Dawkins thesis is that there should be a new European Party of which he said:
…
As I said, this may be the right direction, but I think some refinement is needed. First, I am not sure it is really appropriate to give a new party a single issue name: this has always been a problem for the Greens. Politics is bigger and more long lasting than that.Second, Europe is not enough to unite people. It’s important, but any new party has to also address the failings of 2008, the end of neoliberalism being nigh and the need for a resulting new economic order based on an economics that reflects the reality of the state being something rather more than a household.
Third, a new party has to be built on a consensus that the state has worth, not least as the essential underpinning for the equally important (but not more so) private sector.
Fourth, sustainability has to be in such a party’s DNA or the young are not going to relate to it.
Fifth, and last (for now) there’s another key issue, which is that the party should be based on what I might call the mutuality principle. At it’s core this picks up a theme whose origin Dawkins may not approve of: in essence it’s the command to love your neighbour as your self. This is pretty fundamental to any functioning society as far as I can see, and so to any political party seeking a broad based appeal. I woukd hope the attraction is obvious. It says loving ourselves is fine, and as a matter of fact we know this is fundamental to wellbeing so it’s got to be a good starting premise. The failure of neoliberalism is that it stops there. The mutuality principle takes this forward: there is a duty to love others as well. The result is a very different society from that which we have. I believe this is the basis for real progress without obsessing, as both existing main parties do, about ownership.
If these points could be taken into account and some practicalities (like limiting the amount anyone person could donate to exercise control) could be considered then I believe there is real mileage in a new party. I am in fact not sure what else at present breaks the log jam in English politics.
Don’t those conditions mean that we end up with the Green Party again? Which has 1 seat and what is it, one tenth of the vote of the anti-Europe Party also known as Ukip?
The end of neoliberalism being nigh my arse.
I’ve been told capitalism is about to fall my entire life, and it’s stronger than ever.
Can anyone provide an example of Fat Dick loving anyone as much as he adores himself? I can only think of cases that display his dislike and intolerance of anyone whose views differ in any way from his brain farts
Just a general comment, you don’t always seem to put a link to the original source in your posts. Is this deliberate or am I missing something?
When dealing with Richard Murphy it is deliberate….
He stopped counting at five, then. Wonder what he was using his other hand for.
Toby -applies to this category only, knowing that i think it’s possible to guess why.
I am glad that Tim doesn’t link to that cesspit, otherwise I would be tempted to click on the link.
“the command to love your neighbour as your self” is a Christian thing, so –
1) “young people” have abandoned Christianity
2) Jesus basically said that Christians shouldn’t be in politics since it’s all about the afterlife
“I’ve been told capitalism is about to fall my entire life, and it’s stronger than ever.”
Of course, that capitalism (largely undefined) will fall is an item of faith on the left – the political equivalent of the Rapture or the Second Coming. In Marxoid terms, the ‘reason’ is capitalism’s internal ‘contradictions’, which in fact are no more than tensions – and creative ones at that.
Just imagine Spud on a committee to found a new political party. He’d be an impossible colleague, making dogmatic assertions and then preening himself in his new role as a philosopher-strategist. I do hope he gets involved in such a project, because he’ll waste his and other’s time with his brain excretions and his personality disorder.
Fourth, sustainability has to be in such a party’s DNA or the young are not going to relate to it.
Bullshit. The idea that “young people” are interested at all in ‘sustainability’, yet alone are not voting because parties “don’t propose it” is Emperor-level delusion. The local Greens had a meeting at my local a few years ago. There were half a dozen of them and every single one was an upper-class white person over 60.
Richie loves his neighbour so much he wants to tax him back to a 1950s standard of living, for “sustainability”.
For “upper-class” read “upper-middle class”. Sorry.
Emperor-level delusion.
Nice phrase, and so apt for Spud.
@BiS
That same thought occurred to me. The heading could have been: Pinguid Professor enjoys ordinal orgasm.
Rob: “Richie loves his neighbour so much he wants to tax him back to a 1950s standard of living, for “sustainability”.
If the morons were able to start the clock spinning backwards they would be bloody lucky if it stopped at the 1950s.
The New Stone Age would be more like it.
It is an article of faith amongst the chattering classes that Euroscepticism is ephemeral and superficial but Europhilia is well-established and rooted in rational, but passionate argument.
I think the opposite is the case. Euroscepticism we know about, but judging from my Facebook feed and various other sources, Europhilia is far more frivolous (except in Whitehall and parts of Fleet Street).
Before and during the referendum, the targets of Dawkins’ new party rarely talked about the EU itself. I heard plenty of people say that they’d vote Remain “because racists would be voting Leave” – hardly a considered position.
After the referendum, there were plenty of teddies out of the pram, but they mostly revolved around financial security, the ineradicable belief that they would no longer be able to go on holiday, and dislike of Nigel Farage.
If Brexit is even ok financially and if (as seems incredibly likely) it imposes very few restrictions on where a British passport can take you, I think desire to be in the EU will become about as significant as desire to be in the Euro.
The problem – no current political party will make Ritchie a peer, a treasury minister, chairman of HMRC, head of a quango, etc.
The solution – we need a new political party!
Ritchie’s next post – “Why my massively popular new party will need representation in the House of Lords and why I have humbly put myself forward for a peerage”
“loving ourselves is fine”
Murphy justifies his self-love.
It’s the second part he has trouble with; the “duty to love others” tends to end up as everyone having a duty to agree with Murphy.
@Charlie Suet
“I think desire to be in the EU will become about as significant as desire to be in the Euro.”
Good point. Haven’t heard much recently from those who told us the country would wither and die if we failed to join that great scheme.
He should be honest and call it the MOAR Tax party : that ought to prove popular with the electorate
Charlie Suet,
I observed to a friend that almost no-one I know who is involved in international trade for a living is strongly pro-remain, and most are pro-Brexit.
Most of the loudest outrage I’ve read has come from people I’d describe as the establishment. Those bits of the public sector that are rather discretionary. So, not the bin men or the ambulance drivers but people like economics professors or academics in general.
These people like to paint themselves as socialists. But they aren’t. They’re the establishment. Their interest is not in the working man but retaining the structures that keep them in a place of privilege. And they are thick as thieves about it. One part of the establishment will always support the others. Because they know that retaining the establishment is in all their interests. Look at all the people who move from the Guardian to running a quango or a university. No-one at the Graun wants that quango not to be there when the Graun sinks.
Brexit is like the Miner’s Strike for the middle classes.
‘in essence it’s the command to love your neighbour as your self. This is pretty fundamental to any functioning society as far as I can see, and so to any political party seeking a broad based appeal.’
You vill loff your neighbour!
Like sustainability, a nebulous term to be defined by the state, to whatever the current need, to beat you into submission,
It is genuinely striking that there’s never been any mass sadness (apart from people like Will Hutton) about the fact that we’re not in the Euro. In that period where it was clear that we would be fine keeping the pound and it wasn’t yet plain that the Euro itself was a disaster, you didn’t get that many people clamouring for us to join it for ideological reasons.
I also wonder how many diehard Labour voters could tell you the names of the parties Labour allies with in the EU parliament, let alone their leaders and key policies.
He’s having some difficulty thinking of a party name which both highlights the party’s newness and has wide appeal both within and beyond its proposed core demographic.
Might I suggest the New Party?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Party_(UK)
“Love thy neighbour as thyself” might be a little over-ambitious for Spud.
He should be honest and call it the MOAR Tax party : that ought to prove popular with the electorate
The MOAR Tax Candidly Joyful Party.
The National Socialist British Workers’ Party would be in keeping with most of his proposed policies.
Rob
‘Richie loves his neighbour so much he wants to tax him back to a 1950s standard of living, for “sustainability”.’
Exactly why fortunately his brand of politics looks likely to wither on the vine – it appeals to a certain type of self-abnegating puritan which are in increasingly short supply. However, adherents of such an ideology might be extremely destructive in the short term – rather like the SS detachments that went on the rampage following the surrender in Czechoslovakia…
I imagine a party with Dawkins and Murphy prominent will have no problem attracting members and votes.
@Rob,
Using their own names would mean their policies wouldn’t be examined on their own merits. They would have to use aliases. Possibly Dunning and Kruger.
A turning point in history?
The rise of The New Black Shorts and Roderick Spode II?
How about “It’s MY Party” as the new party’s name and as a slogan “You’ll cry if I want you to”.
Rob
That last post did make me laugh uncontrollably for about 10 seconds to mystified glances in the office….
Until such time as all people are Christians, striving to love others as they do themselves, we’ll need an economic system that leverages the greed and selfishness we see all around us.
Wait, I think I’ve got it………..
“It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.”
We could call it free-market capitalism.
Is it consistent to oppose the green’s policy of open borders and to claim that the best of all the commandments is to love your neighbour as you love yourself? I suppose there is only one place to ask.