Politics for a dummy

[waverunner]

I appeal to all ye on this forum.. I haven't a clue when it comes to UK politics (or any politics really but lets stick to the UK for now).

Please can someone give me a brief synopsis of certain things and if I have any questions along the way.. please help me out? I really want to understand these things. Some stuff I do know already but want it clarified in the most succinct way possible (please please please). Start with the very basics:

- Left/right - what's what, what do they stand for?
- Newspapers? Which ones are left/right?
- Which countries does the uk really not get along with politically?
- What are the rules on voting in a general election in the UK?

Pretty pretty please, thank you x

 

[audiotech]

Essay due?

 

[*Miss Daisy*]

Oooh I've been meaning to ask the same things waverunner,,

It all seems really confusing, I dont even know which war is what and whos fighting who and why?

And why are their loads of middle class Public school educated men unning Our country on the pretence that they are working class? Yeah right! bring back the real men + women who have tasted real life and knows what needs to be done for the people who elected them!

sorry i cant help you - I'm just subscibing to the thread!

 

[waverunner]

Essay due?

Nah mate, I'm done with uni - but I've always been a science and arts person. Never delved into business, economics and the like. I'm just a bit frustrated that half the time I don't understand what people are yapping about when they're talking even simple politics. Just want some enlightenment, you lot seem to know what you're on about

I was hoping I wasn't alone Miss Daisy

 

[tangerinedream]

I appeal to all ye on this forum.. I haven't a clue when it comes to UK politics (or any politics really but lets stick to the UK for now).

Please can someone give me a brief synopsis of certain things and if I have any questions along the way.. please help me out? I really want to understand these things. Some stuff I do know already but want it clarified in the most succinct way possible (please please please). Start with the very basics:

- Left/right - what's what, what do they stand for?
- Newspapers? Which ones are left/right?
- Which countries does the uk really not get along with politically?
- What are the rules on voting in a general election in the UK?

Pretty pretty please, thank you x

Left in moderate sense stands for the old Labour party (state ownership, full employment, funded by trade unions), Right for free marketeering private enterprise loving Tories.

In esssence to me, centre left v right is a battle between Keynseism and Moneterism

Sadly the left seems to belong now to a mixture of fringe groups, those disenfranchised by the concept of organised politics and wierd SWP type factions.

I don't think there is a left wing newspaper (can't get morning star here ), they all seem to espouse a bourgious consumerist liestyle to me, though the Indy and the Grauniad at least have some left leaning writers. The others are variously right wing or apolitical with the Torygraph, Express and Mail the ffurthest to the right advocating hanging and flogging and fearing asylum seekers and stuff like that. (note, the attitudes there are often consider 'right wing', yet 'the right' isn't necacerily illiberal, indeed a neo liberal is on the right of the spectrum. Another way to understand what is right wing is to think of the idea of gov't having limited interference in the management of the life of the individual. In some senses, go far enough to the right and you will find anarchism which is why the spectrum doesn't really work.

Who do the Uk not get on with? - Not sure that's my area to comment on really, seems like whoever the US don't at the moment.

British parliament is made up if 660ish seats, which are all contested by individuals who may or may not be affiliated to a party. The winner of each seats becomes an MP and the party with the most seats (or a coalition in the instance of no clear winner) forms the government - the leader of that party become the PM and he apoints people to form the cabinet (made up of the top ministerial jobs, eg, defence sec, chancelor etc) It is entirely possible because of our system for a party to get less votes overall than the one they beat and be in power for 5 years. Often, more people vote against the gov't than vote for them.

The parties produce a manifesto, outlining there plans before the election and in theory that is what they then implement during their term in office (up to 5 years before an election has to be called) but as far as I know, we have no legal course to take if they don't implement those policies and make up a load of new plans. The process of giving them permission to implement their manifesto is known as giving them a mandate.

 

[Divisive Cotton]

I appeal to all ye on this forum.. I haven't a clue when it comes to UK politics (or any politics really but lets stick to the UK for now).

Please can someone give me a brief synopsis of certain things and if I have any questions along the way.. please help me out? I really want to understand these things. Some stuff I do know already but want it clarified in the most succinct way possible (please please please). Start with the very basics:

- Left/right - what's what, what do they stand for?
- Newspapers? Which ones are left/right?
- Which countries does the uk really not get along with politically?
- What are the rules on voting in a general election in the UK?

Pretty pretty please, thank you x

left-wing and right-wing were terms first coined after the French revolution, from wikipedia:

The term originates from the French Revolution, when liberal deputies from the Third Estate generally sat to the left of the president's chair, a habit which began in the Estates General of 1789. The nobility, members of the Second Estate, generally sat to the right. It is still the tradition in the French Assemblée Nationale for the representatives to be seated left-to-right (relative to the Assemblée president) according to their political alignment.

 

[Divisive Cotton]

Rules in voting in a General Election

One person one vote - unless the governments changed that since the last time

 

[waverunner]

Thank you tdream I didn't understand these bits, first bit because I have no idea what an SWP type faction is, and second bit because I couldn't make head nor tail of it

Sadly the left seems to belong now to a mixture of fringe groups, those disenfranchised by the concept of organised politics and wierd SWP type factions.

It is entirely possible because of our system for a party to get less votes overall than the one they beat and be in power for 5 years. Often, more people vote against the gov't than vote for them.

And what is New Labour by the way? Is this the centre left you were saying?

 

[waverunner]

Rules in voting in a General Election

One person one vote - unless the governments changed that since the last time

Ah no I mean like back home if you don't vote in a general election you'll be fined/put in prison. Is it home vote, go to poll booth etc etc?

 

[tangerinedream]

The death of ideology

The hardist thing now about politics is that left and right, don't seem to mean anything in the sense that the commitment from any of the major parties to any sort of ideology or system of coherent beliefs has been abandoned in favour of a kind of wooly knee-jerk reactionary system of populist decision making. Maybe it was ever thus.

A simple way of understanding the difference seems to me to be

Labour: came out of trade union/workers rights movement - created NHS/BR/British Coal/Steel etc in the imediate post war years, and were commited to the concept of full employment, free education etc.

Tories: dismantled above after going along with it for 30 years - Though, way back in the old days, the Tories were thought to speak more for the common man than the Whigs (liberals) IRC

New Labour: Happy to go along with the post Tatcherite hegenomy (?) and certainly no longer believe in 'socialist' principle like taxing the rich on behalf of the many.

 

[Divisive Cotton]

Ah no I mean like back home if you don't vote in a general election you'll be fined/put in prison. Is it home vote, go to poll booth etc etc?

No fine if you don't vote and you have the choice of either going to the poll booth or voting from home

 

[tangerinedream]

Thank you tdream I didn't understand these bits, first bit because I have no idea what an SWP type faction is, and second bit because I couldn't make head nor tail of it




And what is New Labour by the way? Is this the centre left you were saying?

SWP stands for Socialist Workers Party who are a left wing group who seem to spend most of their time arguing with other left wing groups about the minutae of policy decisions they made in 1997 and fighting over who has interpreted the writing of Karl Marx in the most accurate way. I of course could be being grossly unfair.

New Labour : see above.

 

[waverunner]

OK bear with me and my simple way of viewing things:

Labour: came out of trade union/workers rights movement - created NHS/BR/British Coal/Steel etc in the imediate post war years, and were commited to the concept of full employment, free education etc.

Why would anyone not want ^^^ this?

Tories: dismantled above after going along with it for 30 years - Though, way back in the old days, the Tories were thought to speak more for the common man than the Whigs (liberals) IRC

I thought whigs were tories What did they replace the dismantled with?

New Labour: Happy to go along with the post Tatcherite hegenomy (?) and certainly no longer believe in 'socialist' principle like taxing the rich on behalf of the many.

What on earth is post Thatcherite hegenomy? Surely it makes sense to tax those who can afford it to help those who can't? It's like extending the congestion charge zone further into Lambeth (which thank fuck I believe isn't happening anymore) rather than more to the west where all the posh rich people live (which is happening I believe). Why would this principle not work?

 

[tangerinedream]

OK bear with me and my simple way of viewing things:

Why would anyone not want ^^^ this?

Dunno, beats me too. All I thought was wrong with nationalised industries was that there wasn't enough of them

I thought whigs were tories What did they replace the dismantled with?

I think their were tories and whigs. The tories being tories, or have I got it the wrong way round Was it whigs and Liberals. Ah, i think it was!

What on earth is post Thatcherite hegenomy? Surely it makes sense to tax those who can afford it to help those who can't? It's like extending the congestion charge zone further into Lambeth (which thank fuck I believe isn't happening anymore) rather than more to the west where all the posh rich people live (which is happening I believe). Why would this principle not work?

The post thatcherite world is one where instead of actually paying for anything through taxes levied, there are schemes like PFI, which on the surface look like investment in public services, but actually are a load of bollocks. Either way, middle englanders get a new school/hostpital and no rise in tax. Post Thatcher, raising tax would be a big no-no, as it would be 'punishing enterprise'

fff

 

[waverunner]

So are liberals essentially the middle ground between tories and labour, um, people? If so, surely this would be a nice little compromise?

 

[greenman]

The roots of the three largest British political parties go back to the 18th, 19th and early 20th Centuries. The Tories (Conservatives were originally the "Kings Men" - backing Church (i.e. Anglican/High Anglican) and Hanoverian monarchy (The Georges etc) against the Whigs who were more liberal (though also loyal to the Hanoverian succession) and had connections to the radical wings of the aristocracy, the rising merchant class and the nonconformist religious sects who had ridden high at the time of the English Revolutions in the 17th Century. As the vote was gradually expanded to more of the "non-propertied" classes the Whigs came to represent the middle classes - and so supported mercantilism, the new factory owners, and gradually an imperialist policy overses (liberal imperialism). Toryism came to represent the rural landlords, aristocrats and more reactionary elements of the mercantile and industrial classes. In the 19th Century working class radicalism rose with Chartism, demands for suffrage, republicanism and nascent socialism, trades unionism etc. The struggle for Catholic emancipation and that for independence for Ireland also had an effect. Whilst there was for some time a movement called "Radicalism", the first electoral representatives of the working classes had to deal uncomfortably under the Liberal banner for the most part.

This situation gradually became more intolerable for the politically aware working class and various small socialist groups and trade unionists began to move towards independent political organisation (something that Blair and some New Labour ideologists now are believed to have seen as a mistake which "divided the left" - i.e divided the working class from the radical bourgeoisie and industrialists - hence their creation of "New Labour" in the Labour Party as an attempt at recreating the old turn of the century Liberal Party.)

The Labour Party was formed from groups with Syndicalist, Socialist, and radical democratic ideas (- also influenced by radical Methodism), and for much of the 20th Century held the alliegance of most of the British working class and a good portion of the radical middle class too. They instituted various reforms that served class interests, democracy and progress, but had the common 20th Century flaws of centralism and state bureaucracy, later amplified by the supposed success of the 'Command Economies' of the East - something which seems funny now, but that was how it was seen up to the 1950s/60s or so)

Britain never had a significant Communist Party like other European countries, though their industrial militants did punch above their weight from say the 1930s to 1970s. The New Left came about in the 1950s and 1960s following disillusion of Labour members with bureaucratic social democracy and CP members with the repressive nature of the Soviet bloc shown by events in Hungary and Czechoslovakia. The new left was also influenced by the Trotskyist movement that had existed in Britain since the second world war (with exiles and refugees playing prominent parts at the start) This meant that in Britain the Trotskyists were the most influential current on the left outside Labour and the CP by the 1970s, and were more influential than the CP, and influential inside (entryism) the Labour Party by the 1980s. Unlike some other parts of the world, Britain never had more than a tiny Maoist movement

Labour's success and changing economic conditions at the end of the postwar 'boom' provoked a rethink on the right which was inspired by Eatern European exile anti-communists and free-marketeers. This led to the Thatcherite political 'revolution' of the 1980s and 1990s that dismantled the post war social-democratic consensus in Britain and led to the privatisation of almost all state controlled or owned sectors with the exception of Civil Service and Security Services, Police, Military, Health Service and Education.

In turn the New Labour experiment was forged in the fire of battles with Trotskyism and leftism in the Labour Party of the 1980s. Large numbers of the Trotskyists were harassed and expelled out of the party, and the soft-left cowed into obedience. The Blairites (Mandelsonites or Giddensites really - as these were their heavyweights, Blair is just a figurehead) capitulated to a whole sector of Thatcherite thought, whilst cynically using reformist left ideas of Gramsci-ite Eurocommunists and mutualists, co-operativists and libertarian socialists as "left cover" for their real project (the reinstitution of 19th Century mercantile liberalism and liberal imperialism as the best vehicle for the 'progressive elements' of the British ruling class). They came to dominate Labour by the mid 1990s and so formed the core of the 1997 Labour government. The government has shifted farther right and become more authoritarian since the first term - the left have been further marginalised. The soft left can still win conference votes, but the Blairites have rigged the Party so that the leadership can effectively ignore the conference. The Blairites have pushed the Thatcherite agenda even further, moving towards privatisation of the remaining disposable state assets - education and health, whilst vastly strengthening the repressive and surveillance arms of the state. At the same time they have pursued a social control agenda which has had some reditributive effects to keep the soft left happy. However, their authoritarianism and arrogance, control fetishism etc - inherited from earlier manifestations - and the Iraq war (liberal imperialism in action) - seem likely to be their undoing.

Meanwhile the New Left has developed along with the environmental, peace, feminist, and identity movements into the broad movement of NGOS we see today. These have also affected the rise of the Green Parties, and the left nationalist parties (Scottish National Party and Plaid Cymru) have increased in influence in Scotland and Wales. These relatively new forces to some extent combine the ideas of the New Social Movements with some of the old radical socialist ideas and the longer democratic and libertarian traditions of the 19th and 20th Century. Nevertheless, battles between left and right are not very far beneath the surface of these organisations either.

The situation is very fluid, but currently the Tories appear to be reverting to the protectionist/ruralist 19th Century model as opposed to Thatcherite neo-liberalism, tempered with Heathite "one nation Toryism". New Labour is in crisis as the success which kept the left at bay begins to evaporate in face of their contradictions. Meanwhile the focus of the Liberal Democrats (the fusion of the social democratic split-off from Labour - when the left dominated in the 80s - with the rump historic Liberals) appears to be becoming more like their European counterparts - i.e Thatcherite economically but socially liberal.

All this leaves the old working class in the cold, particularly when the remaining left appear to them to over-focus on segmented groups like the muslim community. Hence the growth in support for the BNP (who combine Tory protectionism with Labour statism and reactionary authoritarian racist elements). This has had a response on the left in the form of the IWCA who concentrate on 'working class' issues and communities - but they are tiny compared to the Far Right and traditionalist/Leninist Far Left.

Apart from all this popular movements and demagogues can spring from nowhere in the climate of political alienation (Fuel Protests, Countryside Alliance, Environmentalist groups, Tax protests) and electoral turnout is erratic.

One thing is certain - British politics is set to change over the next five years as economic and environmental factors make waves.

 

[Gmart]

The division between Keynesians and Monetarists is basically that of spending in the economy.

The K's want to spend money because they believe that they need to do this to ensure that everyone is employed.

The M's think that it's more important to spend only what is necessary and no more than the country can afford.

Thus the K's tend to create jobs but Inflation (general level of prices) tends to rise due to the large amount of public spending and borrowing. Tho the M's blamed the K's for the inflation due to the oil shocks in the 70's (see OPEC).

The M's meanwhile tend to control inflation better generally but the growth of the country and the number of jobs suffers, sometimes leading to recession.

The usual split is between the Conservatives and the Liberals.

The L's think that everything will be fine if we just let people get on with things as they see fit. Thus localised power and freedoms.

The C's feel that the world would fall apart if we released our control on it and thus they believe in more laws and more centralisation.

The Whigs were the Liberals and the Tories were the Conservatives.

Left usually refers to Communism (where the state runs everything) or Socialism (where we all own everything either through collectives or again through the state)

Right usually refers to Capitalism and the attitude that the market will react to any demand and will self stabilise. Any regulation is disliked as it prevents the company from competing and thus employing enough people.

The Right tends to cut taxes as this is popular, and the extra money gets spent on the economy thus leading to growth and more jobs. (Tend to be the rich)

The Left tend to tax more as they see problems everywhere which they feel the government MUST do something about. (Tend to be the poor)

I would suggest taking the political compass test here as it is quite accurate and the website is quite good at explaining the issues. It might clarify your position too.

 

[waverunner]

Wow thanks for that greenman and Gmarthews! I think I got most of it I tried that political compass test but (you're all going to think I'm VERY thick, but I'm not, honest).. I couldn't understand all the questions. I think this is mainly because I did not grow up in the UK and my English, though I speak it fluently, leaves a bit to be desired. And I never studied economics or business or anything and don't understand all that jargon.

So when people refer to left and right, they're not referring to political parties as such, but to theories/ideologies that the parties may be leaning towards?

So who holds the most power in a government's cabinet? Who's the most influential (apart from the PM)?

 

[tangerinedream]

Wow thanks for that greenman and Gmarthews! I think I got most of it I tried that political compass test but (you're all going to think I'm VERY thick, but I'm not, honest).. I couldn't understand all the questions. I think this is mainly because I did not grow up in the UK and my English, though I speak it fluently, leaves a bit to be desired. And I never studied economics or business or anything and don't understand all that jargon.

So when people refer to left and right, they're not referring to political parties as such, but to theories/ideologies that the parties may be leaning towards?

So who holds the most power in a government's cabinet? Who's the most influential (apart from the PM)?

Chancellor I would say, as he/she holds the purse strings for every other department.

 

[audiotech]

Power lies with the executive, with the Prime Minister of the day having authority. Ultimate power lies with the head of state, the Queen. Some pundits describe the UK electoral system as an elected dictatorship.

 

[waverunner]

What does the Queen actually do?

 

[In Bloom]

I've said it before and I'll say it again - The political compass is crap.

I am really, fantastically sick of people posting it up at every fucking opportunity. It's so biased towards the libertarian left, it's not even funny, and the entire notion of marking people's politics along a set of axes relative to an undefined "centre" is ludicrous.

 

[In Bloom]

*takes a deep breath*

Okay, calm now

What does the Queen actually do?

The Queen makes speeches, public appearences and that, in theory she could block any legislation she wants, choose a Prime Minister other than the one we've elected or dissolve parliament. The chances of her getting away with any of that without substantial military force behind her (i.e. in the event of a military coup) aren't brilliant though.

 

[Maggot]

Wavey, If you want to learn about politics, you'll do well to ignore In Bloom!

 

[waverunner]

*takes a deep breath*

Okay, calm now


The Queen makes speeches, public appearences and that, in theory she could block any legislation she wants, choose a Prime Minister other than the one we've elected or dissolve parliament. The chances of her getting away with any of that without substantial military force behind her (i.e. in the event of a military coup) aren't brilliant though.

So she doesn't do anything then?

 

[militant atheist]

Communism (where the state runs everything) or Socialism (where we all own everything either through collectives or again through the state)

Uumm....not really. Communism implies the abolition of property and the ultimate withering away of the state, with the economy run on a collective basis. Socialism is an intermediate stage between Capitalism and Communism.

Explained here: http://www.marxmail.org/faq/socialism_and_communism.htm

 

[waverunner]

I read Animal Farm. I know all about Communism

 

[treelover]

Greenman, get writing those pamphlets, we need you!

 

[treelover]

btw, I've C+P that post for future reference, sticky?

 

[shagnasty]

its hard to put into words what you know is wrong but luckily others can greenman done what i thought was a very good job