Now Keynesianism is the hard left, you have to give credit to the propaganda folks.

Firstly, if I'm catching your drift properly, I think I agree with you. But I'm curious what you mean by social democracy.

And 'the right wing of Labour' should really be an oxymoron. Labour values should be about social justice, not about appeasing international capital. Voting for a right wing Labour Party if you're after social justice is about as ridiculous as stuffing habaneros down your penis.

So let's say the political spectrum is a scale of 1-9 where 1 is 'the left' and 9 is 'the right'. If the centre ground is at, say, 7 and you have 2 main parties fighting for control of 7, then do you think it's acceptable for those whose political persuasions are represented at 1-4 to just vote for the next closest 'electable' party over at 7?

Seems to me that the right thing to do is to create an alternative for those 1-4s, maybe even the 5s so that their voice is heard. Simply voting for the next best thing when that is miles from what you actually want is completely futile, and pretty much why people become disinterested in politics. Luckily the last part is changing, which is bad news for people like you who support the conservative agenda.

Please explain exactly what you mean by the emboldened.

Remember, if you can't explain it to a child, you probably don't know what you're talking about.

1) What exactly do you mean by democracy?

2) Nothing. What's your point?

Absolutely. It's down to the propaganda industry that people think everyone who's not super rich has much more than they actually have. We're told 'free markets' are sought, but there's nothing free about being led a merry dance when all you want to do is buy a [whatever].

That's not the whole picture though. You don't have to win to bring about policy changes that better match your ideals.

JC is already causing (or even better allowing) Burnham to move towards the left a bit. If at some point Labour moves towards the left a bit and manages to be credible than the Tories move towards the left a bit as well to try to capture that ground.

Yeah, this is correct. Another example more specific is how pre coalition lib dems would have their policies adopted by lab and con if they were too popular to ignore, however in coalition they got a number of policies enacted by them how they wanted.

So yes out of power you can wield influence but it's extremely inefficient and unfocused compared to when you're in power.

Far less efficient than being in power I agree but on the other hand it's focused on what you actually believe in.

Some balance is required. Since Blair started it's been far too tilted in the direction of winning being all that matters. You might argue that JC is too principled and need more pragmatism and you might be right - very hard to be sure unless he wins (maybe not even then as 'they' will be so out to get him) but even if he turns out to be too principled he could redress the balance a bit.

Just browsing the latest posts and Andy Burnham on Radio 4 today programme again.

BBC really want him to win.

Reading comprehension problems.

The utterly uncontroversial idea that the people should at some level, be it directly or through some kind of representative republic, have an equal say in the ruling party by a system of vote.

You've come out and said that if the Tories win the next election it'll be down to ordinary people being unaware of 'what is good for them'. We need to settle on a universal definition of 'what is good for them' before you can make a meaningful statement in that regard.

If you can't, it does seem rather arrogant to suggest that you know better than absolute swathes of the population who voted on the basis of their own considered opinions, just as you did.

Social democracy is basically welfare state of Scandinavian countries in the 80s. I don't think the UK is in condition to do that of course but that is what I mean.
What I meant for the right wing of labour was the more centrist part of the party ( in Spanish wing is used to talk about specific party factions not the whole spectrum, so every party has a right wing and a left wing. The left wing of the Conservative party would be something like Jesse Norman even though he is in the right of the whole political spectrum)

I have realized reading about these election that there is a widespread fallacy within British politics. Which is basically that labour has to move to the center to win elections. Now of course that is what happened in the 90s so the narrative is reasonable but the literature I've read doesn't back that up as a universal truth. Winning elections is not necessarily about specific policies that are more right wing or left wing.
In chile the centre leftish coalition lost the election to the right in 2010 with a pretty centrist program. The next election they runned under a much more leftish program and they won in a landslide.

Yeah i agree with that.

I think in British politics, the voters tend to go for the person who has a clear vision and political ideology, and who shapes their party in that image.

When you look at Thatcher, Blair and Cameron, their governments were/are an absolute reflection of their personal political standpoints. Whether any of their policies were right or wrong is obviously debatable, however they had absolute conviction that what they were doing was in the best interests of the country.

You can say exactly the same of Sturgeon and Farage. And now Corbyn.

I think people are (rightly) suspicious when politicians and parties start shifting ground to appease what they perceive as the popular vote and try and win an election.

And not just suspicious of it - when labour argue for tory policies a fair chunk who believe them will decide to vote tory.

Spoke with a friend of mine who's spent a lifetime on the far left of politics - Militant Tendency back in the day, etc.

Thought he'd be delighted with Corbyn's potential rise to power, not so however. He characterised him thus:

Militant tendency types not liking JC is a good sign. I'm liking him more.

and the NHS do fund homeopathy. I think they should do so homeopathically by repeatedly cutting the funding until it can't be detected but still works.

I am going to totally steal this and use it in the future.

Played Monbiot

I know fine well what you said. My conclusions are based on everything I've read from you. You're a Tory.

Utterly uncontroversial? I think you are completely mistaken. How can you reconcile 'equal say' with the democratic deficit?

In the context of this discussion, Jeremy Corbyn would like to see a bottom up approach to policy making through the democratic process, rather than the bullying approach we're used to. Don't accuse me of being 'anti democratic' when you've no idea what it even means.

At what level does 'some' level exactly mean?

What do you think of direct democracy? I'd say we have the technology now to enable this to happen, and decision making power should go as deep into society as possible, allowing people to truly partake in the process of organising society.

Equally, we need to make that settlement before you can accuse me of deciding what is 'good for them'.

What I will say though is that I'm making the point that the media is biased towards the right wing: it sets the tone of the debate; it influences voting decisions made. As long as this is the case, it's never going to make a big deal (if any deal) out of changing the paradigm to stakeholders before shareholders. For example you're not going to find them up in arms on the BBC about the current privatisation agenda.

hahahah that's so typical of 'militant' far left types. They all end up hating each other, accusing the other of not being left enough.

The problem here seems to be with your mate.

Are you saying this is funded on the NHS? I can't believe it.