Post by cjm on Jun 8, 2015 5:18:25 GMT
www.standpointmag.co.uk/node/6075/full
In short, despite being led by a mediocre Conservative prime minister, who has no answer to and often exacerbates the great problems Britain faces, despite the worst fall in real incomes since the 1920s, Britain has shifted to the Right.
The comforting notion that it has a “progressive majority,” which one way or another will keep the Conservatives in their box, died on May 7. In 2015, the combined vote share of all right-wing political parties (Conservatives, UKIP and the Ulster Unionists) rose to 50.5 per cent of all votes cast. The left-leaning political parties (Labour, SNP, Greens, Plaid Cymru and SDLP) gained just 39.8 per cent. My colleague Michael Harris of the Little Atoms website says that if you include Liberal Democrats on the right-hand side of the ledger — and as they were happy to vote for a party that had been in alliance with the Tories, you probably should — you get an even worse result for the Left. In all, 58.4 per cent of the public voted for parties on the Right.
In short, despite being led by a mediocre Conservative prime minister, who has no answer to and often exacerbates the great problems Britain faces, despite the worst fall in real incomes since the 1920s, Britain has shifted to the Right.
The comforting notion that it has a “progressive majority,” which one way or another will keep the Conservatives in their box, died on May 7. In 2015, the combined vote share of all right-wing political parties (Conservatives, UKIP and the Ulster Unionists) rose to 50.5 per cent of all votes cast. The left-leaning political parties (Labour, SNP, Greens, Plaid Cymru and SDLP) gained just 39.8 per cent. My colleague Michael Harris of the Little Atoms website says that if you include Liberal Democrats on the right-hand side of the ledger — and as they were happy to vote for a party that had been in alliance with the Tories, you probably should — you get an even worse result for the Left. In all, 58.4 per cent of the public voted for parties on the Right.
