-prescription-for-the-nhs-is-dangerous

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/keir-starmer-nhs-pledge-privatisation-b2123849.html

https://www.thenational.scot/news/23236106.nhs-keir-starmer-defends-use-private-sector-despite-earlier-pledge/

And this is before the election even happens.

When a politician says "Let me be clear, we’re not talking about privatising the NHS, we’re talking about using the private sector effectively" (emphasis mine) they mean further privatisation, just like under Blair, Starmer's hero.

[–] fine_sandy_bottom@discuss.tchncs.de 0 points 7 months ago (1 children)

That's not really how major parties work though?

This is incredibly reductive but suppose there was a single spectrum between progressive and conservative. Let's make progressive 0 and conservative 10.

Forgetting about parties for a moment, let's say the will of the general population is 7.

If you have two major parties they will arrange themselves as 6.5 and 7.5. Both parties appear "conservative", but really your progressive party needs to appear conservative to steal as many swing voters as possible.

If they won consecutive elections their policies would start to move back down the spectrum.

[–] loobkoob@kbin.social 3 points 7 months ago (1 children)

This is known as the "Overton window" for anyone who wants to read into it further.

Yeah right I had no idea it had a name. Thanks.

[–] Ultragigagigantic@lemmy.world 3 points 7 months ago

If you're tired of people who are upset with their choices at the polls, consider working to pass electoral reform so they can shut the fuck up and get off the sidelines and show us how it's done!

The solution is more democracy, not vote shaming people into a false dichotomy merry go round.