Political Extremities and our Lack of a Left

With the recent popular political rise of Nigel Farage’s UKIP, there has been a frantic scurrying by politicians of all the political parties to adapt their stance and language. This is an attempt to capture the allegiance of those seemingly disenfranchised sections of society that put an unprecedented number of UKIP representatives into the European Parliament. With a glut of similarly right-wing parties doing well across the continent in the European elections, the press condemned the shift, whilst also bemoaning the lack of representation for this group of voters.

This overreaction to the situation is typical of our media in the UK. Although distasteful, the crisis, as presented by pretty much every newspaper and media outlet, was overstated. Their political clout has been exaggerated, they do not represent a power to affect policies in any meaningful political way, although it is a worrying statement on the general outlook of European nations.  It is no great shock that there were so many voters that hold these somewhat bigoted opinions but more that they were so easily and broadly successful.

However, I am not chastising the non-voting section of the public for their apathy in this regard, as many outlets have. If these voters ‘let’ these right-wingers in by not voting, rather it is indicative of the continuing alienation of the British public to the overall political process. And a product of the value-shift of this nation towards the political right. A trend that has built up progressively over recent decades.

The fact is that we live in a predominantly right-wing country. When Tony Blair and Gordon Brown dispensed with Clause IV, ending the supremacy of the Labour Party Conference, broke its ties with the unions, changed its policy-making procedures and distanced itself from its socialist roots, it brought an electoral win. But it was a pyrrhic victory. What we voted in did not protect the principles of the left-wing of this nation but rather, the Centrist movement was a preamble towards a slow, perpetual shift to the right. The Labour party faithful felt, rightfully, betrayed. I was one of them.

It was, effectively, the final capitulation of the potency of mainstream left-wing politics on this history-rich island. New Labour’s shift to the right, establishing for itself a left-of-centre economic stance was, as the late Baroness Thatcher stated, her ‘greatest achievement’. It was the end of a real political choice between the right and left, the end of having any say in the direction, politically and economically, the UK can head in. It was the end of there being a mainstream party who represented me. After that, there was no party I could honestly vote for.

Yet, despite the consolidation of market economics as the principle ideological driving force behind our society and the essential victory of right-wing economic politics, the instilled fear of Socialism still permeates the general consciousness. Some left-over, endemically imprinted belief that such a movement will somehow destabilise the fabric of our society. This is a nonsense. Those things that we should be proud of and were the envy of the world for having – a National Health Service and a strong Welfare State to support the most struggling within our population – are the very things that the capitalist system, aided by increasing deregulation and a lack of governing by our political parties, is endangering.

Our society is being destabilised, all of the rights that were so hard-fought to achieve are being stripped away. The social mobility that a strong economy and infrastructure should provide has been eroded in favour of supporting the profitability of the top levels of business and finance. Poverty levels are rising alarmingly, with no solution in sight, and there has never been so great a disparity between the rich and the poor.

This country needs a change. It needs one of the parties to offer an alternative to austerity and the direction of financial deregulation and non-involvement that led us to the banking crash in the first place. We need one of the parties to challenge the hegemony of big business and finance and instead champion the rights of the vast majority; the workers of this country.

What is needed is not Socialism necessarily, but a halt to this monumental and worrying shift to the right. That’s where those plastic-faced Tories we hate come from. That’s where UKIP live.

We don’t have to shift drastically, but we desperately need a shift to the left…