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Photo: Reuters
Ed Miliband. Completely wrong
Photo: Reuters
Sever Plocker

UK Labour's harmful flirtation with Scottish populists

Op-ed: If the sane left fails to come to its senses and resist populist temptations, it will stop being relevant for most of the West's citizens.

David Cameron, the prime minister of the United Kingdom and leader of the Conservative Party, didn't have to make much of an effort to win the elections held in his country last Thursday. The economic reality, on the one hand, and the conduct of the oppositional Labour Party, on the other hand, did his job for him.

 

 

When Cameron was sworn in as the British prime minister in the spring of 2010, the United Kingdom's economic situation was still bad. Since then, it has been significantly improved. One of the reasons is that the Conservatives' Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne wisely avoided implementing his party's declared ideology. He failed to mercilessly cut the budgets and did not adopt a policy of demonstrated restraint.

 

That doesn't mean that Britain's economy is out of all trouble. it isn't. But in the most important economic issue for the citizens' lives, the Conservatives could proudly point to achievements.

 

The British economy is now growing at a nice rate of 3% a year, the unemployment rate is very low - only 5.5% of the workforce, and the inflation rate is zero - excluding, like in Israel, sharp rises in housing prices, which apparently do not affect the voters' preferences. The relatively high deficit of Her Royal Highness' government, 4.4% of the domestic product, served as proof that the Cameron government rationally avoided the sin of exaggerated cuts.

 

Scottish National Party ad. The left grew weaker and populism grew stronger (Photo: AP)
Scottish National Party ad. The left grew weaker and populism grew stronger (Photo: AP)
 

On the backdrop of this reality, the Labour Party, led by Ed Miliband, launched a campaign with the unofficial title: Citizens, your economic situation has never been worse! Britain is collapsing, and its people are living in the garbage. Only we, the Labour Party, have a formula for solving this problem: "We'll take from the rich and give to the poor."

 

You are completely wrong, Mr. Miliband, the editors of liberal weekly The Economist immediately explained to him, using statistical figures: Britain doesn't have two people, rich and poor. It has a handful of very rich people, and even if their entire fortune is nationalized and divided between the citizens, the gaps will not be closed, and there is shameful poverty in neglected communities, which are crying out for focused social care. The average British citizen lives in the middle in a reasonable standard of living, free of the fear of unemployment or inflation or both. He is pretty satisfied, even if he complains often. It's natural to complain.

 

The Labour's social-economic horror propaganda missed its target. Although Miliband himself stayed away from the populism flooding the margins of British politics, as well as Israeli politics (margins which are constantly expanding), other prominent members of his party adopted those margins' battle and rage calls. This was well reflected in Labour's strange flirtation with the Scottish National Party, which combines Scottish nationalism with demagogic socialism.

 

Labour should have - as political strategy experts admit today, after the defeat - disassociate itself from the Scottish National Party without hesitations. But Miliband stuttered, both because he didn't want to burn any bridges with the party which he thought he may go to coalition with, and because he heard a soaring nationalistic-social whisper in meetings with voters.

 

What happened to him happens to the leaders of other parties of the social-democratic left: They convince themselves, mainly by visiting social networks and listening to commentators spitting fire, that "the people" are demanding that they adopt a populist political mix like the banner raised by the Scottish party.

 

It's a serious mistake, which repeats itself. In every embrace between a moderate democratic left and undemocratic and non-moderate populism, the left grows weaker and the populism grows stronger. The former loses and the latter wins, just like what happened in the past week in Britain. The Scottish populists conquered the Labour strongholds in Scotland, and the Conservatives conquered - thanks to a tangible improvement in the economy - the strongholds of England's middle class.

 

The lesson from the elections to the London parliament is therefore crystal clear: If the sane left fails to come to its senses and immediately divorce the populist temptations, it will stop being relevant for most of the West's citizens.

 


פרסום ראשון: 05.10.15, 23:52
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