{"id":3776,"date":"2015-07-27T19:16:58","date_gmt":"2015-07-27T19:16:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/really.zonky.org\/?p=3776"},"modified":"2015-07-27T19:16:58","modified_gmt":"2015-07-27T19:16:58","slug":"would-real-left-wing-policies-really-be-bad-for-labour","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/?p=3776","title":{"rendered":"Would Real Left Wing Policies Really Be Bad For Labour?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tWith all the fuss about Jeremy Corbyn<\/a> being nominated for election as the Labour party leader, anyone would think that the mainstream (read "parliamentary") Labour party is terrified that the slightest whiff of a genuine left-wing agenda by Labour will make them unelectable.\n<\/p>\n

\n\tPerhaps so. Anyone who remembers the height of the Thatcher era when Labour was<\/em> unelectable could well be worried that Labour might again make itself unelectable. And some of that distant past unelectability may well have been caused by the policies.\n<\/p>\n

\n\tBut not necessarily the 'left-wing' part of those policies.\n<\/p>\n

\n\tIn the recent election approximately 1\/3 of the electorate chose to vote for the Tories which means that 2\/3 did not. And that does not inlcude those who failed to find somebody worth voting for. And given the widespread revulsion at the early plans of what the Tories plan to inflict on us indicates that people could well be interested in a genuine alternative.\n<\/p>\n

\n\tAnd that alternative is not<\/em> "Conservative-light" (I refuse to use the trendy spelling of "light"; apart from anything else, there's a word for someone as old as I am trying to be trendy … and that word is "pathetic").\n<\/p>\n

\n\tThere is nothing more repulsive than a politician pandering to the lowest common denominator, and modifying their principles<\/em> to make them more appealing to "middle-England". Perhaps this is why Labour is loosing their core work-class support.\n<\/p>\n

\n\tLabour should<\/em> be for the working classes, but the working classes including everyone who isn't a member of the idle rich which includes many people who don't traditionally think of themselves as working class. Such as doctors, solicitors, surveyors, bank managers (not "bankers"), etc. \n<\/p>\n

\n\tTake a look at the results of the Green party – a genuincely progressive party with left-wing policies – who went from 1% share of the votes to 3.8%. Despite being an unelectable fringe party with no hope of being elected, they massively increased their share of the vote. \n<\/p>\n

\n\tPerhaps a Labour party with sensible left-wing policies would not be electable, but at least it would be honest<\/em>. And who knows? Maybe it would be electable after 5 years of Tory mismanagement and punishment for those who weren't born with a silver spoon.\n<\/p>\n

\n\t\"Elements<\/a>\n<\/p>\n

\n\t \n<\/p>\n

\n\t <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

With all the fuss about Jeremy Corbyn being nominated for election as the Labour party leader, anyone would think that the mainstream (read "parliamentary") Labour party is terrified that the slightest whiff of a genuine left-wing agenda by Labour will make them unelectable. Perhaps so. Anyone who remembers the height of the Thatcher era when […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3],"tags":[114],"class_list":["post-3776","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-labour","category-3-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1f2KI-YU","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3776","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3776"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3776\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3779,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3776\/revisions\/3779"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/really.zonky.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}