The Next UK Government... That Isn’t the Tories

[Kelvin]

The one thing that most us agree about in the political threads is that we're in for a long, long period of Tory rule. But when a change finally comes, whether in ten years or fifty, what will it look like do you think? A resurgent Labour Party? A coalition of desperation? Something even more right wing than the Tories? Or will our grandchildren's grandchildren be celebrating 200 years of Tory rule in their rented Sleep Booth?

[Chollis]

David Miliband

[jamiefairlie]

Doesn't matter what they're called, it'll just be continuity despotism. Once power is taken, it's never voluntarily given back.

[Chollis]

but seriously, I don't think it will for many years (10+) and when it does it come, it will be further right than Starmzy or Blair. then again, a lot of things can happen in that time, society could look very different, so the optimist in me thinks there's the possibility, however small, of a big Brexit-scale issue that benefits the left rather the right.

[TrenterPercenter]

It will be a centrist Labour Party.  Already baked in for 2029

Labour will naturally gain some seats in 2024; this will be span as evidence that a move rightwards from 2019 was warranted and more needs to be done.  With no major leftwing presence in the party due to everyone throwing their toys out of the pram a smooth operating "strong minded unifier of the party" will emerge and seduce the remaining electorate and tell you that; who would have guessed Corbyn and Starmer were both wrong.  Tories will be burning out by 2026 with many of their more rightwing supporters dismayed at them not going bonkers right, and with everything at a stand still, will see them stay at home in 2029. So a Centrist Labour Party capitalise on some movement on the grounds of hope and change.  The political pound will have already moved over to Labour on the successful election of a right-leaning Labour leader and will be putting money in to make Labour more visible with a proviso  to champion most of the identity politics demands as long as economics and security are not touched other than some earnest projects to manage the outputs of the aforementioned rightwing economics.

[Alberon]

Emergency Coalition government formed in 2040 due to the ongoing global collapse of civilisation and climate change.

What can I say, I'm an optimist.

[Buelligan]

I'm with you, Alberon.  Or we might get some experts in from the private sector to run the world.  Private sector general, that sort of chappy.

[TrenterPercenter]

Simple thing to remember is you are fucked if you want leftwing politics.  It isn't going to happen.  What once seemed like a golden opportunity for mass collective movements i.e. the internet has been found out; all that needed to happen was the digitisation of the barriers to forming collective identities; the ones that had already been instilled into society for the 100 years before.

Perhaps some other technological advancement will give us another shot at something but my general feelings are we'll only fuck that up also.

[jamiefairlie]

Simple thing to remember is you are fucked if you want leftwing politics.  It isn't going to happen.  What once seemed like a golden opportunity for mass collective movements i.e. the internet has been found out; all that needed to happen was the digitisation of the barriers to forming collective identities; the ones that had already been instilled into society for the 100 years before.

Perhaps some other technological advancement will give us another shot at something but my general feelings are we'll only fuck that up also.

Because it's people who are the problem. Technology just magnifies that.

[bgmnts]

Simple thing to remember is you are fucked if you want leftwing politics.  It isn't going to happen.  What once seemed like a golden opportunity for mass collective movements i.e. the internet has been found out; all that needed to happen was the digitisation of the barriers to forming collective identities; the ones that had already been instilled into society for the 100 years before.

Perhaps some other technological advancement will give us another shot at something but my general feelings are we'll only fuck that up also.

If anything, the Internet was the ultimate tool in having some form of global community.

[Buelligan]

If anything, the Internet was the ultimate tool in having some form of global community.

I know I've linked this before but it's extremely relevant to this conversation, you need enough patience to listen for just over sixteen minutes.  DoubleDown News - the incredible Ronan Burtenshaw.  Watch it.

[TrenterPercenter]

If anything, the Internet was the ultimate tool in having some form of global community.

Yes that is my point it shouldn't been but it dissolved into just another format for people to shout at each other.  Jaimefaire is right it is people but there were opportunities to counter act but they were and remain not to be taken.

[chveik]

It will be a centrist Labour Party.  Already baked in for 2029

people aren't going to turn to centrism in the midst of complete economical and environmental collapse. the only way for the ruling classes to keep their privileged position will be totalitarianism, and the only proper alternative and chance of survival (or at least a decent extinction) for the rest of humanity will be communism.

[bgmnts]

Basically yeah. Millions of people had to die over two world wars for us just to get an NHS. God knows what it would take for such a huge overhaul of political and economical systems.

[Buelligan]

Not a pandemic, anyway.

On your NHS point, find it incredible that people, anyone, could see the death, want, disease, rampant in the population and take so long to agree the NHS was needed.  And, worse, far worse, that now it's a thing, they spend their days looking for ways to bleed it or kill it.  For what?  For dead money to hoard or spend on shit.  Utterly repellent.

[TrenterPercenter]

Basically yeah. Millions of people had to die over two world wars for us just to get an NHS. God knows what it would take for such a huge overhaul of political and economical systems.

Millions of Russians died so that we could have a national health service - that's a new one.

[Buelligan]

Millions of Russians died so that we could have a national health service - that's a new one.

Fuck off.

[bgmnts]

Millions of Russians died so that we could have a national health service - that's a new one.

What?

[TrenterPercenter]

What?

Maybe I've misunderstood.  When you say millions of people had to die over two world wars just for us to get an NHS what do you mean?

[Video Game Fan 2000]

people aren't going to turn to centrism in the midst of complete economical and environmental collapse. the only way for the ruling classes to keep their privileged position will be totalitarianism, and the only proper alternative and chance of survival (or at least a decent extinction) for the rest of humanity will be communism.

This. The way capital has dealt with the ecological crisis and the liberal mantra of "social justice not economic equality" as effectively voided the dream of an "ownership society", a society where upkeep, values and progress is ensured because people own parts of it - working class owning homes, middle class owning shares and businesses. The idea that society would improve because people were invested because they own literal chunks of it to pass on to their children has been absolutely fucked, first by migrancy from formerly colonised territories, then by economic collapses induced by monetarian (not neoliberal) policy, and now covid and extreme weather.

The fork in the road is between: consolidation of property into the hands of just a few hundred people per state or thinking about a political alternative to private property. It's not an ideological conflict its an either/or arising from political necessity.

But its an intellectual battle. We're not going to find "communism" on the pages of any existing theory books or already there with plucky underdog grassroots struggles. A new alternative needs to be made on the basis of former insights, not through orthodoxy.

[Shit Good Nose]

Maybe I've misunderstood.  When you say millions of people had to die over two world wars just for us to get an NHS what do you mean?

Well he didn't say Russians, that's for sure.

[bgmnts]

Maybe I've misunderstood.  When you say millions of people had to die over two world wars just for us to get an NHS what do you mean?

That a huge amount of suffering has to be undergone before we see even the smallest of positive changes for the masses.

[Shit Good Nose]

That a huge amount of suffering has to be undergone before we see even the smallest of positive changes for the masses.

Don't worry - once the tories succeed in getting shot of the NHS altogether and replace it with a US style system, everything will be great.  Just ask Tony the tiger.

[TrenterPercenter]

Well he didn't say Russians, that's for sure.

bgmnts wasn't clear but if he was talking about the UK; total casualties for W1 & 2 combined isn't millions - it's just under 1.5 million (I should add these are mostly military deaths only about 70k civilians died across both conflicts - W1 can be argued to be troublesome here because of conscription).

Regardless I'm still interested in the how these deaths relate to the creation of the NHS? I've no doubt it is an influence but there are lots of things about the creation of the NHS that should probably be considered here rather than the death toll of two wars (one of which was nearly 3 decades prior).

[Video Game Fan 2000]

Getting rid of the NHS won't just cause human suffering in the immediate through lack of access to treatments, it'd be an economic timebomb. The NHS keeps the UK economy ticking over in a lot of ways, greasing the wheels of an unstable workforce and making the human cost of old age a lot lower, every year keeping thousands active in jobs and education and smashing the cost of care. Privatising it would be like getting a fiver today but then having to find a grand at the end of the week. Even the Tories know this which is why its being dismantled in a piecemeal fashion.

This is the untold story of why the US system is so bad and hard to fix. Its not just insurance lobbying, its the fact that an insane market-based healthcare system causes an economic crater that has to be fixed too. There's a certain naivety around American M4A campaigns (even though they're one of the most positive political movements on the planet): they're just blanking on how to fix the problems surrounding healthcare. Classic case of free market economics only being able to function if there's a monstrous inefficiency clogging up an important part of the process to drive up value else where.

[TrenterPercenter]

That a huge amount of suffering has to be undergone before we see even the smallest of positive changes for the masses.

Lots of other countries had much higher death tolls and didn't get an NHS.

I'd say that the main reason we got an NHS is because some socialists in the Labour Party at the time proposed it and were elected.  When they were elected the actually did what they said they would.

[Video Game Fan 2000]

We got an NHS because there was consensus amongst liberals at the time that a welfare state was necessary. This changed with the Cold War, of course. Thankfully our American friends educated us about their superior legal systems, as they tend to do in times of need, so liberals no longer held this consensus from the mid-70s onwards. 

Don't get me wrong, socialists and reds deserve the credit. But they wouldn't have been able to get it without liberal consensus confirming economic reality instead of obscuring it with social ideology.

[TrenterPercenter]

Don't get me wrong, socialists and reds deserve the credit. But they wouldn't have been able to get it without liberal consensus confirming economic reality instead of obscuring it with social ideology.

I agree and that was my point; that perhaps if people want socialist things they did to start thinking about how they can actually get them.

[Video Game Fan 2000]

Most mainstream liberals are completely Meritocracy-Pilled and believe huge wealth and quality of life disparities are a motor that drives societies, life is sieve to sort the hard working talented wheat from the lazy feckless idiot chaff. Trump voters are dumb see but voting for Biden was like going to Hogwarts. Their ideology is Yas Queen Slay King and trumpetting either megacelebrities or megawealthy billionaires. The idea of Elizabeth Warren or Kier Starmer or Emmanuel Macron preciding over a 21st century equivalent of the Beveridge report is pure science fiction when those people have all explicitly said that massive disparities drive the aspirations of society.

The appeal I'd make to the lefties on CaB is don't be misanthropes. Don't fall for this "most people are bad" or "people are dumb" bullshit. We already have a leftwinger that does that stuff and its Slavoj Zizek, one is enough. Believing in the goodness and ability of your fellows is a more 'radical transgressive act' than anything else going at the moment, and there is always a reason for tempered optimism. Stare at the internet long enough will have you believing in the cruelty and stupidity of all humans. Don't believe it. Don't fall for the meritocracy lie about a minority of good or decent people with magic powers of empathy, leave Hogwarts to Glinner and superheroes to Moviebob.

[bgmnts]

But the liberals of yesteryear were not the centrist yas queen liberals of today were they?