I see people bleating yet again that "elections are won from the centre". Let's examine this claim. 1. Not long ago, the current Labour government, with its grovelling to corporations and oligarchs, extreme deregulation, island of strangers rhetoric etc, would have been classed as radical right. 🧵 2. It succeeds a government elected under Boris Johnson, an extremist in both style and substance, pursuing an ultra-Brexit, ripping up the political rulebook, trashing the social fabric, surrounded by glitter-eyed fanatics. 3. He in turn succeeded the extreme austeritarian government of Cameron and Osborne, who tore up the enabling state by its roots. Nothing centrist about them either. 4. In the United States, Donald Trump, an extremist by any measure, a fascist by some, won a clean sweep of Presidency, House and Senate. This follows victories in several European countries by similarly extreme rightwingers. 5. Meanwhile, in several nominal democracies, there has been a dramatic failure of “centrist” parties, which shows little sign of abating. They've been falling like ninepins. 6. “Elections are won from the centre” is a mantra used to try to block challenges from the left. It says “you can’t win if you want to change the system”. It ignores the fact that first the neoliberals and now the far right have completely transformed – in some respects replaced - the system. 7. Hope lies in the recognition that the left can also change the system. That the left too can mount a radical challenge to business as usual. It lies in twigging that elections here haven’t been won from the centre in years, and that this, if we can grasp the potential, can be used to good effect. The thread on one page: skywriter.blue
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