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LadyEllen -> RE: For those on the political left....new worries (6/8/2009 5:39:13 AM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: DomKen
This is funny. The right wingers think center right parties doing well in the EU parliament election means something bad for Obama and Democrats. Let me break this to you gently, take a deep breath and sit down, Obama and the Democratic party would be right of center in Europe. The GOP would be a far right party in Europe. Greens and socialists are the left parties in Europe.
Agreed. Were Obama over here in the UK, he'd either be on the left wing of the Conservative party (the centre right) or the extreme right wing of New Labour (centre left). New Labour of course being the "Blair Stitch Up Project" whereby the Labour party ("old" Labour) was moved dramatically right, took on the clothes of the centre right and continued Conservative centre right economic policy to win in 1997 when the actual Conservative party had become unelectable.
It really is amusing to hear so many Americans complaining of Obama's "socialist policies" in this context. Heaven help them - or the nearest ER, if they should ever come across a real socialist, let alone a Marxist, like the ones we have here (and who polled dismally low in the Euro elections for the most part)!
Now, with the coming of Brown there was hope that the New Labour project might be turned back a little and we might actually have Labour - representing the people rather than big business and the bankers - but sadly not, and then of course the results of pursuing centre right economics came to pass in the financial crisis. The reason that the Labour party went down here was not because of failed socialist policies - it was because it abandoned its core electorate in favour of bankers and big business, and when that bit us all in the arse, it continued to do so. As a result the Labour vote stayed at home or went for a protest vote - note the Conservatives did not increase their vote - it was the Labour vote which melted away.
As for the continent - where for the most part its centre right parties in charge, the socialists/left wing did badly because the centre right put the blame for the crisis squarely on "Anglo-Saxon capitalism" - that means you lot in the US and us lot in the UK who follow whatever you do as if it were always the best thing ever. Such a model and its associated practices have long been resisted on the mainland of Europe which sees business as having a social function, not being an end in itself. By promoting the idea of reforming capitalism, economics, financial markets and business, the centre right did well; this idea was prevalent also at the recent G20, alongside the comparison with the Anglo Saxon solution - to prop up the existing dominant model as the US and UK wanted.
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