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CommentWays forward for the Liberal Democrats? Why winning power is overrated
Archive — Left
Left-wing v right-wing: it’s complicated — — YouGov
A fascinating study from YouGov around people’s understanding of what is meant by left-wing and right-wing, and what policies people who self-describe as left- and right-wing actually support.
The article sweeps aside the idea that politics is better seen through an additional authoritarian/libertarian axis. Presumably a study for another day.
But from a liberal perspective, and as someone who doesn’t clearly view themselves as either left- or right-wing, this makes interesting reading.
This study shows that the majority of people who:
- Want a greater redistribution of wealth
- Think the minimum wage is too low
- Want to nationalise the railways
- Want to nationalise utilities
also:
- Think the criminal justice system is too soft
- Want tighter restrictions on immigration
- Support capital punishment
- Favour powerful government over individual freedoms
It’s almost as if believing the government should have more control over economic activity, and believing the government should have more control over people are… somehow… linked. 🤔
Values and voting
How to measure levels of populism, and how that cuts across traditional measures of economic left/right and liberal/authoritarian sentiment.
Populist sentiments are more common on the left than the right of the economic dimension, and authoritarians are more likely to be populist than liberals but the patterns are complex…
The Labour party win a clear majority of the votes of those on the ‘liberal’ and ‘centre’ left. But their vote share is lower among the ‘authoritarian’ left than it is among the centre liberal position. In fact, the Conservatives gained greater share of the left-authoritarians (regardless of populist sentiment).
The centrist fallacy
Fascinating piece from Nick Barlow on why it is problematic for the Liberal Democrats to attempt to chase centrist voters. Because while most people report having centrist views, when you analyse what their views actually are, more people are actually economically-left authoritarians.
These views are the effective centre of views in Britain, but they’re not really at the centre of political debate and in conjunction they tend to be the most unrepresented.
What is concerning for a liberal is that there do not seem to be many of us generally. Moreover, Nick Barlow’s analysis suggests that liberals tend to be on the economic left, not the centre.