Where Now For the British Left Wing?

It is not always reassuring to have what you already know confirmed.  And so it was with the release of the UK 2015 General Election manifestos.  As the sound bites of ideas came drip fed out I started listening.  The ideas I heard ranged from the occasionally good bordering on original, the cynical vote grabbing to finally the profoundly worrying.  The profoundly worrying was perfectly encapsulated in the pledge by the Green Party to increase income tax to 60% for those earning over £150,000.

It is tough being left of the UK political spectrum.  We are a fractious, frequently morally self-righteous and scatter brained bunch.  We seem to have so many causes and so many things we want to put right.  But often amidst the fog of war we stir up as we use our frantic energy to do the right thing, we ironically end up too often losing sight of what is fundamentally right and fundamentally wrong.  The ends seem to always justify the means for us leftists as we go about our vigilante-like crusade to do things differently.  In one sense this is a courageous mind-set and it often does work out that way.  But I fear that too many times nowadays we get a pretty inappropriate bloodlust from sticking it to our enemies, or more accurately those we believe to be our enemies.

It feels like on the left side of the pond that we have forgotten two important values; those of listening and those of self-reflection.  This author who is hard of hearing would like to assure you that listening is underrated.  Incidentally feel free to ignore allegations from this author’s fiancé about supposed “selective hearing”, on  which I naturally couldn't possibly comment.  But listening is important.  Taking in opinions that are not your own and learning something new every day are both very important.  But it seems the more politically extreme anyone gets, left or right, the more angry one becomes.  And the angry person is famous for opening their mouth as they close their ears.  Preconceptions and beliefs I had thought ridiculous before have been blown away simply by myself allowing them to be challenged.  This means putting an idea out there and not worrying too much about being wrong.  People are sometimes wrong, get over it and learn from it.  But the more extreme you get it seems the more unacceptable it is for you to have some humility, admit that you are wrong and go back to the drawing board.  This is one of the major lessons that brought me back from the extreme left once upon a time.  No matter how dogmatic I became it didn't make me immune to the human condition.

Self-reflection is linked to listening.  We hear new information and opinions and we reflect on the positions we take.  Sometimes this reflection brings us to places we don’t want to go.  It is very hard as a person, some may argue particularly as a man, to admit when you are mistaken.  It is even harder to believe that you have been mistaken for some time.  Days, months and even years.  But it is all a part of growing up.  Much of the new experiences you take in may force you to re-evaluate and possibly change your positions.  The last time this happened on a major political scale in the UK leftist spectrum was when the Labour Party became New Labour.  Since then among many it is still an open question in the public area about whether Labour is still leftist.  But for me this completely misses the fundamental question.  We shouldn’t be asking whether Labour is still a leftist party.  We should be wondering about whether it matters.  When it is all said and done the Labour Party had to make a profound change which undoubtedly did reconnect the party with much of the country it wished to govern.  In doing this the party and it’s leaders had to confront hard truths and make bold decisions about how to go forward.  Even harder, they had to admit that stances they made in the past were wrong.

As I have said before at the start of this article, none of the manifestos in the 2015 general election on the whole really represent anything groundbreaking.  Mainly we are looking at reversals of the incumbent government with one or two exceptions here and there.  There isn't much adventurous, especially not in terms of foreign policy, more about this in a later blog entry.  But there as a concerned leftist, now 10 years away from his fringe revolutionary socialist days, I can see some disturbing red flags about of the none Bolshevik kind.  The programme of the left today looks tired and unoriginal.  We seem so constrained by ideological purity. We can’t seem to make ourselves think outside of the box for fear of unconventional ideas not looking radical or leftist enough, or even worse of looking like we have certain crossover points with the right.  This leads us to fall back on uninspiring ideas, even ones that we have already seen the negative consequences of such as cheap gimmicks like price freezes. 

But what I find profoundly worrying is that in the name of making our society more fairer and more tolerable for many, we expand our lists of those whose lives we would make harder, often with far too much glee.  This for me is what the 60% tax represents.  Even with my university education I would be profoundly surprised to reach £150,000 per annum.  Who knows maybe I will hit that gong one day.  Maybe once I finally write that novel or release my political memoir (probably entitled something along the lines of ‘Lessons in modesty: how I abolished the monarchy, made leftists and rightists hug each other, stopped climate change, made everyone well off and brought about world peace’) I will hit that peak.  The modest side of me wonders how that would alter me as a person.  If we are honest having more or less does effect people profoundly, you would have to be a strong person for it not to.  But I wouldn't for a second believe my greater wealth made me somehow more immoral.

But this is the trap the left has fallen into.  In trying to create a more accepting and tolerant world we have begun continued to hound those who don’t need or want our help.  Instead of our respect and understanding these people always seem to get the worst treatment from the left.  And in dishing out this treatment we dehumanise those who have worked to become more well off than ourselves and others (notice the “worked” which is the clause that alludes to my republican leanings).  And what for?  Well surely it cant be to show how morally superior before, but in a weird way  that fundamentally is the reason.  If that sounds ridiculous that is because it is!  This is the wall the UK left has ran into and if it wants to evolve more it must burst through it.  That walls is emphasised by the ridiculous and completely unethical notion that anyone deserves to have more than half of what they earn taken away by the government.  As soon as that sort of move is justified, beyond lies madness.

So what is next for the left?  Well to a certain extent I am working on that.  But I am modest enough to admit that I don’t have all of the answers (really you wonder?).  But I am saying to you know that we cant go on like this.  We cant go on loudly waving our banners and shouting about how much we hate them who dare to not vote for us.  We can’t go on being satisfied bringing out the same slogans and half baked ideas just for the sake of taking the reigns from an incumbent government.  We can’t go on not considering why people dare to ignore us.  We can’t go on not challenging accepted norms about our society and about why people act as they do.  We can’t go on not considering certain solutions because those we deem as being on the other side are flirting with them.  A very wise man once said to me that “we need to be as economically right wing as we can possibly be and as socially left wing as we can possibly be”, which is a sentiment which I feel carries a certain wisdom about it.  We need new and dynamic ideas that challenges conventional wisdom, including our own.  Overall it is time for us to grow up.  And sadly I don’t think the British left are there yet for this election.  Till then there is always next time.

UK Parliament: What is in a place?

The Houses of Parliament are broken.  I don’t mean this in a metaphorical sense as in the wider state of UK politics (corruption and broken promises etc), physically the building is actually broken.  Paint is peeling, wires are exposed, damp is everywhere and  overall refurbishment and renovation work is needed just about everywhere.  The place in short is a mess and if the mess isn’t sorted out the building may well be on the way to being condemned.  So the question is, what should be done?

The first option is to pay the necessary public money for the renovation works, patch the building up and life will go on.  The second and third option is to either stay in the building till the building starts to fall apart, which conversely may cure the over representation problem if a piece of the ceiling falls on some MPs, or simply close the building down and seek another premises.  The motivations behind the last two arguments tend to fall into be divided between concerns about finances and about values.  Renovating Parliament will be expensive.  To put it bluntly the place is bloody old and has been through a lot.  From Guy Fawkes to the Luftwaffe the building has endured for better or worse.  Perhaps more emotively some MPs have even died on or near the site.  In living memory Airey Neave MP was killed by a car bomb planted by the Irish National Liberation Army in Parliament’s car park. 

But time moves swiftly on and falling voter turnout at the polls and the abandonment of the big 3 parties in favour of alternatives have sounded alarm bells that British politics as we know it cannot go on.  A recent documentary on the BBC about the day to day workings of Parliament, far from making people more sympathetic to the place and the people who work there,  seems to have had the opposite effect.  The place is spoken of as being frozen in time in a bad way, which strikes me as a tad bit hypocritical when I hear people admire nearby Buckingham Palace for the same quality. 

OK so following the above argument we would abandon the old Houses of Parliament and make a brand new building.  We would henceforth lead the monument to a corrupt and old era of politics to a brand and spanking new beacon of truth and virtue (being deliriously optimistic).  We could make the building more open up to the public.  In an ingenious modern quirk the Germans have built a huge public walkway in the new dome of the old Reichstag, allowing Germans to keep an eye from above on their elected representatives.  Perhaps this could be emulated here in the UK? The Commons chamber itself was designed specifically to foster an adversarial attitude to debate.  Perhaps a new chamber, such as a circular one (eg Reichstag or Holyrod) may foster a more cooperative mentality.   A  broad debate could be started off about what this new Parliament building should look like and where it would be located.  At first this break with the past looks very hopeful and bold.

However after careful reflection I have decided that I am not in favour of abandoning Parliament as a building.  I have a number of reasons for this standpoint so I shall start from the financial.  After all of the planning, clearing land, building and furnishing of a new site I doubt much money if anything will ultimately be saved.  Physically there is no escaping the fact that the building is iconic.  It is the centrepiece of many tourist postcards, much more so than the Queen or Buckingham Palace.  To me throwing it all away because of our current disillusionment seems short sighted, bitter and more than a little futile.

I was chatting to someone on Facebook recently about how the Communists in East Germany tore down a royal palace to replace it with a big ugly modern (by 1970s standards) monstrosity of a Parliament building.  I thought it was a shame that the Communists had torn down a historic building for a superficial political point.  My friend pointed out that he was a republican.  I said so was and I have no problem with royal palaces, just the occupants.  I feel the same way about Palace of Westminster.  Put simply changing the setting is just too shallow.  Politicians don't take hints, large or subtle.  So putting them out of the office is unlikely to change anything.  Making them lose their job for not listening however is likely to make them take notice.  As a republican I believe that the last safeguard against tyranny is not the crown. It is us; the people.  If we want change we need to focus on our politicians themselves and not the physical place they work.  If we want change we must demand it and keep up the pressure; by voting, lobbying and constantly debating about the future of our country.  The last one is very important.  Too many people nowadays debate politics like it is some abstract thing that doesn't exist and they have no place in.  Put simply it isn't and we do.  If we don't want to be products of our environment, we have to step up and make our environment a product of us. One has to wonder if we resort to building Parliaments every time irritation with politics gets to a certain level, how many Parliament buildings are we going to have to build, until we be brave and get our hands dirty?