A SHIFT TO THE RIGHT ?

I have read a number of articles by many different people commenting on the lurch to the right of many current governments. What is surprising is that these administrations have been elected in the course of seemingly free elections.

There is a piece by Simon Tisdall in the Guardian dated 4th June 2023 entitled:
Europe’s lurch to the  right rolls on. Only unity on the left can stop it.
The article is headed:
Recent polls in Italy, Spain, Greece, Turkey and Finland tell the story of voters swayed by fear and prejudice. Progressive parties - take note Keir Starmer - need a clear, principled agenda to turn the tide.

Mr Tisdall  states inter alia:
“Each country is different, its circumstances unique. Yet a broad pattern is discernible – and it’s not difficult to trace. The banal common denominator is that parties of the European left, hard and soft, are too fractured and fractious to build winning coalitions that offer convincing alternative solutions to voters’ problems. Like Spain and Italy, recent election outcomes in Greece, Turkey and Finland suggest the dominant issues for electorates are the cost of living, energy and inflation. Other shared worries include security (foreign and domestic), migration, climate and environment, and national identity (loosely defined).”
He goes on:
“It’s not as though rightwing conservatives, populists, nationalists and assorted radicals and extremists have all the answers. Anything but! Where they hold office, as in the UK, Hungary and Poland, they are often clueless and divided, too. But centrist and leftist parties are struggling to convince voters they can do any better.”
After recent elections in Spain, he states:
“the far-right Vox Party…the third largest party nationally and distorting echo chamber for the Francisco Franco fascist era, trebled its share of councillors last weekend. Vox’s success partly relies on a favoured hard-right tactic, used across Europe: the weaponisation of ethnic, racial, gender and regional difference. Its particular targets are Basque and Catalan nationalist parties. Guess who were among the first to congratulate Vox? Meloni and Hungary’s autocrat, Viktor Orbán.”
He concludes:
“The radical right’s resilience should ring alarm bells in Britain, too, which, despite itself, is not immune to European trends. By shifting rightwards in hopes of winning power in 2024, Starmer’s Labour risks empowering its opponents. Better to draw a line like Sánchez, Spain’s socialist leader, then set one’s own agenda, offer a clear choice and trust voters to decide. It’s not that complicated. Unity, plus well-defined, principled policy programmes, is the way the left stops losing – and learns to win again.”
(You can read the whole article at:  https://www.theguardian.com/world/commentisfree/2023/jun/04/europes-lurch-to-the-right-rolls-on-only-unity-on-the-left-can-stop-it)

Whatever can be said about unity may well be the path to power; however, what puzzles is the idea that one can weaponise ethnic, racial, gender and regional differences to stimulate fear and prejudice in order to persuade the electorate to actually support the purveyors of such tactics. So far as I can tell, most governments (in particular western Europe and the Americas) claim to support freedom, of speech, of religion, or race, of gender as the highest ideals of a progressive society. Laws are enacted in order to discourage and indeed criminalise such prejudice and hate; yet, despite holding up  these ideals, in order to gain votes and thereby power, the far right stimulates the very opposite behaviour. How is this possible, and why does it succeed?

Is it that, despite the higher ideals of society, the majority of the electorate are unified by the far right’s appeal to their baser instincts? Is it that the unity of the far right overshadows any unity on the centre or left of the political spectrum? Are the left so fractured that they are incapable of coming to some common consensus?

I have been pondering just what is the make-up of the British electorate. According to government statistics, the current socio-economic classification of the adult population aged 16+ is as follows:
Managerial, administrative and professional occupations.   33.0%
Intermediate occupations.                                                            22.0%
Routine and manual occupations.                                              28.8%
Full time students.                                                                           7.7%
Never worked/long term unemployed.                                       8.5%

Most of the top group is located in London and the south east of the country. As to the rest it is difficult to say. Of that top third there are surely a number of Labour Party supporters, and I would have thought the rest of the hoi polloi would lean towards the Labour Party, but that is clearly not the case. Suppositions are not reliable evidence at all. As an example, in the Dagenham and Rainham constituency Labour Party MP Jon Cruddas was elected with a majority of 293 in 2019 from a majority of 4652 in 2017. In the 2016 referendum 70.3% voted to leave the EU. Indeed the east end of London including Ilford North, Barking, Erith and Thamesmead, and Eltham, whilst reelecting Labour MPs voted to leave the EU.

How the British electorate will vote in any coming election is difficult to predict despite the polls. Will they succumb to fear and prejudice and create a Conservative majority or create a minority Labour Government supported by another party in coalition. Either way there is no guarantee that a left of centre social agenda is on the cards. Will a Labour majority or coalition repeal the various bits of recent legislation that have ripped the constitution apart and created what can only be described as a framework enabling an authoritarian state? I wonder.

It is however clear that Mr Tisdall’s comment “By shifting rightwards in hopes of winning power in 2024, Starmer’s Labour risks empowering its opponents” is indeed a worry. Starmer’s attempts at keeping all those who voted both labour and leave on his side are not at all reassuring. Perhaps, now that Brexit, having been promoted by fear and prejudice at the outset, is at last being seen as the large failure it always was, Mr Starmer can unify the Labour Party into the social left of centre government it deserves. Perhaps even more left than some might suppose. I wonder.