What’s wrong with this country?

How did I find myself here? I think of myself, if I have any political home, as a sort of realistic leftish conservative. All my serious arguments for voting agaist T Blair are conservative ones, about the preservation and maintenance of standards — you should not subvert democracy by drawing us into war on a lie; nor should you introduce a corrupt system of postal votes. These don’t seem to me particularly socialist positions. But, if this survey is accurate, I am wildly to the left of even most Liberal Democrats.

This is chiefly because of my views on prison and foreigners, which are almost the last things that I would give up as I grow older and my brain softens. So perhaps the great divide in British society has to do with views of outsiders.

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4 Responses to What’s wrong with this country?

  1. Robert Nowell says:

    Like you, I’m amazed to find myself so much on the left. I described myself as fairly left of centre, but from the survey I emerge as very left wing on the first set of criteria and fairly left wing on the second. No wonder I can now sing the Internationale…

  2. Robert Nowell says:

    If the survey assumes that opposition to the Iraq war on the grounds that it was and is immoral places one firmly on the left, does this suggest that the survey is fundamentally flawed? I can envisage quite a few people of strongly conservative outlook taking a principled stand on the grounds of needing to uphold law against anarchy.
    Similarly, if one believes that an essential element of criminal justice must be to rehabilitate offenders, and further adopts the Christian idea that no one is beyond redemption (pace the doctrine of double predestination), why should this be seen as placing one on the left?

    Baffled, New Barnet

  3. Andy says:

    I find myself in exactly the same position as Robert, yet regard myself as mildly left-of-centre. Apparently my political brethren are the Green party and 95+% of the population hold views to the right of my own. It’s all fairly frightening really, considering that I simply make the effort to reach reasonable, informed and balanced opinions on most matters. Can the general results really be true? I am similarly baffled.

  4. acb says:

    Perhaps the real news is that there are so few people of real an dprincipled Conservative views. I remember a very conservative lawyer friend being completely outraged by the SAS shooting three IRA operatives in Gibraltar. This is not how the Party and the press greeted the news.

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