The political world is in complete turmoil at the moment. The two parties that have had the field to themselves throughout my lifetime are both deeply unpopular but we still have an undemocratic 'first past the post' electoral system which makes it possible for a party to take full power even though the majority hate them. We also have most of the "free" press owned by right wing billionaires, who also own the social media platforms. Add to this the avalanche of hate stirring AI generated memes from Russia and it's hardly surprising that the public space is so discordant. Rational debate is replaced by name calling and point scoring. People aren't listening to each other but trying to undermine each other.
At various times I've been a member of both the Green Party and the Labour party, and I haven't liked either, though my political sympathies lie in that red/green axis.
People support particular political factions for all kinds of reasons, not all of them rational. It may be that they find a particular candidate attractive, or they have a hatred for a particular social group. It is often that a party represents their short term interests, or pretends to.
To me, the obvious starting point is to ask what sort of a society would I like to live in. Since you ask. I'll tell you!
First of all it has to be sustainable, globally. There's no point in living a perfect life, whatever that is, if it's going to lead to a population crash through global famine caused by climate breakdown. Even if we don't expect it to happen in our lifetimes, most of us care about the next generation. "Well, it'll see me out" is the most irresponsible phrase I hear, and I hear it often. Frequently from people who have children who they profess to love!
From the above follows the need for fairness. As things stand most of the worlds resources, be they land, money or industrial facilities, are owned by a relatively small proportion of the global population. Whether they are the 1%, Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos et al, or just someone who owns agricultural land or a factory in Bangladesh, their income is derived passively from other people's efforts. The majority are trapped into working hard for somebody else in order to pay rent or a mortgage for somewhere to live and to buy food that they don't have time or space to grow for themselves.
Those who live by owning wealth have sometimes worked hard to attain that position, others have got there by lucky gambling but the vast majority have simply inherited wealth. Sometimes they've managed it well, sometimes not, but the fact remains that their comfortable lives rely on others having less comfortable lives.
Now, the status quo regarding wealth distribution may be alright if it was possible for everlasting economic growth to drag everyone out of poverty. The theory is that because the sum of wealth keeps inexorably increasing the eventually those who now work hard for a dollar a day or less will eventually drive SUVs and fly halfway round the planet for their holidays. By then, the owners of everything will be flying in private starships and enjoying their superyachts on the Martian canals. This is the theory of economic growth, but its pursuit has already run up against, or beyond, the capacity of our planet to sustain it. Most of the world's population still live in poverty.
In my view, we all need to live simply,so that others may simply live. That's not a message that most people want to hear. They have been trained to equate greater wealth with greater happiness, but it is not necessarily so.
In order for everyone to enjoy a comfortable life it will be necessary to redistribute the wealth, not just money but, in the words of the old Labour party, the means of production, distribution and exchange.
Clause 4 of the Labour party's constitution, so triumphantly expunged by Tony Blair and his pals, was often referred to as a nationalisation clause, but not necessarily so. There are many ways to skin a cat, if skinning cats is your thing. I am more of the Kropotkin/William Morris school of socialism rather than the Marxist/Leninist school. One of my more right wing friends insists on referring to me as his favourite communist. I know he means well, but it's highly inaccurate. Although the original Communist vision was one of liberation, I can think of little worse than the centralised bureaucratic nightmare that the Soviet Union became. Even worse is the unashamedly National Socialist surveilance state that the People's Republic of China has become.
In general, people of the left have a rosy view of human nature. Those on the right tend to believe that everyone is out for him/herself and continually in conflict with one another. Both are wrong, but often people feel the need to behave as though they are jungle dwellers because that belief is so widely promoted in our culture. In fact our species has only risen to prominence on our planet by its ability to co-operate and to devise rules to live by.
We all tend to assume that other people are pretty much like we are. In fact people vary widely. That's OK. If I need a brain surgeon I need someone with enormous specialised knowledge, very precise motor skills and a calm disposition. That's not me, but I can build them a very nice boat. Our different traits complement each other.
The difficulty comes with the 1% who lack compassion. This is to do with an undeveloped part of the brain. If treated well as children they often develop the ability to co-operate and find a suitable niche where they do good rather than harm. They often make good brain surgeons! If brought up in a dog eat dog culture they can become axe murderers, CEOs or dictators. Such people, commonly known as psychopaths, mostly lean to the right politically, but will actually adopt any ideology that they see as giving them a route to power. Mussolini began his political career as an anarchist.
Revolutions have a problem. Overthrowing the unjust system and replacing it with something better seems a good idea, but there is always resistance, often armed, from the status quo. To organise a fight the revolutionary group needs strong leadership. which is usually taken up by a psychopath, be it Napoleon, Lenin or Mao. These people develop a cult following that empowers their followers to behave without compassion and negate the original objectives of the revolution in order to keep the glorious leader in power. As the Chinese say, "he who fights the dragon becomes the dragon."
More peaceful transitions can also lose their way. Unfortunately the Labour party took their excellent clause 4 to mean Nationalisation, which is a very distant and indirect form of common ownership. In 1945 they had a once in a lifetime chance to change over to common ownership, but they blew it. Instead of giving core industries to the the workers they nationalised them, keeping the same boss/worker conflict and making them easy for the Tories to privatise again. I think the reason that the Labour party took the route of Nationalisation rather than worker ownership was that it retained well paid roles for powerful individuals and for trades unions, which would be redundant if the workers owned the company and elected the management.
My MP is Angela Rayner. She gets a lot of flak for everything she does. A lot of this is clearly mysoginistic or classist, relating to her humble beginnings. She's made some mistakes regarding her slightly unconventional housing arrangements, but those who criticise her for this are actually experts at getting away with dodging tax. I like her, though I don't always agree with her.
Angela came up through the trades union movement which is, quite rightly, devoted to improving wages and conditions for workers. During her short period of access to the levers of power she got legal improvements to these things. These changes have been heavily criticised for making small businesses unviable. No mention is made of the fact that many small businesses are paying crippling rents to those who live by owning rather than by working. Often that rent money is being sent abroad and so is lost to our economy. The media never mentions the drag on our economy caused by high rents. Wages largely go back into the local economy.
Trades unions have been declining in influence throughout my lifetime. Essentially they are part of capitalism, a necessary voice for workers confronted by the immense power of capital. The problem is that capital is now global but unions are national. The bosses can say 'If you don't like it we can relocate to China". We need global trades unions to defeat global capital. The only one of these is the Wobblies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Workers_of_the_World who are seen as a threat by most unions, who seek compromise with capital rather than overthrowing it. The Wobblies are still active, and actually growing in Britain. https://iww.org.uk/
I feel that the current Labour Party leadership, with Morgan McSweeney as puppetmaster, have worked a con trick on the British public. The biggest threat to democracy and the well being of ordinary people are the handful of people who own so much of our planet's resources that they are actually wealthier than many nations. Our allegedly socialist leaders have done secret deals with them in order to gain limited power. Don't get me wrong. The Labour government are slowly sorting out the mess left by the Tories and will do better for ordinary people than their predecessors, but, they're not interested in tackling the ownership of resources. They're happy that the rest of us pay rent to the owners of everything rather than taking back ownership. Did you know that the pipes delivering gas to your house are largely owned by a Chinese billionaire. We get the crumbs left over after the tax free rents have been paid.
One of the things that I have learned about recently is the exsistence of cults in politics. Like most people, I used to see cults as things like the Moonies, The Scientologists or the Branch Davidians. In fact there are many unrecognised cults that play a huge and unhelpful part in politics. MAGA is an obvious one but they exist on the left as well as the right. How do you define a cult. Perhaps a good definition would be 'a set of beliefs held tenaciously even to the extent of denying or refusing to consider evidence to the contrary'. If Trump tells his followers that prices are going down they believe it, even if eggs are costing more. Along with cults goes the idea of a magic man. Someone who is infallible and goes against conventional thinking because he's such a genius. Brexit was a cult and Farage it's magic man. Devotees still will not acknowledge what a disaster it's been or that Farage is no more than a conman. Through Reform UK Ltd he's now leading another cult based on the fallacy of white English superiority.
I could never wholheartedly get behind Jeremy Corbyn. Corbynism got too cult like for me. I recall a vicious attack on Facebook by some Corbyn devotees of a rather vulnerable lady who dared to suggest that the Blair government did some good things. It did, and overall it was better than the Tories, but, by using PFI for almost everything we ended up paying more rent to global financiers. Jeremy Corbyn was an unlikely cult leader but the left made him one because they wanted a magic man who would solve everything. In fact he did not have the management skills to lead a darts club, ran a clueless election campaign and walked straight into the antisemitism trap set for him. I disliked his support for dictatorships, just because they were left wing, and could never understand his apparent fondness for obvious psychopath Vladimir Putin.
Today is the day of the Denton and Gorton byelection. It's a first past the post contest and currently Labour, Green and the Nazis , call a spade a spade, are pretty much level pegging. I live in the next door constituency with similar demographics. If I had a vote I would use it to support whoever was most likely to defeat the Nazi. It's hard to know who that is because the polls put them all so close. The danger is that the Nazi will get in with 1/3 of the vote, while 2/3 of the voters can't stand him. That's first past the post for you! In 1933 63% of voters did not support the National Socialist party. They didn't get the chance to vote again.
I worry about what the makeup of Tameside council will be after the May elections, I expect Labour to do badly. There are already some independent councillors, about whom I have mixed feelings. Perhaps we'll get some Greens but, in view of the amount of casual racism locally I fear we could get an influx of Fascists.