Corbyn’s 20th socialism a alongside the 20th Century ‘One Nation’ Tories. It’s so 20th Century!
Gosh it never ceases to amaze us just how 20th century our politicians are. ‘Cradle to grave wealth redistributive socialism and nationalisation from Labour as the Tories consolidate the middle ground and make it theirs with some post war one nation Conservatism. The dialogue between the two reflects a class war from Labour as the Tories critique tax and spend whilst speaking to the whole nation from the One Show sofa. What is wrong with all this is that it is all so 20th Century. But how so?
Well not only does Macron speak about the failed political system so does Corbyn. In Corbyn and Labours’ case, they are accused of being Marxist, presumably because questioning parliamentarialism’ is the same as revolutionary communism in the minds of some Conservatives. But does Corbyn know this, does he know what parliamentarialism is, does he mean that parliamentarialism is the problem in modern Britain. However whilst policy comes in spade loads, spluttered out all half baked and barely understood by those communicating it, there is no solution offered to the problem of parliamentarialism. And parliamentarialism is a problem. Corbyn’s solution, like Macron’s is simply to get into parliament and to introduce a policy on say tax or nationalisation …..not to change the system.
The British Parliamentary system is a 200-year-old system which was always intended to be a representative model that allowed an ‘elite’ to manage the British nation on behalf of ‘the people’. Of course ‘the people’ were not the rag tag of bonded workers (a legacy of the feudal system) or the emerging proletariat, they would scarcely count as people at all. The people was a combination of the landowners and the emerging capitalist classes who identified with parties who represented them. From the Whig’s and Tories emerged the Liberals and Tories and then Tories and Labour. Each party reflecting the interests of different social ‘classes’ as history marched forward. The problem which 20th century Corbyn doesn’t understand and the Tories ignore is that we are too diverse and the economy too, fragmented to render our existing parliamentary system a good model for running the country. People feel that the ‘state’ and the parliamentary system fails the sniff test because to work a parliamentary system, has to bracket people into groups similar to classes and with modern diversity, people don’t see the full range of their interests or concerns being reflected in policy from either of the main parties, apart from Brexit that is. It gets worse once the party is in parliament due to the party system and the whip taking away the independence politicians should be allowed to have. Their naive, well-intentioned former selves become machined in the party system as a ‘career in politics’ beckons.
The radical solution is the Blue Revolution’s Legislative College. Taking national politics as close to the people as it is democratically possible to do.
