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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Move over right v left: John Curtice says the new political divide is social liberal versus social conservative
Good insight by John Curtice. After Brexit, it's no longer about "left" and "right"—it's now social liberals vs social conservatives https://t.co/A7No132kDb via @prospect_uk
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I agree that parts of Labour’s Corbynite support are very authoritarian, but they themselves don’t see it that way - the shutting down of dissenting opinion, for example.
I'm a fairly traditional Labour voter but my local constituency MP (John Cryer) is a Leaver, so I voted LD. I would however have voted Conservative without a moment's hesitation if their candidate had been a Remainer.
Btw, it's an interesting reversal of roles that Curtiss is touching on here. The Tories have always been identified as the Party of business but Leave doesn't really have the support of the business community.
It's a bit less clear-cut on the Labour/Trade Union side. I guess the TUs like the protectionism of Leave, but are less keen on other aspects, so maybe more ambivalence there.
On differences between the parties I am also going to raise morality. Not a I am moral and you are immoral argument, but who uses it. Labour have a very clear sense of injustice, that it is immoral on a basic level of human decency to have a policy that leaves cancer patients to die in abject poverty having been declared fit for work. Tories never defend these outrages, or even respond to them. We get some platitudes about a principle which their policies always seem diametrically opposed to in practice, and a lot of shrugging of shoulders.
Yet when it comes down to gay marriage there is OUTRAGE. On biblical grounds often. Yet the same Bible has an awful lot to say about the treatment of the poor sick and needy and gets ignored by the same people...
religion rarely enters UK politics, our last geat "religious leader" was Blair
And religion gets raised a lot. Only yesterday we discussed Mogg and Catholic doctrine regarding his suitability to be in change of the nuclear deterrent.
But the BBC thinks that the CBI speaks for British industry
Certainly the Tories have always identified strongly with small business owners. There's probably more ambivalence on the Leave/Remain divide there though. I would think a lot of small business owners would be Leavers, although it might depend on the type of business.
There's certainly a good deal of ambivalence amongst farmers - or those that farm on a modest scale at least.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-36803544
That qualifies and balances my argument nicely. (And makes it unnecessary for me to reply to Charles above!)
You have to wonder how the Tories have managed to get themselves on the opposite side of the argument from business. Interesting comments from Barnier this morning (once again) restating the obvious - the EU won't give us a deal for the city.
BTW if you have discovery there is a good series at the moment looking st done of the wackier conspiracies from an intellectual perspective (e.g. Why did Pope Gregory decide to conflate the woman who washed Jesus' feet with Mary Magdalen?)
It seems to me that Brexit was rather a one off which did highlight social divisions that rarely got much attention from our media and metropolitan elites but once it is put to bed arguments are more likely to revert to our more traditional left right divide on economic issues.
(But seriously, big business likes regulation because it's a barrier to entry. And if they can reduce their costs by making it transnational then so much the better)
What we do see with political "Christian Fundamentalism" and its parallel in "Catholic Fundamentalism" is that these thrived in areas separated from the mainstream of the European Enlightenment, in Frontier America, the Boer Republics, Ireland, and Latin America.
Basically, the issue is one of unnecessarily hyperbolic language used on both sides. For example the ATOS assessments started in 2009 under Labour, here are the Guardian criticising it at the time https://www.theguardian.com/society/2009/oct/28/work-capability-assessment-incapacity-benefits It’s difficult to accept screaming critisicm of the policy from those who voted for it and implemented it in the first place. Similar issues with food banks, I’ve never understood the critics of basic community charity helping those in need - especially so at this time of year.
In general, politics works better if people work together to look at problems and find solutions, rather than screaming at or past each other. Sadly today’s crop of politicians and issues such as Brexit are making the problems worse rather than better.
Surely here is the challenge. Doing the right thing is difficult. Plenty of moral crusade politicians of both sides have tried and failed (or in the case of IDS claimed a moral crusade and done their best to make things as worse as possible for the people allegedly being 'helped')
I just don't understand this current government and current ministers. Their policy is simple - make work pay. Be fair to the taxpayer. Yet in practice the policy is neither, and when swathes of proof are presented to them about the needless suffering AND the cost to the taxpayer, their response is a shrug of the shoulders. I'd expect outrage of some kind - Tories are principled people and certainly dislike state largesse. Yet seem nonplussed by a system which wrongly takes money off the poorest and they pays for an appeal system that it loses in the vast majority of cases then having to pay back the withheld money AND costs.
This indifference to people can't be a long term benefit to the party. Seeming to not care about examples of ex squaddies left to die of hunger or disabled people left to crawl around their flat or terminal cancer patients pronounced fit for work and dying destitute winning a posthumous appeal - these are all the direct result of government policy. That policy could be at least tweaked to prevent similar outrages, yet it is not.
Why? Is that not proof of a basic immorality - a government that choses not to give a shit to pointless suffering imposed by it's own incompetent indifference? You want a policy of work capability assessments that's fair. But crap ones that make idiot decisions and create this hell and cost more money? Come on...
Defining peoples political views by their demographics can ultimately only get us so far. There are quite a lot of socially liberal older folk, plenty of gay working class or BME Britons and active religion in Britain tends to be ethnically and SE class related.
Just so we're clear. Is the answer to a system today that acts in the most gratuitous way and costs the taxpayer money in the process to be ignored because Labour started it...?
Some of you indifferent shoulder shruggers can accuse me of hysteria, but I don't get how you can look at the current system and say "it's working fine". But I agree that we need to look beyond the worst examples (by fixing them) and get onto the far bigger issues such as why work doesn't pay when you have kids etc etc
I just don't like unelected Bureaucrats dictating to the masses. That's not exactly a liberal model.
We seem to have a system that wreaks punishments on meek inarticulate people while leaving open doors to manipulative scroungers. The problem is that it is easier to target the former as they tend to compliance. The system has targets set to get people off benefits, rather than evaluate real need.
If there is a difference it tends to be on the anterior question of where all this money comes from. Tories believe that a successful welfare state needs a thriving private sector to support it and is more interested in what is needed for it to thrive. Labour supporters tend to believe that successful economies are “fair” economies, where everyone has a stake and where social cohesion is emphasised. This mass participation will encourage growth and become self funding.
The degree of difference on either side even here can be exaggerated with plenty in each of the main parties that have some sympathy with the approach of the other. Where they are both having difficulties is with some of their core supporters who have come to realise that their team does not really represent their opinions. So small state economic liberals find little to appeal to them in the modern Tory Party and genuinely socialists have, pre Corbyn, wondered about the priorities of Labour. Now it is those who recognise the importance of the private sector who feel uncomfortable.
My wider point is that these issues are best addressed by sober discussions, that the overly hyperbolic language - from those who started this policy the the first place - is at best not helping and probably making things worse.
Work doesn’t pay when you have kids because Gordon Brown introduced £50bn a year of borrowed money spent on tax credits, alongside rules where all this can be taken away if you move from 16 hours a week to 17. UC is absolutely doing the right thing here, even if the details such as waiting times need addressing (we can thank a more recent former Chancellor for that one).
Jeremy Corbyn says he expects another general election next year, which he will “probably win”.
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/jeremy-corbyn-says-expects-another-11717491
https://twitter.com/PolhomeEditor/status/943025419716059136
That tends to get people's backs up
Political rhetoric doesn't help either - the Daily Pokitics contributor video posted yesterday claiming 21% of the population is disabled is non credible and frankly unhelpful to a rational discussion of needs and objectives and how to best satisfy them
Curtice's thesis is an interesting oversimplification. It ignores people like Corbyn and McDonnell, who have never been especially interested in social issues like gay marriage though generally side with the liberal view of them. A more important division might be attitudes to globalisation. Is it desirable and/or inevitable, and we should embrace it and make it work for everyone (the view of Blair and many on the right) or is it a race to the bottom coupled with massive tax avoidance which we must try to curb (the view of most on the left, but also many of the anti-immigration people). That too is a simplification (I think it's inevitable AND dangerous) but it's arguably the most important challenge for all parties.
It’s the same with all government interactions, they’re set up to be gamed. Legal immigration is the same - I can’t move back to the UK with my wife because our not-uncommon situation just doesn't exist in their box-ticking exercise (I met and married non-EU citizen while working abroad) - yet others in slightly different circumstances have no problem. It gives the impression that those who seek to do the right thing are discriminated against by government when they need help, while others appear to have no problems achieving the same ends.
I have a lot of sympathy with Dr F’s last posting, and particular the first sentence of the last paragraph: 'We seem to have a system that wreaks punishments on meek inarticulate people while leaving open doors to manipulative scroungers.'
What all of these failures have in common is a lack of empathy with the feckless, incompetent and needy in our society. I don’t think this is a party issue so much as a government one. When policy is produced and implemented by producer interests with their convenience in mind vulnerable people get hurt. One party trying to claim the moral high ground in this area really doesn’t help address the issue although I would accept that some on the left have done more to highlight the consequences than many on the right.
"We seem to have a system that wreaks punishments on meek inarticulate people while leaving open doors to manipulative scroungers."
That's the problem, and it used to differentiate left from right. Some left-wig politicians (eg Tony Benn in his heyday) refuse to believe there are manipulative scroungers, or they don't matter. Some right-wingers seem inclined to ignore the genuine cases.
Just over fifty years ago, as a naïve student, I joined the 'Socialist Society' at University expecting to meet like-minded people. I met a small number of well-meaning Christian types but a majority of posh, middle-class youngsters with an abiding hatred of and anger at those who didn't totally agree with them (even their Christian colleagues, describing them as pinko liberals). This was usually allied with a total ignorance of how normal people lived.
People are people whichever group they come from - a mixture of good, bad and indifferent. But I've learned to avoid the extremists of whatever hue.
Fundamentally to do this you need to either stop the wrong people getting on benefits or have a mechanism to detect errors and correct them
The idea that someone unemployed and claiming benefits should be required to attend regular interviews and workshops shouldn’t be particularly controversial, but the way it was done in practice (with targets on job centre staff for sanctions and savings?) was terrible and didn’t help the situation.
Good policies sometimes have negative impacts for some especially early on or if some aspect has been done poorly. I highly doubt the last labour government abandoned as immoral every policy which initially had some bad impacts.
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The real point though is he is very confident, and he has more reason to be so than pessimistic. It's not really much embarrassment that offhand predictions like this may not pan out.
A risk based approach would have the govt doing much less on it compared to other kinds of fraud. But benefit fraud really really angers the public and is obviously hyped up by certain newspapers.
I don’t think we will see the Conservatives address the issues you talk about. Benefit fraud is just too good an issue for them - a real vote winner.
It also explains why the Tories have a better chance in socially conservative working class, industrial towns than they do in socially liberal inner cities. Longer term while being the more socially liberal of the main parties will help Labour keep its big lead with socially liberal young people it may mean it has a closer fight on its hands to keep ethnic minority support, the Asian community in particular is socially conservative and shares Tory values more on that front.
Although I admit - his reliability as a source has taken a bit of a hit...
Pretty fed up of the Libs picking and choosing those policies of the coalition that they were involved in. Turns out the country seems to be, too.
But when times are bad, they cry *something must be done* which is the natural ground of interventionists, nanny statists, wannabe autocrats and meddling bureaucrats - all of whom appear to have answers to the "something" that must be done.
We are living through extraordinarily fearful times, and people are running to those who seem to have the answers - whether that is voting leave or electing a Marxist or any one of the myriad "anything but the status quo" results we have seen in the last few years.
Things are worse than you say, I think. The whole concept of welfare has been so denigrated by certain politicians and newspapers that the system is close to being untenable as a functioning safety net.
I've personally known of lots of people who claim benefits while working cash in hand jobs etc but they get away with it and I doubt they're included in these estimates of yours. I used to work in an industry where cash in hand payments were rife and I was struggling to recruit people as I would only pay by BACS and I was repeatedly told "... but I'd lose my benefits" by job applicants without them even blinking. One guy even spat on me before storming out of the building when I told him I wouldn't pay him cash. It was entirely accepted second nature that they could work cash in hand and keep benefits.
The truth is like all types of fraud it is hard to ever put your finger on how serious a problem is because if they're getting away with it, its not getting counted.
It's an interesting argument. Theresa May has, from the moment she became Prime Minister, emphasised the role of the State as an empowering part of her conservative philosophy. Indeed, her role model looks to be Heath or Heseltine rather than Thatcher or Cameron.
It's a strand of conservatism that was in eclipse in the Thatcher and to an extent the Major years where the emphasis was on laissez faire and "enrichessez vous" to borrow two French expressions including one from Guizot. The market ruled, the State was to be reduced to the margins and people were going to be allowed to take personal responsibility (remember that?) for their lives.
I'm not sure terms like "social liberal" and "social conservative" are correct - it's more about the role of the State and the role of the individual which is the classic division across all parties and across Anglo-Saxon politics. Neither May nor Corbyn are "small State" thinkers - both see the State as having significant roles in public policy setting and implementation.
The Thatcherites turned against the EU when it appeared their triumph over one overpowering State would be under mined by another unelected bureaucracy. We are already seeing a number in the Cabinet who see "taking back control" in terms of "the removal of constraints" on working hours, paid holidays for part-time workers etc.
The war for the soul of post-EU Britain is now beginning and the shape of that society for the 2020s and beyond is far from clear.
While that's true, there's no doubt that it antagonized a fair few Tory members. I'm very proud of how far the UK has come in my lifetime; when I was born, homosexuality was illegal. We're a good country because we're mostly decent, tolerant people.
So I can get a job in the UK as a higher rate taxpayer, but I would have to wait two years before I could sponsor my wife to join me.
Meanwhile the system is easily gamed, by things like three brothers taking it in turns to be “manager” of the family firm, purely in order to get the qualifying salary (c.£23k) to bring a wife from abroad - and often as an arranged marriage.
Even worse, if I were a non-British EU citizen I could bring my wife in with no problems, as EU citizens have a “right to a family life” in the U.K. that British citizens don’t.
The last time we seriously looked at it, by far the easiest way would be for her to “buy” a passport from somewhere like Romania, where officials in the immigration department earn £300 a month. Nudge nudge.
Rules are there for good reasons I can understand, but the legitimate immigration system is completely bonkers for someone who’s always done the right thing and just wants to move home with his wife. I guess we’ll be staying in the sandpit for a while longer.
Its the ending of those things during the last 15 years that has broken the political model.
The way that bankers were allowed to walk away with fortunes from the taxpayers also had an effect.
The modern world seems to be one where some people can't win and some people can't lose.