4 ms·

Wasn’t my experience as an American living in London. Labour and Tory mapped well enough to US politics.

by dfee 6y ago

nostrademons 6y ago
Most of the U.S. Democratic party (all but the Bernie Sanders wing, really) is to the right of the Tories. Britain has nationalized health care (which isn't really up for debate in Britain the way the much more conservative Obamacare is starkly divisive in American politics), Tories supported LGBTQ marriage before it was legalized in the U.S, and Boris Johnson endorsed Barack Obama.
- oarsinsync 6y ago
  > Britain has nationalized health care (which isn't really up for debate in Britain Correct, there's no debate. New Labour under Blair started privatising the NHS, and the Tories simply accelerated the process, taking advantage of opportunities presented to them to do so (e.g. Covid). Alas, this doesn't make the news, so there continues to be no national conversation about how important the NHS is, beyond paying lip service and occasionally clapping for them. So yeah, there's no debate, because both parties were doing it.
  - TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
    New Labour were more or less analogous to the centre-right Democratic Party in the US. Old Labour/Corbyn were more or less analogous to the European centre-left mainstream and Bernie Sanders. These centre-left positions are allowed to play a role to continue the appearance of genuine democracy, but they're not allowed to win power. Some European countries have more extreme left parties. Some have actual Communist parties. These parties never win power either - but they tend to keep the centre-left on the left side of the centre and stop the rightwards drift that happened in the UK. The British public haven't realised that the NHS - fully socialised medicine - is already over. They're worked out that care levels and service provision have been dropping steadily, but they haven't worked out that this has been happening since the 90s, because all the centre-right parties are ideologically opposed to effective public health care. Meanwhile Brexit is about oligarch-ing what's left of the UK, very much in the style of post-Soviet Russia. It's a period of planned chaos which will see a small number of rich and well-connected individuals land-grabbing public money and what's left of the public's assets. Unlike Russia, which had significant physical resources, the UK has very little of value which won't be destroyed by Brexit. The remains of the NHS is on that list, and it will be forced to become a customer of US pharma and insurance with a much-weakened negotiating position.

Wasn’t my experience as an American living in London. Labour and Tory mapped well enough to US politics.

by dfee 6y ago

Wasn’t my experience as an American living in London. Labour and Tory mapped well enough to US politics.

Most of the U.S. Democratic party (all but the Bernie Sanders wing, really) is to the right of the Tories. Britain has nationalized health care (which isn't really up for debate in Britain the way the much more conservative Obamacare is starkly divisive in American politics), Tories supported LGBTQ marriage before it was legalized in the U.S, and Boris Johnson endorsed Barack Obama.

oarsinsync 6y ago
> Britain has nationalized health care (which isn't really up for debate in Britain Correct, there's no debate. New Labour under Blair started privatising the NHS, and the Tories simply accelerated the process, taking advantage of opportunities presented to them to do so (e.g. Covid). Alas, this doesn't make the news, so there continues to be no national conversation about how important the NHS is, beyond paying lip service and occasionally clapping for them. So yeah, there's no debate, because both parties were doing it.
- TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
  New Labour were more or less analogous to the centre-right Democratic Party in the US. Old Labour/Corbyn were more or less analogous to the European centre-left mainstream and Bernie Sanders. These centre-left positions are allowed to play a role to continue the appearance of genuine democracy, but they're not allowed to win power. Some European countries have more extreme left parties. Some have actual Communist parties. These parties never win power either - but they tend to keep the centre-left on the left side of the centre and stop the rightwards drift that happened in the UK. The British public haven't realised that the NHS - fully socialised medicine - is already over. They're worked out that care levels and service provision have been dropping steadily, but they haven't worked out that this has been happening since the 90s, because all the centre-right parties are ideologically opposed to effective public health care. Meanwhile Brexit is about oligarch-ing what's left of the UK, very much in the style of post-Soviet Russia. It's a period of planned chaos which will see a small number of rich and well-connected individuals land-grabbing public money and what's left of the public's assets. Unlike Russia, which had significant physical resources, the UK has very little of value which won't be destroyed by Brexit. The remains of the NHS is on that list, and it will be forced to become a customer of US pharma and insurance with a much-weakened negotiating position.