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I blew it.
You rightly hold SoylentNews to a high standard and I let you down when I merged three different political stories into a single story.
Rushing to get out the door to get to work, seeing the story queue running out, having seen the interest in the UK elections in our IRC channel, having heard much on the radio concerning former FBI Director Comey's testimony, seeing a story appear on a likely nomination for that vacated FBI post, and aware of the guideline on only one Politics story per day — I made a hurried decision to merge all three stories together.
The community rightly pointed out the shortcomings in that decision. Rest assured I won't make THAT decision again!
In retrospect, it would have been much better if I released two separate stories — one with the UK Election vote, and another with a merge of the FBI-related stories with, say, a 12-hour spacing between them.
It is a privilege to volunteer for this site, one that I do not take lightly. I let down the community — you deserve better. Trust that I have taken this lesson to heart and will strive to do better going forwards.
--martyb
[n1: There will be a UK election story coming in the next day or so, when more details are available. The majority of the coverage so far is speculation and reports of agreements have been retracted.]
(Score: 4, Informative) by theluggage on Monday June 12 2017, @09:40AM (1 child)
Well, by US standards, politically speaking, the Republicans are a tad right-wing by Conservative standards, the Democrats are roughly equivalent to the center-left portion of the Conservatives and the other parties are what Mom and Pop warned you about in the 1950s. By UK standards, the Republicans are more like the DUP (except bigger... and the name "republicans" would be a problem).
Labour also have the problem that they're the main party for both the acadamic/progressive/socialist vote (the Liberal Democrat party being a busted flush) and the traditional working-class vote (who actually tend to be somewhat small-c conservative).
No. I'm not saying that antisemetism and anti-immigration don't exist in UK politics (and I'm not defending either), but they are not connected (well, except maybe one of the UKIP's poster choices, but that's another story...) The Labour Party are typically pro-immigration, anti-racism but the left is also, traditionally, pro-Palestinian, which gets them into trouble whenever someone oversteps the line on discussing the middle east and re-discovers Godwin's Law by comparing Israel to the Nazis (see: Ken Livingstone).
Labour usually support immigration (on ideological grounds) as do Conservatives (because its good for business) but it has recently been the main dog-whistle for the Brexiteers (whether or not they believe their own propaganda) who have drummed up anti-immigration sentiment amongst both Conservative and Labour voters. Of course, although all the economists seem to agree that immigration is great for business, it might help if some of the proceeds of that went to building and staffing schools, hospitals, affordable housing etc. to support the extra population.
No, the problem is that both major parties are split on Brexit. The hard-right minority of the conservative party want it so they can get rid of all those pesky workers rights so they can turn the country into a low-wage tax haven and hand pork to their own businesses. The hard-left minority in the Labour party want out so that they can get rid of all the pesky enforced free-market competition stuff and take state control of industry.
Cameron went into the 2015 election expecting a second hung parliament. He promised a Brexit referendum mainly to ward off the UKIP threat but also to try and heal the rifts in his own party - assuming "remain" would win easily. Turns out he was wrong about the hung parliament (in 2015) and wrong about "remain" winning. Looks like the days of the Tories thinking that they can call the results of an election are definitely coming to a middle...
Meanwhile, Corbyn is pretty obviously lukewarm on Brexit and was heavily criticised for not doing more in the referendum campaign. In any case, one of the upsets of the referendum was the number of labour-voting areas that voted to leave (guess what: traditional working-class voters aren't actually that progressive!) with immigration being one of the key "doorstep issues".
The problem is, now, the tories are still riddled with a mixture of rabid Brexiteers and rabid Remainers and can't afford to call any vote that won't satisfy both. Don't expect to see too many government defeats, but any bill that actually gets presented to parliament will be heavily watered down to ensure that the issue doesn't arise.
(Score: 2) by wisnoskij on Monday June 12 2017, @02:51PM
The Left-right dichotomy is completely worthless, especially now, in defining American politics. The two parties have the exact same policies but with different target audiences.
It is particularly ridiculous now since the Republicans just elected a hard core liberal democrat to president, and the only serious democratic candidates were anti-gay marriage. One small government pro-wall candidate who objected to the government legislating marriage and the other a war hungry career politician who spent her entire career stating that marriage is between a man and a woman.
The only notable difference is in their audiences. The Republican's campaign for low to middle income Americans. The Democrats specialize in Academia, Big Business, and Minorities. This is often simplified into the Urban-Rural divide. Something that mirrors UK politics.