The Moderate Politics Thread

[bickster]

1 minute ago, bobzy said:

But how is that a view?  I guess I don't fully understand.

If someone said "what's your view on healthcare funding" (as an example), I may expect my left-wing view to be that there should be an increase in public funding to deal with the backlogs whereas a right-wing view may be that the private sector is brought in to deal with the backlogs.  What is a "centrist" views?  Have some increased public funding but also use the private sector?

Well you could look at Energy suppliers for a better example

The Left want full Nationalisation. The Right want full free market economy. The Labour Party's current policy is a bit of both, allow the current suppliers to exist as they currently are but set up a government owned one too which gives them the advantages of being able to have a subsidised supplier should the need arise, a supplier of last resort if a supplier goes bust and essentially be able to control the market by undercutting it if they need to.

[KentVillan]

1 minute ago, Chindie said:

Can you be an extreme centrist? So sensible you won't even consider pushing for anything that might change something?

Yes, I think this was the disease that afflicted a lot of the later Blair disciples in the Miliband / Corbyn years. They stood for so little besides the cult of Blair and had few original ideas. But that doesn’t mean centrism per se is misguided.

[The Fun Factory]

3 minutes ago, KentVillan said:

Yes, I think this was the disease that afflicted a lot of the later Blair disciples in the Miliband / Corbyn years. They stood for so little besides the cult of Blair and had few original ideas. But that doesn’t mean centrism per se is misguided.

And yet they won 3 elections, two of which were landslides

[bickster]

1 minute ago, The Fun Factory said:

And yet they won 3 elections, two of which were landslides

He said in the Miliband / Corbyn years

[bobzy]

8 minutes ago, bickster said:

Well you could look at Energy suppliers for a better example

The Left want full Nationalisation. The Right want full free market economy. The Labour Party's current policy is a bit of both, allow the current suppliers to exist as they currently are but set up a government owned one too which gives them the advantages of being able to have a subsidised supplier should the need arise, a supplier of last resort if a supplier goes bust and essentially be able to control the market by undercutting it if they need to.

OK, so my understanding is broadly there.

In which case, I don't actually think "true" (or... far?!) centrists exist.  People will always align, however marginally, one way or the other on at least some things.

[blandy]

6 minutes ago, KentVillan said:

I think this was the disease that afflicted a lot of the later Blair disciples in the Miliband / Corbyn years.

Milliband/Corbyn as leaders were the drivers, really of policies for manifestos, and they were not centrists. Not sure that the Blairites really had much of a sway on either of Corbyn/Milliband or their party policies at the time, so I'd say it's not that they didn't have any policies, it's that they weren't really involved by the leader in setting policy, if that makes sense. My guess is had they been, they would have, as Blairites, proposed Blairite things.

[bickster]

9 minutes ago, bobzy said:

OK, so my understanding is broadly there.

In which case, I don't actually think "true" (or... far?!) centrists exist.  People will always align, however marginally, one way or the other on at least some things.

So in my example which way are Labour aligning? Towards the free market or towards nationalisation?

 

[KentVillan]

10 minutes ago, blandy said:

Milliband/Corbyn as leaders were the drivers, really of policies for manifestos, and they were not centrists. Not sure that the Blairites really had much of a sway on either of Corbyn/Milliband or their party policies at the time, so I'd say it's not that they didn't have any policies, it's that they weren't really involved by the leader in setting policy, if that makes sense. My guess is had they been, they would have, as Blairites, proposed Blairite things.

Yes I was talking about the Blairite factions during those years, not the front bench teams.

If you look at the output from the centre left think tanks, the voices that still had a platform on TV etc - they were really struggling to say anything interesting.

[KentVillan]

17 minutes ago, The Fun Factory said:

And yet they won 3 elections, two of which were landslides

The people I was talking about didn’t win any elections at all. Liz Kendall is the kind of person I had in mind.

[bobzy]

25 minutes ago, bickster said:

So in my example which way are Labour aligning? Towards the free market or towards nationalisation?

I think you can be centrist on one particular thing - or many particular things - but not everything.

[bickster]

Just now, bobzy said:

I think you can be centrist on one particular thing - or many particular things - but not everything.

That is such a strange point to argue

[bobzy]

4 minutes ago, bickster said:

That is such a strange point to argue

It’s not an argument

[bickster]

1 minute ago, bobzy said:

It’s not an argument

Thats like saying centrists don't exist  

[bobzy]

Just now, bickster said:

Thats like saying centrists don't exist  

I know what you’re saying, but I also don’t understand 

[bickster]

Just now, bobzy said:

I know what you’re saying, but I also don’t understand 

There's more than one definition of argue and I didn't mean it in the sense of an angry  quarrel or disagreement

[VILLAMARV]

Isn't what is being described here, effectively just Realpolitik?

[VILLAMARV]

9 hours ago, blandy said:

Overton window

thanks for this btw. That's my learning thing for the day.

[blandy]

34 minutes ago, VILLAMARV said:

Isn't what is being described here, effectively just Realpolitik?

It's definitely a part of it IMO. I might be wrong, and happy for people to disagree, but it seems like an acceptance of realities is part of what centrists base their ideas on, but I guess it's also true that someone away from the centre  might feel "the current status/situation is so bad, that we need to completely break up or change what we have now and re-build", so maybe they (we) would feel that on that thing, they too are proposing realpolitik solutions? Also, though maybe that's still subject to the potentially fairytales/ genius test?

[KentVillan]

1 hour ago, VILLAMARV said:

Isn't what is being described here, effectively just Realpolitik?

Realpolitik usually refers to power politics, especially foreign / military policy (Kissinger etc) … it’s more about the how of politics.

The far right and far left can use realpolitik to force through their agenda.

Centrism overlaps with realpolitik, but it’s also more of an ideological / policy position. Eg nobody would describe Nick Clegg as a master of realpolitik, but he is clearly a centrist. Dom Cummings isn’t a centrist, but he’s very good at realpolitik.

[VILLAMARV]

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/realpolitik

Quote

practical politics, decided more by the urgent needs of the country, political party, etc., than by morals or principles

If the real centre shifts over time - i.e a centrist when I was born would classify as a left winger these days - then I don't understand how, ideologically, one can describe onesself as a centrist/moderate.

I totally get the practical, negotiation side of the label, it's easy to comprehend.

But, ideologically and policy-wise, what constitues a centrist? Which policies are centrist?

If we accept the middle of two points argument how far to the extremes do we go to set the metric? And if that is the metric then wouldn't everything that's not 'extreme' be counted as the centre. Where are the lines drawn?

And I hope my posting history would make it unnecessary to state, but for opacity I'll do it, but I'm not a fan of the left/right labels as they adhere to modern politics. The narrowing of the debate surely means the choice between the 3 main parties over here - if using the middle ground of the current overton window - would all constitute centrist parties, no? even though on any old skool scale they are all right of centre (If we accept the lurch to the right of mainstream politics in my lifetime)

In the US the same term is used but for a more right wing version of politics than we have over here - the different overton window.

It's easy to imagine those on the left of the Tories and those on the right of the Labour party as 'centrists' in their own party as opposed to extremists. But I don't get how it can have an ideology.