Is there hope for the Left in the UK?
March 18, 2025 9:44 AM Subscribe
I'm feeling betrayed by the Labour Party and despondent about the state of the country, and I'm looking for some sign of hope.
A lot of the people I follow on the left seem to be convinced that Labour are a lost cause, and that the far right will inevitably take over in four years. That may be true, but it doesn't feel productive to be resigned to that fate at this point. Can anyone point me towards a more hopeful perspective on the future of left-wing politics in the UK, or something positive I can do which might make a small difference?
A lot of the people I follow on the left seem to be convinced that Labour are a lost cause, and that the far right will inevitably take over in four years. That may be true, but it doesn't feel productive to be resigned to that fate at this point. Can anyone point me towards a more hopeful perspective on the future of left-wing politics in the UK, or something positive I can do which might make a small difference?
Best answer: Ben Ansell posits that we may have reached peak populism, largely thanks to the current leader of the US.
Here in Canada, the (MAGA dog whistling) Conservatives seemed poised for near-certain victory based on polling all through last year until just a few weeks ago. Latest polling shows the Liberals in majority-government territory.
I can’t tell you exactly what to do in the meantime, but lots can change in a short time in the bonkers political landscape we all unfortunately live in.
posted by rodneyaug at 11:59 AM on March 18 [5 favorites]
Here in Canada, the (MAGA dog whistling) Conservatives seemed poised for near-certain victory based on polling all through last year until just a few weeks ago. Latest polling shows the Liberals in majority-government territory.
I can’t tell you exactly what to do in the meantime, but lots can change in a short time in the bonkers political landscape we all unfortunately live in.
posted by rodneyaug at 11:59 AM on March 18 [5 favorites]
A lot of the people I follow on the left seem to be convinced that Labour are a lost cause, and that the far right will inevitably take over in four years.
Given the majority that Labour got in the last election, they are expected to lose seats in the next election. If we are talking about Parliament, the far right means Reform and Farage. It might be helpful to read this House of Commons Briefing about how well they actually did in 2024. One of the main takeaways is that they did broadly the same as UKIP in 2015, but with slightly more seats. Lots of things can change in 4 or 5 years, but as things stand Reform are not on track to be the largest party at the next election. It's possible that they could be the 3rd largest party if things went their way, but they might just as easily lose every seat they currently hold.
People I know on the left sometimes conflate "Labour are a lost cause because they are not acting as left wing as I want them to", and "Labour are politically a lost cause and will lose the next election". Labour might not be enacting the policies you want them to, but that doesn't mean they can't win elections.
posted by plonkee at 5:06 PM on March 18 [1 favorite]
Given the majority that Labour got in the last election, they are expected to lose seats in the next election. If we are talking about Parliament, the far right means Reform and Farage. It might be helpful to read this House of Commons Briefing about how well they actually did in 2024. One of the main takeaways is that they did broadly the same as UKIP in 2015, but with slightly more seats. Lots of things can change in 4 or 5 years, but as things stand Reform are not on track to be the largest party at the next election. It's possible that they could be the 3rd largest party if things went their way, but they might just as easily lose every seat they currently hold.
People I know on the left sometimes conflate "Labour are a lost cause because they are not acting as left wing as I want them to", and "Labour are politically a lost cause and will lose the next election". Labour might not be enacting the policies you want them to, but that doesn't mean they can't win elections.
posted by plonkee at 5:06 PM on March 18 [1 favorite]
A lot of the people I follow on the left seem to be convinced that Labour are a lost cause, and that the far right will inevitably take over in four years.
Well that's partly because doom and gloom and catastrophising generates eyeballs and clicks and followers and revenue. It's also because plenty on the Left still seem to feel betrayed that the electorate didn’t sweep Jeremy Corbyn to power in 2019 when Twitter loved him but instead delivered a comprehensive Tory victory.
Unfortunately Corbyn has become, for a lot of people on social media, the standard bearer for what constitutes "the Left" and anything perceived to be to the right of him is somehow right wing. But the reality is that Corbyn only represented one specific strand of left-wing thinking, a strand which married traditional socialist economic policy with a modern progressive desire for identity politics. I know I'm going to get a lot of grief for saying something so heretical on Me-Fi but the reality is that neither of those things is broadly popular with the electorate and Corbyn was duly trounced at the election box.
Personally as a centre-leftie I'm quite comfortable with the direction of the current Labour party in regard to the difficult choices that have to be made. That doesn't mean I agree with every policy decision or pronouncement - far from it - but if you look behind the hyperbole on social media you can see some clear-sighted analysis of the problems the British state is facing and a commitment to long-term fixes. Don't mistake short-term pragmatic decisions or specific mis-steps as a sign of a long-term direction of travel. This is clearly a centre-left administration regardless of whether that is "left enough" for some people, and regardless of whether people want to point to a specific policy and argue that it's not left-wing.
Given that our economy is in the toilet, Trump is intent on destroying the world economy, Putin is intent on destroying the Western world, the EU is unable to work out a way to deal with huge amounts of mass immigration, and the world has not been this fractured for a long time, I'm much, much happier that Labour is currently in power than the alternative. And I'm betting that in 4 years time enough of the electorate will feel the same way that you don't need to worry about the busted flush that is the far-right in this country.
Don't give up hope. The grown-ups are in the building. They've been in power for 9 months out of a 5 year term. Give them some time to fix the shit show they inherited.
posted by underclocked at 12:56 AM on March 19 [5 favorites]
Well that's partly because doom and gloom and catastrophising generates eyeballs and clicks and followers and revenue. It's also because plenty on the Left still seem to feel betrayed that the electorate didn’t sweep Jeremy Corbyn to power in 2019 when Twitter loved him but instead delivered a comprehensive Tory victory.
Unfortunately Corbyn has become, for a lot of people on social media, the standard bearer for what constitutes "the Left" and anything perceived to be to the right of him is somehow right wing. But the reality is that Corbyn only represented one specific strand of left-wing thinking, a strand which married traditional socialist economic policy with a modern progressive desire for identity politics. I know I'm going to get a lot of grief for saying something so heretical on Me-Fi but the reality is that neither of those things is broadly popular with the electorate and Corbyn was duly trounced at the election box.
Personally as a centre-leftie I'm quite comfortable with the direction of the current Labour party in regard to the difficult choices that have to be made. That doesn't mean I agree with every policy decision or pronouncement - far from it - but if you look behind the hyperbole on social media you can see some clear-sighted analysis of the problems the British state is facing and a commitment to long-term fixes. Don't mistake short-term pragmatic decisions or specific mis-steps as a sign of a long-term direction of travel. This is clearly a centre-left administration regardless of whether that is "left enough" for some people, and regardless of whether people want to point to a specific policy and argue that it's not left-wing.
Given that our economy is in the toilet, Trump is intent on destroying the world economy, Putin is intent on destroying the Western world, the EU is unable to work out a way to deal with huge amounts of mass immigration, and the world has not been this fractured for a long time, I'm much, much happier that Labour is currently in power than the alternative. And I'm betting that in 4 years time enough of the electorate will feel the same way that you don't need to worry about the busted flush that is the far-right in this country.
Don't give up hope. The grown-ups are in the building. They've been in power for 9 months out of a 5 year term. Give them some time to fix the shit show they inherited.
posted by underclocked at 12:56 AM on March 19 [5 favorites]
The grown-ups are in the building.
There's too much of this in politics. The technocrat faction of every political party likes to describe itself as the adults in the room, a position that demonstrates a completely unhelpful degree of contempt for anybody even slightly more willing to work for change than they are.
Simple fact is that these "adults" exist in a conceptual bubble at least as robust as that surrounding anybody they disagree with. This happens not because they're centrist technocrats but because they're human beings. To a very good first approximation, all of us are more comfortable spending our time in the company of people whose views we essentially agree with.
The other simple fact is that these same "adults", who have been supervising economies all over the world since the era of Thatcher and Reagan, are wholly responsible for the ongoing economic immiseration of ordinary people all over the world today. This is not because these people are evil, it's because their mental model of the way the economy works is wrong. It's wrong in a specific way: it fails to account for the natural tendency of wealth inequality to compound at an accelerating rate when the brakes of progressive taxation are taken off it.
And because wealth inequality doesn't show up in the traditional aggregate economic metrics that the press and therefore the public and the "adults" pay attention to, like GDP and inflation and unemployment levels, economic policy predicated on optimizing those metrics simply doesn't do anything to improve the ongoing, accelerating transfers of wealth away from both general public and governments that are making the operation of any genuinely capable welfare state less and less feasible.
The "adults in the room" are essentially averse to displaying leadership as opposed to acquiring it, which is why they characteristically treat anybody who does display any as a threat to be managed. This takes all kinds of forms. One common one is spreading straight-up lies as stuff that "everybody knows", like a man capable of winning his seat back as an independent after being dumped by the party he's served for sixty years having no electoral appeal, or that you can't make the poor richer by making the rich poorer.
Actually preventing the remains of Western democracy from swirling down the U-bend requires two things: (1) having technocrats, who for all their faults do actually know how to get shit done, in power and (2) strong public demand for the shit they're getting done to be the shit that actually needs to get done, so that they don't have to lead on it because it's what their focus groups are telling them that the people clearly want.
Which is why "tax wealth, not work" is the four-word slogan that could actually make a difference if enough people learn enough basic inequality economics to spread it in a well informed and therefore persuasive fashion. It's a slogan that comes more naturally to leftists than anybody else, but its main advantage is that it's actually what needs to happen.
Obviously the idea of taxing wealth is anathema to the existing billionaire class because most billionaires are deeply stupid people completely incapable of seeing past their own bloated egos. So we need to expect billionaire-owned propaganda organs - basically the entirety of the press - to react to any kind of wealth taxation proposal with a relentless barrage of pseudo-informed ridicule plus unsupported opinion presented as equivalent to fact and a huge push behind a bunch of alternative slogans that all boil down to "it's the immigrants".
Billionaires are happier when toddlers are in charge because they're essentially toddlers themselves: the only thing that matters more to them than how much they have is that nobody is ever in a position to make them share.
If Tax Wealth, Not Work is going to get the traction it needs to then we need to be spreading it face to face, and it seems to me that this is quite a hopeful praxis for leftists. Even the Sensible Centre might give up their "principled" objections to it if genuine grassroots efforts can shift the Overton Window to the point that it stops being something "everybody knows" has no electoral appeal.
posted by flabdablet at 4:09 AM on March 19 [1 favorite]
There's too much of this in politics. The technocrat faction of every political party likes to describe itself as the adults in the room, a position that demonstrates a completely unhelpful degree of contempt for anybody even slightly more willing to work for change than they are.
Simple fact is that these "adults" exist in a conceptual bubble at least as robust as that surrounding anybody they disagree with. This happens not because they're centrist technocrats but because they're human beings. To a very good first approximation, all of us are more comfortable spending our time in the company of people whose views we essentially agree with.
The other simple fact is that these same "adults", who have been supervising economies all over the world since the era of Thatcher and Reagan, are wholly responsible for the ongoing economic immiseration of ordinary people all over the world today. This is not because these people are evil, it's because their mental model of the way the economy works is wrong. It's wrong in a specific way: it fails to account for the natural tendency of wealth inequality to compound at an accelerating rate when the brakes of progressive taxation are taken off it.
And because wealth inequality doesn't show up in the traditional aggregate economic metrics that the press and therefore the public and the "adults" pay attention to, like GDP and inflation and unemployment levels, economic policy predicated on optimizing those metrics simply doesn't do anything to improve the ongoing, accelerating transfers of wealth away from both general public and governments that are making the operation of any genuinely capable welfare state less and less feasible.
The "adults in the room" are essentially averse to displaying leadership as opposed to acquiring it, which is why they characteristically treat anybody who does display any as a threat to be managed. This takes all kinds of forms. One common one is spreading straight-up lies as stuff that "everybody knows", like a man capable of winning his seat back as an independent after being dumped by the party he's served for sixty years having no electoral appeal, or that you can't make the poor richer by making the rich poorer.
Actually preventing the remains of Western democracy from swirling down the U-bend requires two things: (1) having technocrats, who for all their faults do actually know how to get shit done, in power and (2) strong public demand for the shit they're getting done to be the shit that actually needs to get done, so that they don't have to lead on it because it's what their focus groups are telling them that the people clearly want.
Which is why "tax wealth, not work" is the four-word slogan that could actually make a difference if enough people learn enough basic inequality economics to spread it in a well informed and therefore persuasive fashion. It's a slogan that comes more naturally to leftists than anybody else, but its main advantage is that it's actually what needs to happen.
Obviously the idea of taxing wealth is anathema to the existing billionaire class because most billionaires are deeply stupid people completely incapable of seeing past their own bloated egos. So we need to expect billionaire-owned propaganda organs - basically the entirety of the press - to react to any kind of wealth taxation proposal with a relentless barrage of pseudo-informed ridicule plus unsupported opinion presented as equivalent to fact and a huge push behind a bunch of alternative slogans that all boil down to "it's the immigrants".
Billionaires are happier when toddlers are in charge because they're essentially toddlers themselves: the only thing that matters more to them than how much they have is that nobody is ever in a position to make them share.
If Tax Wealth, Not Work is going to get the traction it needs to then we need to be spreading it face to face, and it seems to me that this is quite a hopeful praxis for leftists. Even the Sensible Centre might give up their "principled" objections to it if genuine grassroots efforts can shift the Overton Window to the point that it stops being something "everybody knows" has no electoral appeal.
posted by flabdablet at 4:09 AM on March 19 [1 favorite]
To be clear, when I say "The grown-ups are in the building." I'm comparing the current Labour government to the Tory government that came before it, not other parts of the left.
I'm also saying this because the OP asked for reasons to be hopeful about the UK left, and my personal opinion is that having ministers who act like thoughtful adults rather than sugar crazed children is a good thing. I certainly feel more hopeful now, at any rate, and I hope the OP can find reasons to be hopeful too.
posted by underclocked at 6:50 AM on March 19 [3 favorites]
I'm also saying this because the OP asked for reasons to be hopeful about the UK left, and my personal opinion is that having ministers who act like thoughtful adults rather than sugar crazed children is a good thing. I certainly feel more hopeful now, at any rate, and I hope the OP can find reasons to be hopeful too.
posted by underclocked at 6:50 AM on March 19 [3 favorites]
They've been in power for 9 months out of a 5 year term. Give them some time to fix the shit show they inherited.
The disabled citizens of the UK were beaten with a shitty stick for 14 years of the Tory Government. The Labour Government has adopted a policy which they claim will improve the administration of beating them with a bigger, shitter stick. How is this fixing anything?
posted by biffa at 8:33 AM on March 19 [5 favorites]
The disabled citizens of the UK were beaten with a shitty stick for 14 years of the Tory Government. The Labour Government has adopted a policy which they claim will improve the administration of beating them with a bigger, shitter stick. How is this fixing anything?
posted by biffa at 8:33 AM on March 19 [5 favorites]
People I know on the left sometimes conflate "Labour are a lost cause because they are not acting as left wing as I want them to", and "Labour are politically a lost cause and will lose the next election". Labour might not be enacting the policies you want them to, but that doesn't mean they can't win elections.
Well put. This applies to the Democratic Party in the U.S. as well. It's become increasingly clear to me from looking at data about the Democratic electorate that American progressives tend to vastly overestimate their own numbers and/or the prevalence of their own views within the party. So when Dem politicians don't speak or act in a way that progressives approve of, progressives tend to condemn them as "cowards", "idiots", "corporate sell-outs", etc.
In fact, when you understand the breakdown of the Democratic electorate, the rhetoric and voting records of many mainstream Dem politicians makes more sense. The largest single bloc of Democratic voters are multiracial moderates -- what the Pew Center refers to as Democratic Mainstays. This is why most Dem politicians tend toward the center-left: They are fairly faithfully representing the views of the plurality of their constituents.
Some areas can elect more progressive folks like AOC, Bernie Sanders, etc., because the voters trend more leftward. But candidates like those can't (and don't) win in most Democratic districts across the country.
I suspect similar realities apply in the UK.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 1:33 PM on March 22
Well put. This applies to the Democratic Party in the U.S. as well. It's become increasingly clear to me from looking at data about the Democratic electorate that American progressives tend to vastly overestimate their own numbers and/or the prevalence of their own views within the party. So when Dem politicians don't speak or act in a way that progressives approve of, progressives tend to condemn them as "cowards", "idiots", "corporate sell-outs", etc.
In fact, when you understand the breakdown of the Democratic electorate, the rhetoric and voting records of many mainstream Dem politicians makes more sense. The largest single bloc of Democratic voters are multiracial moderates -- what the Pew Center refers to as Democratic Mainstays. This is why most Dem politicians tend toward the center-left: They are fairly faithfully representing the views of the plurality of their constituents.
Some areas can elect more progressive folks like AOC, Bernie Sanders, etc., because the voters trend more leftward. But candidates like those can't (and don't) win in most Democratic districts across the country.
I suspect similar realities apply in the UK.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 1:33 PM on March 22
I think that analysis is pretty sound. Which is exactly why I advocate as strongly as I do for persuading the people around us that the problems we're facing have the cause that they do, as opposed to the cause that the prevailing propaganda apparatus keeps on yelling that they do.
Centrist representatives are herd animals by instinct because the herd defines where the centre is, so yelling at them for failures to display leadership is pointless. They are where they are exactly because that's where the herd already is. They don't lead because there's no demand that they do so, let alone any expectation that they could do so, which is because by and large the herd doesn't know and doesn't care to know why there's no fucking grass here any more. Blaming the cows next door is just easier.
Effective populist leaders like TFG, Sanders, Ocasio-Cortez and Corbyn all understand how to move a herd. Progressive populists want to move it to where the good grass is at. Regressives like TFG and Farage are all about stampeding it into a box canyon for greater ease of harvesting.
Centrist "leaders" fear all forms of populism, but they fear progressives more because those are the ones whom they themselves always look worse by comparison to. This is why it's always always the progressives whom centrists will actually organize against, regardless of how loudly they deplore the actual deplorables in public.
As a responsible herd member I see no downside in trying to persuade the cows around me that we actually need to move, that the progressive direction is the correct one to pick, and that trampling the instigators of panicked stampedes is both achievable and involves no loss worth mourning.
I don't see centrists as any kind of enemy because I believe I can rely on them to stay bang in the middle of the herd regardless of which way we're moving. The work they consistently do to oppose movement in any progressive direction is annoying but also structurally inevitable, and I don't think its effects are as strong as those that can be achieved by stochastic efforts to get the herd moving from within.
As for all the furious carping they always engage in about how their own failures to prevent the fascist stampede are the fault of all those noisy progressives, that's just hilarious. Or would be, were the walls of this box canyon not so high nor the entrance so narrow.
posted by flabdablet at 8:12 PM on March 22
Centrist representatives are herd animals by instinct because the herd defines where the centre is, so yelling at them for failures to display leadership is pointless. They are where they are exactly because that's where the herd already is. They don't lead because there's no demand that they do so, let alone any expectation that they could do so, which is because by and large the herd doesn't know and doesn't care to know why there's no fucking grass here any more. Blaming the cows next door is just easier.
Effective populist leaders like TFG, Sanders, Ocasio-Cortez and Corbyn all understand how to move a herd. Progressive populists want to move it to where the good grass is at. Regressives like TFG and Farage are all about stampeding it into a box canyon for greater ease of harvesting.
Centrist "leaders" fear all forms of populism, but they fear progressives more because those are the ones whom they themselves always look worse by comparison to. This is why it's always always the progressives whom centrists will actually organize against, regardless of how loudly they deplore the actual deplorables in public.
As a responsible herd member I see no downside in trying to persuade the cows around me that we actually need to move, that the progressive direction is the correct one to pick, and that trampling the instigators of panicked stampedes is both achievable and involves no loss worth mourning.
I don't see centrists as any kind of enemy because I believe I can rely on them to stay bang in the middle of the herd regardless of which way we're moving. The work they consistently do to oppose movement in any progressive direction is annoying but also structurally inevitable, and I don't think its effects are as strong as those that can be achieved by stochastic efforts to get the herd moving from within.
As for all the furious carping they always engage in about how their own failures to prevent the fascist stampede are the fault of all those noisy progressives, that's just hilarious. Or would be, were the walls of this box canyon not so high nor the entrance so narrow.
posted by flabdablet at 8:12 PM on March 22
Effective populist leaders like TFG, Sanders, Ocasio-Cortez and Corbyn all understand how to move a herd.
Do they all understand this, really? And are they effective?
Sanders lost two presidential primaries, by significant amounts. (I voted for him in one of them.) Rather than processing the fact of this loss in a useful way -- by, for example, trying to better understand why he didn't appeal to very many voters of color -- his most fervent supporters took refuge in conspiracy theories about the primaries being "rigged".
Corbyn surged briefly to become the leader of Labour, but then delivered a devastating, historic loss for his party.
And AOC has done well in her NYC district, and rallies like-minded supporters in blue districts around the country, but her brand of politics does not appeal to the majority.
Also: I don't think viewing moderate voters (including voters of color) as a "herd" to be "moved" is the same thing as engaging with them and their concerns seriously.
If progressives want to continue to claim the mantle of advocating for people of color, it is imperative to try to listen to and understand them — not just assume that we already know what's best for them, and that we just need to persuade them to vote for it.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 10:24 AM on March 24
Do they all understand this, really? And are they effective?
Sanders lost two presidential primaries, by significant amounts. (I voted for him in one of them.) Rather than processing the fact of this loss in a useful way -- by, for example, trying to better understand why he didn't appeal to very many voters of color -- his most fervent supporters took refuge in conspiracy theories about the primaries being "rigged".
Corbyn surged briefly to become the leader of Labour, but then delivered a devastating, historic loss for his party.
And AOC has done well in her NYC district, and rallies like-minded supporters in blue districts around the country, but her brand of politics does not appeal to the majority.
Also: I don't think viewing moderate voters (including voters of color) as a "herd" to be "moved" is the same thing as engaging with them and their concerns seriously.
If progressives want to continue to claim the mantle of advocating for people of color, it is imperative to try to listen to and understand them — not just assume that we already know what's best for them, and that we just need to persuade them to vote for it.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 10:24 AM on March 24
her brand of politics does not appeal to the majority
Then we need to keep breaking the taboo against discussing politics until it does. And the way to break that taboo without having the result consistently degenerate into counterproductive yelling matches is to educate ourselves so that we can bring the receipts when we present a line of reasoning instead of trying to win it on rhetoric and bluster.
Our opponents have one weapon - the Gish Gallop - which they are accustomed to deploying to devastating effect. And in any mediated and therefore inherently time-limited debate, it is devastating. But we're not trying to win a TV debate here, we're trying to spread an education.
So when you encounter a Gallop, which you will undoubtedly do once you start talking politics with your neighbours, pick the one point on which your prep work has been the most thorough, and speak to that. Relentlessly, doggedly, patiently, persistently, and with gentle humour that doesn't involve trying to make your interlocutor feel small.
It's often been said that you can't reason somebody out of a position they never reasoned themselves into in the first place, but this is not actually the case. In fact patient, persistent, face to face reasoning is the single most common thing that does induce people to shift their positions. Don't be afraid to give it a crack.
Once your relationship with a neighbour has built itself up to the point where they're not just Gish Galloping you with a raft of Murdoch-approved talking points every time a political topic arises, both of you might well be surprised to learn just how much you have in common.
I don't think viewing moderate voters (including voters of color) as a "herd" to be "moved" is the same thing as engaging with them and their concerns seriously.
The herd metaphor I'm employing here refers to the populace as a whole - not only voters, so certainly not only moderate voters. All of us move across the political landscape in ways that are inescapably affected by the movements of our neighbours.
It's a very big herd, though, and therefore difficult to see clear across.
posted by flabdablet at 11:22 AM on March 24
Then we need to keep breaking the taboo against discussing politics until it does. And the way to break that taboo without having the result consistently degenerate into counterproductive yelling matches is to educate ourselves so that we can bring the receipts when we present a line of reasoning instead of trying to win it on rhetoric and bluster.
Our opponents have one weapon - the Gish Gallop - which they are accustomed to deploying to devastating effect. And in any mediated and therefore inherently time-limited debate, it is devastating. But we're not trying to win a TV debate here, we're trying to spread an education.
So when you encounter a Gallop, which you will undoubtedly do once you start talking politics with your neighbours, pick the one point on which your prep work has been the most thorough, and speak to that. Relentlessly, doggedly, patiently, persistently, and with gentle humour that doesn't involve trying to make your interlocutor feel small.
It's often been said that you can't reason somebody out of a position they never reasoned themselves into in the first place, but this is not actually the case. In fact patient, persistent, face to face reasoning is the single most common thing that does induce people to shift their positions. Don't be afraid to give it a crack.
Once your relationship with a neighbour has built itself up to the point where they're not just Gish Galloping you with a raft of Murdoch-approved talking points every time a political topic arises, both of you might well be surprised to learn just how much you have in common.
I don't think viewing moderate voters (including voters of color) as a "herd" to be "moved" is the same thing as engaging with them and their concerns seriously.
The herd metaphor I'm employing here refers to the populace as a whole - not only voters, so certainly not only moderate voters. All of us move across the political landscape in ways that are inescapably affected by the movements of our neighbours.
It's a very big herd, though, and therefore difficult to see clear across.
posted by flabdablet at 11:22 AM on March 24
Response by poster: Corbyn surged briefly to become the leader of Labour, but then delivered a devastating, historic loss for his party.
He also delivered the greatest Labour gain since 1945 in 2017
posted by Chenko at 12:05 PM on March 24
He also delivered the greatest Labour gain since 1945 in 2017
posted by Chenko at 12:05 PM on March 24
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posted by flabdablet at 10:25 AM on March 18 [2 favorites]