Government Affairs Blog
Do we all need a political compass?
Jonathan Meades - www.jonathanmeades.com – in his latest BBC 2 programme, Jonathan Meades – Abroad Again, described Tony Blair as a social Thatcherite. Blair has said that New Labour is social democratic in nature. Neil Kinnock, the godfather of New Labour, called himself a democratic socialist. Others have said Blair is more a European Christian Democratic and some have accused him of having no political belief system at all: simply a desire to control the media and win favourable headlines.
David Cameron has said he is a liberal conservative. The Labour party accuse him of being “Dave, the chameleon”.
All this could be explained as political name calling, an aspect of the party game of attacking your opponent and undermining him.
In reality it reveals the confusion at the heart of modern day political discourse.
Many years ago when I was studying Government at Essex University we examined the Left-Right divide. Our lecturer, at the time Dr Sanders and now Professor explained that one could look at the divide in a more complex way: more a prism than a straight line. This helped explain why we could have a visiting Labour MP lecturing on defence who was to the Right of some Tory MPs and a visiting Tory MP was more environmental than some Liberals (the greenest party in the Commons at the time). It also helps explain why some US Democrats are more right-wing than some Republicans and how some in the GOP are more liberal than their Southern opponents.
That political belief is a complicated business is no great revelation. The fact that a lot of people are beginning to realise it is what is of interest.
My grandfather used to say that Labour was for the workers and the Tories were for the bosses. As a tailor in the East End he always voted Labour. For him, and the vast majority of people, politics was a simple Left-Right divide. The fact that Hitler and Stalin (both at the opposite end of the divide) could employ the same tactics was dismissed as extremes meeting each other. For politicians it was far easier to appeal to the straight line. Now it is not so easy.
The fact that Blair can be described as so many things illustrates how complex our politics are. How we understand politics is changing and how we understand the terms to describe a political position is changing. We might not have got to the point where it is easy to decode it all but slowly it is becoming obvious that the Left-Right divide will no longer do.
Enter the political compass – www.politicalcompass.org. Political compass isn’t the only website that allows you to map out where you are politically. There is also www.politics.beasts.org. Both sites ask you a series of questions about your social, economic and political views. Political compass divide views up between Left, Right, Authoritarian and Libertarian while the Political Beasts survey replaces the latter values with Pragmatic and Idealistic.
Many years ago I got a work colleague who was on the Far Left to do the political compass. He was horrified to discover he shared the same social views as Ann Widdecombe.
Perhaps we should ask all our elected representatives to take one of these tests and publish the results. It might help the voters understand where our politicians really stand.
As for the author, there was no great surprise. I was placed where I place myself. As an employee of a politically neutral organisation and a writer for CIPR GAG, which is also politically neutral, I must take “the fifth” on where exactly that is in the new political prism.
Simon Goldie is Head of Communication at The Chartered Institute of Taxation – www.tax.org.uk - and a member of the CIPR GAG committee