Coalition: Bringing the Right onboard

Great Britain, Not Little England is continuing to build a blogswarm about a coalition of the willing to get blair out. The latest part is about how to bring the Right onboard, as part of the 'Right', or more accurately a frothing-at-the-mouth-libertarian here is my ideas.

First why there will be friction in the first place. Below, if I can get blogger to do it, is a diagram to help me with this.



The extreme 'left' often considers economic freedom completely separate from social freedom. The way that Socialism was supposed to work was that everybody would be free to do as they please but (or actually because) all economic structures would be controlled by society as a whole.

The extreme 'right' often considers economic freedom to be an intrinsic part of social freedom. The way that Anarcho-Capitalism is supposed to work is that everybody would be free because they where all completely free economic agents to act and trade as they wished.

The reality is that neither of these positions hold in practice. The horrors of Socialist China and the USSR need no further explanation. As do the horrors of Somalia.

There is an intersect here on most areas of personal social freedom. If the campaign keeps to these areas then both sides can agree completely.

There is also a third force that needs to be courted. Those too obsessed with the past to look at the present but it comes in two forms. People that want to return to the past, I could call this conservatism with a small c, and people that fear the return of the past, Thatcher-phobes.

Conservatism is not the same as the 'right' but has a long standing alliance with it. For details as to why they are not the same have a look at this essay by F.A. Hayek entitled "Why I Am Not a Conservative". This is in a large part the politics of nostalgia, things where better in the past so we should return to the old ways. There is a large intersect with the politics of the 'right' since during the last century both where engaged in the fight against the newer doctrine of Socialism.

The alliance here is simply due to the radical authoritarian nature of New Labour it has trampled over so much of the ancient customs of this country that anyone interested in conserving and restoring them will be anti-New labour. Here is the intersect, the restoration of the old civil liberties and constrained government.

The Thatcher-phobes are a slightly different problem. There is an almost totally irrational fear here, perhaps pointing out that New Labour are generally continuing Thatcher's economic prescriptions (because they work). But by doing this they would just say that everyone else also follow these same prescriptions (because they work), and then go back to gently rocking in the corner. Noesmonkey has a suggestion for resueing these people from their phobia and so getting them on board our coalition

if you push people these days to come up with what Thatcher did that was so bad (once they accept that our industrial sector was no longer viable anyway), the worst they can usually come up with is the Poll Tax. Give me that any day over Blair's ID card equivalent - because not only is that a shit-load more expensive, but what is it if not a poll tax?

And Blair's version is a poll tax with nobs on. When did Thatcher suggest fingerprinting and retina scanning us all to ensure we paid?

As you can probably tell I have less sympathy with them, and find it unlikely that they will be rescuable. The effort could well be distracting from building a broader coalition and our resources will be limited. The next election will anyway be the first with voters who weren't even born while she was in office. Time is probably the best healer for this type of irrational fear.

The solution, as has already been pointed out.

Simply to focus on the areas of agreement and agree to disagree on everything else. Make sure that it is not hijacked by wingnuts like myself from the 'right', moonbats from the 'left'. Concentrate on restoring the ancient civil liberties (such as Habeas Corpus and the Presumption of Innocence) that we had before New Labour started tearing up the constitution to get the small c conservatives on board. Remember that getting New Labour out is the important thing.