The Student Room Group

Poll shows 75% of Brits identify as centrist, centre-right or right-wing

Scroll to see replies

Original post by AlexanderHam
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/sep/10/britains-political-tribes-hinder-labour-chances-of-winning-coalition

A plurality of Brits, 45%, view themselves as being centrist. 30% identify as being either centre-right (17%) or right-wing (13%). Furthermore, 25% identify as centre-left (15%) or left-wing (10%)

In other words, 70% of people view themselves as being centrist, centre-left or left-wing.
Original post by AlexanderHam


For the right-wing, they might use increases in the tax-free threshold and mechanisms to help people buy their first house. For the left-wing, they might implement tax credits and benefits that top-up the income of ordinary working and middle-class people with help particularly when they have children.

The right wing use all of the above, and it has failed to ensure that people are fairly rewarded or that society becomes more equal. The income of the highest paid 1% has seen the biggest increase in recent years, from 5.7% to 8.3% of the national share. In-work benefits now cost more than job-seekers allowance. In effect, the taxpayer is subsidising poverty-level wages in order for businesses to maximise their profits.
Original post by AlexanderHam

There are many different ways for the left and right to meet centrist aspirations using their respective tools and policy preferences. What won't work is to lecture the people with dogma, to accuse anyone who doesn't sign up to the ideology 100% as being some kind of corrupt traitor, and purging their party of moderates.


You lose sight of the fact that the 'centre' is fluid and cannot be defined. Corbyn wants to nationalise the railways, which is seen as extreme left-wing, and yet 25 years ago the railways were nationalised and Margaret Thatcher refused to privatise them because she thought it was going too far. Even now, a majority of the public would like them back under state control. A National Health service is supported by a huge majority of the population, and yet our apparently centrist government are steadily privatising some areas and starving the rest of funds.
The Labour party is a socialist party and has been since it was established. If some people cannot support socialist ideas, it raises the question of why they are in this party. 'Moderates' is a vague and emotive term. If you are in a left-wing party but support right-wing ideas is it any surprise that people question your motives? Whilst compromise can sometimes be good, if the compromise has to be so huge as to include every opinion, the party ceases to have an identity or ethos. There is a battle for the soul of the Labour Party and the members and MPs do not seem to be singing from the same hymn sheet. The question now is who does the party belong to? Its members or its MPs?
Original post by The_Opinion
Considering that in recent years leftists have assisted, apologised for and facilitated murder, child rape and mass sexual assaults, this is not surprising.


https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/07/07/a-big-political-cover-up-of-1980s-pedophile-ring-in-u-k-parliament/
Original post by Bornblue
I have confidence that eventually the Keynesian consensus will prevail again. Throughout history, investing to grow has proved far more successful than cutting to grow.

The Tories and right wing press have consistently trashed the word 'borrowing' to make it seem like an awful word. Governments should be borrowing when interest rates are low and investing into infrastructure projects, which acts as a fiscal multiplier.

Austerity is simply awful economics. If you reduce the amount of money that the poorest people have then they have far less to spend, if they have less to spend there is less demand. If there is less demand, businesses suffer.
On the other hand if you give them money which they spend, it creates more demand.

Ironically we lose far more money as a country when we give tax breaks than when we pay benefits. People on benefits spend nearly all their money, pumping it back into the economy. However when we give tax breaks to wealthier families there is increased likeliness of them either saving or spending abroad, taking money out of our economy.

Right wing economics is all about short-termism, gaining a pound now rather than ten in the future.


It could be argued that left-wing economics is actually more about short termism than right-wing. A government could boost spending but then be in greater debt which means they'll have less to spend later. Alternatively you can cut back today to save & therefore have more to spend in the future. It's the whole "less jam today, more jam tomorrow" philosophy.
It's also worth pointing out that, although giving monetary handouts may certainly boost short term growth, it may not particularly help in the longer term as you can unintentionally make people too reliant on the state.

I'm certainly not opposed to Keynesian economic policy as I believe that it has more than proven its worth & I fully support the idea that you can spend your way out of a recession if you have the means to do so. There's been certain points where because of other factors, like rampant inflation or massive public debt, attempting to boost spending isn't necessarily the best course of action though.
Original post by SCIENCE :D
I have this fear that UKIP will be the Conservatives main opposition by 2020, and it is becoming more and more probable. :redface:


You have nothing to fear. They're slowly becoming irrelevant and only Farage (who's quit) can save them.
Original post by Tempest II
It could be argued that left-wing economics is actually more about short termism than right-wing. A government could boost spending but then be in greater debt which means they'll have less to spend later. Alternatively you can cut back today to save & therefore have more to spend in the future. It's the whole "less jam today, more jam tomorrow" philosophy.
It's also worth pointing out that, although giving monetary handouts may certainly boost short term growth, it may not particularly help in the longer term as you can unintentionally make people too reliant on the state.

I'm certainly not opposed to Keynesian economic policy as I believe that it has more than proven its worth & I fully support the idea that you can spend your way out of a recession if you have the means to do so. There's been certain points where because of other factors, like rampant inflation or massive public debt, attempting to boost spending isn't necessarily the best course of action though.


Disagree. Left wing economics is the very opposite of short term-ism because it seeks spending now for huge gains in the future. Right wing economics seeks saving a small amount now as opposed to gaining a huge amount in the future.

Take flood defences for example. For every £1 you spend on flood defences, you save around £7 in the event of a flooding disaster. However the previous government decided to cut flood defences to save money now and lost out hugely when there was serious flood damage earlier in the year.

The NHS is another example. If you invest into the health service you encounter a short term loss, but in the long term you have a healthier, more productive population who need to take far less time off work.

If you want to repay debt you need to get the economy going and you need to increase consumer confidence. If people have more money they spend more, if they spend more there is more demand. Cutting benefits does not help growth. It may save in the short term but it then means that people find it more difficult to rent properties and they have less money to spend on other items etc.

If you do make cuts, the very worst place to make them is on the poor because they tend to spend pretty much all of their income, thus pumping money back into the economy. Wealthier individuals tend to both save and spend abroad, money which leaves the economy, so if you are to make cuts, economically they are the most efficient targets.


Right wing economics is incredibly short term. It's about making a quick buck whenever you can even though it will cost you far more in the long term than investing and increasing your gdp. Whether that be by cutting benefits, or by cutting flood defence, or by cutting health spending.

Also, rather than create dependency, benefits such as tax credits do the opposite as they allow people to gain experience in work areas which they would otherwise not be able to afford and thus are more likely to be able to climb the ladder.

Again, it's better to have pounds in the future then pennies now.
Reply 25
Given that we have a steady Conservative government at the moment, I am not shocked
Original post by fksociety
considering that the youth are becoming more and more liberal this is hardly relevant.


According to the economist there's also some evidence to suggest that the younger generation is more economically liberal than previous generations (and that's before the general move right through your life as you start to care more about your mortgage payment than the equal distribution of resources).

This is not exactly a shock when one thinks about it. The best way for the left to reinforce their ideology was through universal welfare payments because nobody wants to lose them and will pay higher taxes to defend them.. this generation has not had those and so view such notions as giving their money to people who don't need it.

Original post by Bornblue
I have confidence that eventually the Keynesian consensus will prevail again. Throughout history, investing to grow has proved far more successful than cutting to grow.

The Tories and right wing press have consistently trashed the word 'borrowing' to make it seem like an awful word. Governments should be borrowing when interest rates are low and investing into infrastructure projects, which acts as a fiscal multiplier.

Austerity is simply awful economics. If you reduce the amount of money that the poorest people have then they have far less to spend, if they have less to spend there is less demand. If there is less demand, businesses suffer.
On the other hand if you give them money which they spend, it creates more demand.

Ironically we lose far more money as a country when we give tax breaks than when we pay benefits. People on benefits spend nearly all their money, pumping it back into the economy. However when we give tax breaks to wealthier families there is increased likeliness of them either saving or spending abroad, taking money out of our economy.

Right wing economics is all about short-termism, gaining a pound now rather than ten in the future.


It's interesting that like much of the left your terms of contention are within the austerity age despite the fact that by 2020 we'll have a deficit of something like only 2% GDP even if we don't aim for surplus. You risk fighting a battle you've already lost.

That said i don't disagree entirely and since 2012 the government did adopt higher capital spending. The difference between us lies in how it was paid for (you'd borrow, the coalition cut current spending and transferred the funds).
Original post by Rakas21
According to the economist there's also some evidence to suggest that the younger generation is more economically liberal than previous generations (and that's before the general move right through your life as you start to care more about your mortgage payment than the equal distribution of resources).

This is not exactly a shock when one thinks about it. The best way for the left to reinforce their ideology was through universal welfare payments because nobody wants to lose them and will pay higher taxes to defend them.. this generation has not had those and so view such notions as giving their money to people who don't need it.



It's interesting that like much of the left your terms of contention are within the austerity age despite the fact that by 2020 we'll have a deficit of something like only 2% GDP even if we don't aim for surplus. You risk fighting a battle you've already lost.

That said i don't disagree entirely and since 2012 the government did adopt higher capital spending. The difference between us lies in how it was paid for (you'd borrow, the coalition cut current spending and transferred the funds).

The obsession with the deficit is both baffling and short termist. It's better to run a temporary deficit, even a large one, if in doing so you invest in fiscal multipliers yielding far greater long term growth.
You yourself have acknowledged that by cutting benefits and tax credits to the poorest you don't save any money in the long term because they spend all their money, pumping it back into the economy.

When interest rates are low governments should be borrowing and investing to encourage far higher levels of growth in the future.

I don't understand how people can think cutting spending and thus consumer confidence can possibly lead to the same levels of growth than investing can.
(edited 7 years ago)
And Opinium polling would suggest that a lot of people are kidding themselves or don't want to admit to being what most would consider right wing:



Also explains why the Tories do so well, need to run the figures to get more info out of it, but it very much looks like the centrists prefer the Tories to Labour. But then again, the Tories are the ones at least pretending to offer a small state, low taxes option, just like a third of the population
the Lib Dems under Farron should theoretically be perfectly placed to capitalise on this, alas it seems their flame has long since died out

Original post by The_Opinion
Considering that in recent years leftists have assisted, apologised for and facilitated murder, child rape and mass sexual assaults, this is not surprising.

back to the basement for u
Original post by AlexanderHam

For the right-wing, they might use increases in the tax-free threshold and mechanisms to help people buy their first house. /QUOTE]

Will this involve significant increases to the housing supply or will they just do the old New Labour way - make it easier to borrow so people can more easily overextend themselves on credit?
Well duh. Most people don't want to seem extreme. The centre ground moves. The trick is to get it to move in a direction you want. Gay marriage is now a centre ground position. Rewind 50 years and it was anything but.


Original post by Bornblue
Cameron and Osborne essentially believed that the free market was always better no matter what, despite evidence to the contrary. .


I'm not sure Cameron believed in anything other than how much he wanted to be PM.
(edited 7 years ago)
Original post by Bornblue

You yourself have acknowledged that by cutting benefits and tax credits to the poorest you don't save any money in the long term because they spend all their money, pumping it back into the economy. When interest rates are low governments should be borrowing and investing to encourage far higher levels of growth in the future.

The obsession with the deficit is both baffling and short termist. It's better to run a temporary deficit, even a large one, if in doing so you invest in fiscal multipliers yielding far greater long term growth.
I don't understand how people can think cutting spending and thus consumer confidence can possibly lead to the same levels of growth than investing can.


My belief in not running in a deficit is predicated on the belief that the state should be self-sufficient in the modern world (a net creditor), that we have more room to manouver during future economic shocks and that from an ideological point of view i consider tens of billions of pounds of government spending to be unnecessary and therein lies our first disagreement regarding your statement that its better to run a deficit to fund capital investment, you preclude the scenario that some of what government is already spending should not be cut.

Secondly the notion that cutting government spending harms consumer confidence is more or less proven wrong by the past 6 years. Even when growth was weak in 2011 and 2012, the service sector was still growing for the most part as consumption remained relatively strong.

Finally i don't think we're actually that far away from agreement here. Both of us agree that capital spending is a good thing and that the level of it should be increased. Where we disagree is on how it should be paid for (why tax the people more even in the short term if we are wasting money in current spending).
Original post by ChaoticButterfly
Well duh. Most people don't want to seem extreme. The centre ground moves. The trick is to get it to move in a direction you want. Gay marriage is now a centre ground position. Rewind 50 years and it was anything but.

I'm not sure Cameron believed in anything other than how much he wanted to be PM.


I'm curious as to where you see it today.

Personally i don't think it's that far away from where it was twenty years ago. Take Blair and give him some anti-immigrant rhetoric while proposing to cut the welfare bill and i think people would lap it up.
Original post by Rakas21
I'm curious as to where you see it today.

Personally i don't think it's that far away from where it was twenty years ago. Take Blair and give him some anti-immigrant rhetoric while proposing to cut the welfare bill and i think people would lap it up.


If you also throw in some actually fund the NHS then maybe yeah. People don't like immigrants because they are ruining the NHS. Stopping immigration and funding the NHS are both something the Tories don't seem keen on doing. Even though the Brexit vote was basically asking for those things. Stop immigration, fund public services properly. Stop throwing money to work shy and the foreigners. I think people have had enough of austerity (or are starting to).
(edited 7 years ago)
Original post by Bornblue
I have confidence that eventually the Keynesian consensus will prevail again. Throughout history, investing to grow has proved far more successful than cutting to grow.

The Tories and right wing press have consistently trashed the word 'borrowing' to make it seem like an awful word. Governments should be borrowing when interest rates are low and investing into infrastructure projects, which acts as a fiscal multiplier.

Austerity is simply awful economics. If you reduce the amount of money that the poorest people have then they have far less to spend, if they have less to spend there is less demand. If there is less demand, businesses suffer.
On the other hand if you give them money which they spend, it creates more demand.

Ironically we lose far more money as a country when we give tax breaks than when we pay benefits. People on benefits spend nearly all their money, pumping it back into the economy. However when we give tax breaks to wealthier families there is increased likeliness of them either saving or spending abroad, taking money out of our economy.

Right wing economics is all about short-termism, gaining a pound now rather than ten in the future.


Maybe then if we just spent an unlimited amount of money, all our problems would be solved.
Original post by ChaoticButterfly
If you also throw in some actually fund the NHS then maybe yeah. People don't like immigrants because they are ruining the NHS. Stopping immigration and funding the NHS are both something the Tories don't seem keen on doing. Even though the Brexit vote was basically asking for those things. Stop immigration, fund public services properly. Stop throwing money to work shy and the foreigners. I think people have had enough of austerity (or are starting to).


I find it intriguing that so many people are saying the EU referendum was a proxy for other things. The anti immigration brigade (and internationalists wanting to call Britain racist) call it a proxy on immigration; the SNP have it proxy Indy ref; the big state people are saying its a proxy for a larger state (so your post suggests).

It's none of these things, it is a vote that tells us more people who could be bothered to vote wanted to leave the EU than remain in it, nothing more, nothing less.

Posted from TSR Mobile
Original post by Jammy Duel
I find it intriguing that so many people are saying the EU referendum was a proxy for other things. The anti immigration brigade (and internationalists wanting to call Britain racist) call it a proxy on immigration; the SNP have it proxy Indy ref; the big state people are saying its a proxy for a larger state (so your post suggests).

It's none of these things, it is a vote that tells us more people who could be bothered to vote wanted to leave the EU than remain in it, nothing more, nothing less.

Posted from TSR Mobile


It certainly wasn't a vote for liberal capitalism. Sorry Mr Hannon.

People generally have reasons for not liking the EU. Wanting to find out what these reasons are seems sensible.
(edited 7 years ago)
Original post by Jammy Duel
And Opinium polling would suggest that a lot of people are kidding themselves or don't want to admit to being what most would consider right wing:



Also explains why the Tories do so well, need to run the figures to get more info out of it, but it very much looks like the centrists prefer the Tories to Labour. But then again, the Tories are the ones at least pretending to offer a small state, low taxes option, just like a third of the population


I'm not so sure. Labour is enjoying increasing support in Southern England these days than they ever have. Unaffordable house prices, and rents are making people turn to labour. Also other issues such as welfare cuts and wanting air attacks in Syria to stop.

I was recently in Bath a Tory type city or so I thought. There was a left wing rally on and it seemed to have a lot of support. Many wanted Mendips to be a trident free zone. Several people I spoke to said they'd vote labour and would be happy to wake up with Corbyn as prime minister.
Original post by Bornblue
Cameron and Osborne essentially believed that the free market was always better no matter what, despite evidence to the contrary. They were very unwilling to accept that a publically run service could ever be better than a private one.

It is for that reason that they hacked away at the BBC, sold off the Royal Mail and continued to increase 'competition' into the NHS.

Capitalism is absolutely the best economic system we have, but neoliberal capitalism is not.


I've always wondered (and I say this as someone who would have been a hardline anti-communist in the Labour Party if I lived during the Cold War), maybe the existence of the Soviet Union forced the West to be much fairer to workers. If you look at the West during the 1950s to the 1970s, it was almost what modern conservatives would call socialism.

You had tax rates as high as 90% (not just in the UK, in the US too!), the money supply was tightly controlled by the government (banks had to get government permission to release tranches of credit to certain types of debtors, in some cases they needed government permission to make a loan, period), large parts of industry was owned by the state and those parts that weren't were under government control by regulation anyway.

But as soon as the Soviet Union started to teeter and head towards the collapse, the West said "Cool, we can go back to how things were before the war". Facing up against a superpower whose, at least putative, raison d'etre was the wellbeing of workers... did this, even subconsciously, make the West move towards the left?

I wouldn't claim everything was great then. But it seems to have been a pretty good time to be alive, from those I ask. Sure you only had three channels on TV, travel was expensive, services were often poor. But the average salary was around £3,000 and you could buy a house for £6000 (and a Georgian terrace in Islington for £12,000). People were pretty laid back and for the most part optimistic. You had great newspapers doing great journalism, and giants of the Labour movement like Harold Wilson, Jim Callaghan, Roy Jenkins, Denis Healey and Tony Crosland at the top of politics. Some things are better now, but a lot of things seem worse.
(edited 7 years ago)

Quick Reply

Latest