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Reader Comments (29)
So where is the Green, and Liberal support going? Maybe they have all switched to Labour. On the eve of Paris, it is worse than they thought.
Having polarised the debate, support is melting away. Unlike the bears and ice.
Please help out an American. Does the UK/GB have a political party that is overtly libertarian or classical liberal? Anything close?
By "classical liberal" I mean this:
https://mises.org/library/what-classical-liberalism
@ Mark Stovel
short answer NO
Libertarianism died out in 1960's
Mark Stoval
The simple answer to your question is "no".
Until about 20 years ago I would have said that the Conservative Party fitted the description pretty well, allowing for the fact that different countries have developed in different ways and the out-and-out free marketism (sorry!) of the US has not been around in the UK for a long time.
Small government, freedom of belief (includes politics, religion, speech, etc.), lightly-regulated free markets were key to the Conservative philosophy but they took fright when they got hammered into the ground by Blair in 1997 and we've had to live with "modernising" and "decontaminating the brand" ever since.
In fact that last phrase indicates just how much politics in the UK (and, I suspect, in the US as well) has stopped being a question of philosophy and belief in the good of society, whatever different interpretation you put on that, and become just one more commodity to be marketed.
New Labour was only ever interested in getting elected. Blair had no philosophy except an urge to be the first Labour PM to serve two full terms and get Labour elected three times. Everything else in government was subordinated to that which meant that the party would steal anybody's clothes if it meant votes.
Cameron and Osborn are now doing the same thing. See one of your erstwhile fellow-countrywomen Janet Daley in this morning's Sunday Telegraph here.
R4 now, John Prescott will telling us why he thinks Paris is our ________ ________ to save the planet .
coming up on R4 News*
... did you guess the words ?
* now known as BBC Radio Labour Party News
Bit surprising that Labour not doing that well, given BBC have given them their own custom news channel. For months every R4 news prog was filled with items on 'will Jezza be elected' leader?'.
Now he's leader every news prog has items on 'our sturdy leading' standing up to rebellio'... the other parties don't get a look-in
I think the Tories are close to 40% because they are the only party to actually want to achieve an annual budget surplus to stop the devastating addition to the public debt every second. It should have happened by now, but 2020 is better than never. Thankfully there is still a big minority in England (maybe close to 49.9%) in favour of "sane" economics. Not so in the Celtic fringe.
The decline in the Green vote is hardly good news since Corbyn is as green as they are.
Corbyn's election as party leader hasn't done Labour any harm, despite everything the Tory press, the Labour press, and his own colleagues have thrown at him. But then the same thing happened to Michael Foot, who was on course to beat Thatcher until the Falklands war.
Prezza is saying every country should have its own Climate Change etc. applying fixed carbon targets.
"China and India who still use coal" ...(em almost all countries are building new coal plants.)
"I'm involved with GLOBE International .... 60 countries backbenchers have forced thru Climate legislation."
now they've got him onto Syria decision and Labour part divisions
..ah interview is over now thank god
stewgreen, that GLOBE line up with Prescot, Deben and Davey certainly looked impressive. I am sure that it was a great confidence builder for those of a Green persuasion to see that the Conservatives, Liberals and Labour had allowed their top experts to work together to ensure GLOBE achieved so little for so much Charitable money.
Globe has the rest of the maniacs/spivs Yeo's there too ..a quick glance shows
"Speakers : Mr. Tim Yeo, Member of the House of Commons. - Baroness Worthington, Member of "
+ Barry Gardiner MP, Lord Hunt of Chesterton all at one event
Gordon Brown quadrupled the UK's national debt and crippled pension schemes with 'windfall taxes' in order to fund a monumental government spending spree. Compliance culture, the socialisation of all civic life and passing the buck towards a nascent world government all follows.
Society here needs rebuilding from the ground up. How? Chipping away from the blogosphere is a start, but there is no political or media platform now for libertarian views (aka 'laissez-faire').
Geoff Chambers
Dream Team - Foreign Secretary and Ken Livingston as Minister of Defence....
See Corbyn dragged his soap box along to the London Climate March.
The only surprise is nearly a third of the British adult population are mentally unhinged enough to still vote Labour.
CheshireRed, does anyone vote for a party anymore? I thought it was now a matter of chosing the party you dislike the least or will prevent the party you hate the most getting in.
@ TinyCO2
Yeah there's little doubt the old rules are old hat but whatever the reason or tactical motivation the fact remains a third of our adult population is certifiably stupid. Strange times.
TinyCO2@9:31
That explains the 3.3% Green vote then - only most of those haven't looked very closely at all at the Greens - who as far as I can see get a massively disproportionate amount of coverage on the state broadcaster and from that rarely called out source of Green Slime - The Press Association.
CheshireRed
stupid has no party - so it's evenly spread :-)
The frightening figure is 70%. In North Korea, the dear leader goes from strength to strength, hence the people vote in their millions for him and his vote goes up after the count of each plebiscite - rejoice.
Now and not for a minute do I set store in these instant opinion polls but even NOP polls though made up of a puny sample, and weighted to produce prejudiced results. On this showing, it would seem that, nigh on 70% of those questioned, still, would place a X beside a Tory or a Labour named candidate!?
You cannot be serious, is this a joke or, has, is the
nationelectorate become the joke?Mark Stoval
The answer is YES. The UK Independence Party is truly Libertarian. UKIP is the only party that believes we should pull out of the EU which is the only way we can become a democracy again. It has only one MP but it has great support amongst voters and just needs a breakthrough event to 'tip' it over into mainstream.
I am surprised by this thread because his grace knows that although we are united in opposing CAGW; he also knows that we are not united politically.
The right has yet to formulate any credible ideology. It is not by accident that they are defined by their enemies. In any case, were they to win, they would be forced to adopt left wing policies in absence of their own.
Aila, I think you have just hit your thumb nail, and head, with a single hammer blow.
Hmm... the right adopting leftist policy ... Oldham by election is warming up....John McDonald as ever is showing no party has a monopoly of stupid - looks like the red line might droop a bit more. It'll droop a lot if the locals cotton to his advisor Richard Murphy's "economics"
Two recent opinion polls show declining concern about climate change.
BBC: COP21: Public support for tough climate deal 'declines'
Public support for a strong global deal on climate change has declined, according to a poll carried out in 20 countries.
Sky news:
Poll: Growing Doubts Over Climate Change Causes
The British public is increasingly sceptical that human activity is to blame for climate change, a poll for Sky News suggests.
The BBC spotted this opinion poll and has turned itself over to the Green party, wall-to-wall green propaganda around some meeting in Paris, no dissenting voices allowed, seek medical advice before listening.
Oh I think 'let's leave it to the invisible hand' is as credible as any other popular ideology in that it stinks just as much. Libertarians seem quite good at predicting failures but are not so hot wrt solutions. The notion of creative destruction is inept and the idea that a market can ever be truly free for anyone except criminals is hilariously naïve. 'Classic liberalism' is as close to real liberalism as Marxist socialism is to utopian socialism; ie only in the theft of the word. Sullying Adam Smiths good name by a false association was also beyond the pale.
Paul Matthews, there's a graphic purporting to show "Annual Temperature Change" on that Sky link - as a piece of scientific reporting (unlabelled, uncited and dispaying complete drivel) it might make even Michael Mann blush...
@Mikky opposite way GreenDream has been the state religion of the BBC for years, no non believers are allowed.
The BBC itself commissioned that survey..it probably rigged it to get the highest result possible, but was still disappointed
..but it could hardly cover the results up now.
However ..see below
99.95% of people are not are NOT excited about Paris says a new survey.
Just think of all the massses whose salary depends on Greenbiz or work in the climate change industry etc. ..must be millions.
Yet when the front page of YouTube was dedicated to hyping the #OursToLose Paris Climate Petition
and then when Google took over and put the #OursToLose link right on it's front page
it got 3,66 million signatures
..There are 7.6 billion people on the Earth so only 1 in 2,000 bothered
that's not even a 97% failure rate..... it's 99.95%.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Hey and Lomborg has a BIGGER survey on his FB page of 8.5 million people
The UN them asked to list their priorities
Last place : Climate : 1,770,608 (16/16) .............Education is #1, followed by healthcare & job opportunities
WUWT had a preview 5 months ago
The Sky page full of trash
It starts "The finding comes ahead of the UN summit in Paris that is expected to result in big cuts in greenhouse gas emissions."
..Fantasy island next year will for sure have bigger emns that this year etc etc.. CO2 will keep growing for years at COP rates
It then ends by quoting Dr Paul Williams
"We are storing up problems that we haven't yet seen because the climate system takes decades to respond to the carbon dioxide.
So even if we cut emissions dramatically today there are big problems stored up for future. This is why we need to take urgent action."'
Am I wrong that increased CO2 starts to effect quickly but takes decades in theory to leave the atmosphere ?
..hang on before that Williams says
"the warming atmosphere is already increasing the chances of floods, heatwaves and storms in Britain - and the problems will only get worse if emissions continue to rise."
..Got that peer reveiwed and in an IPCC report have you Williams ? ...no of course not, it's just your assertion. It's opinion not evidence.
Fading support for the Greens most likely due to some of their hard-left supporters switching to Corbyn's hard-left Labour.