Misunderstanding the British Election

For John, BLUF:  I know there are people who think we would be better off with a government more like Venezuela, but frankly those folks have a solution for making all equal (except for the leaders) by making everyone poor.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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Misreading the British Elections

Here is the sub-headline:

Corbyn is no Sanders, Johnson is no Trump

From Commonweal Magazine, by Associate Editor Matthew Sitman, 24 December 2019.

Here is the lede plus one:

In the weeks leading up to the Conservative Party’s triumph in the British elections earlier this month, there were just enough glimmers of hope to let Labour partisans nurture what, deep down, they probably knew were unrealistic dreams of an upset—anecdotes about surging voter registration, talk of armies of canvassers, a bit of movement in the polls.  In the end, that only made the final results more stunning.  Boris Johnson will lead a commanding majority in Parliament with a mandate, as his campaign slogan went, to “get Brexit done.”

The vote tallies had barely been announced when pundits began churning out dire warnings about what this meant for Democrats in the United States: See what happens when you move too far left?  In the Atlantic, Yascha Mounk gravely suggested that if Democrats “position themselves outside of America’s cultural mainstream, they may suffer the same dismal fate as Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party.”  In New York magazine, Andrew Sullivan admonished them to “ignore the woke.”  The New York Times rushed out an article about the “ominous signs” centrist politicians like Joe Biden and Rahm Emanual saw in Labour’s defeat.  Roger Cohen, also in the New York Times, published a column titled “Boris Johnson and the Coming Trump Victory in 2020.”  His colleague Bret Stephens seemed to agree, concluding that to oppose Trump with “progressive primal screams is to ensure his re-election.”

Not much of this was serious analysis. It’s true that Donald Trump could win again in November, especially in the absence of an economic downturn.  But the direct comparisons between U.S. politics and what happened in Great Britain strain credulity.  Most of all, Jeremy Corbyn was a deeply unpopular candidate, quite apart from his politics.  His approval rating going into the election was forty points underwater.  While some of this surely was due to an onslaught of negative press, including charges of anti-Semitism, it’s also true that Corbyn could seem evasive in his answers about Brexit, allowing his position to be tagged as “dither and delay”—during his final debate with Johnson, he refused to say whether he would campaign for or against the deal he promised he would negotiate with Brussels and put to a second referendum.  Bernie Sanders, often compared to Corbyn, is viewed quite differently.  As Eric Levitz pointed out, he’s “more than 15 times as popular as his British comrade.”

There’s little evidence that Labour’s leftwing agenda should be blamed for their loss. One exit poll found that only 12 percent of respondents cited the party’s economic policies as the reason they didn’t vote for Labour, while 43 percent said it was because of the party’s leadership.  Polling on the Labour platform was summarized this way by the Independent:  “The public are absolutely not scared of government intervention and quite like Labour's socialist platform.  These policies individually range from quite popular to ridiculously popular.”  Proposals to raise taxes on the rich and nationalize railways and water companies, for example, garnered broad support. Whatever else this means, it certainly doesn’t prove that Democrats should tack to the center instead of embracing a wealth tax, Medicare for All, or the Green New Deal.

When Trump runs for re-election, he’ll no longer be a blank screen onto which voters can project their hopes, but a candidate who has to defend a record of astonishing cruelty, incompetence, and pathetic obedience to the demands of corporations and plutocrats.

There is at least one lesson Democrats should take away from the British elections, however: rightwing populism remains a potent political force.

Why is populism "Right Wing"?.nbsp; Using left and right to describe parties is not very accurate.  For example, the Nazis, socialists of a different rank as described as "right wing".  Are they?  If murder is the criteria, they are more like Communists.

It is like using "red" and "Blue" to describe US political parties.  In the course of my life Red has almost always been the part of Revolution.  Are the Republicans, the GOP, the revolutionaries?

But most of all, the working class in the United States is rapidly becoming more diverse—in a decade or two, half of it will be people of color.  Much of the commentary on the British elections has simply erased this fact, treating the aging white population of a small island as representative of our own electorate.  Lacking a controversy as galvanizing as Brexit, and faced with the prospect of the United States becoming a majority-minority country within many of our lifetimes, the GOP increasingly relies on undemocratic institutions such as the Electoral College, the Senate, and the courts, as well as assaults on voting rights and foreign interference in elections, to cling to power.  If Trump wins again, it will not look like the wave that delivered Johnson his impressive majority.  It’s more likely that he’ll win while receiving millions fewer votes than his Democratic opponent—an prospect that reveals a different task for those who want to see him defeated.

I was wondering if Mr Sitman was a racist, since he seems to be viewing politics through the lens of race and ethnicity.  Then I cheated and looked up the word.  The word suggests that one views one's own race as inherently superior to other races.  That doesn't seem to be Mr Sitman.  He seems to view politics in terms of the balance of races, rather than through the lens of The Declaration of Independence.  Where Mr Sitman and I differ is that he seems to think that all left wing views and political systems are equal and I believe we have a very good system and we should be looking for immigrants who wish to benefit from it and sustain it.  To be blunt, I want some semblance of an Anglo-Saxon form of Government, something that caters to what we call The Rights of Englishmen.

The other way Mr Sitman goes wrong is in understanding today's political situation.  As Reporter Silena Zito keeps pointing out, it wasn't that Mr Treump (or Mr Boris Johnson) created a political moment.  Rather, they stumbled upon it and exploited the moment.  Here is a column that talks to the, "The Town That Wouldn't Be Passed By".  We are still a fairly high trust society.  I don't wish to see the US become more like Latin American societies, especially Mexico, with not only a drug cartel society, but an avocado cartel society.♠

As for the sub headline, I think Mr Jeremy Corbyn is a disaster and an anti-semite.  As for Senator Sanders, some of his associates are anti-semites and his proposals are a disaster for the American economy and the American People.

Regards  —  Cliff

♠  A couple of weeks ago an avocado cartel shot up some town in Mexico, asserting their authority.  What can you do?  Boycott guacamole and vote Republican in November 2020.