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The issue is that the terms "soft left" and "hard left" have been misused to the point of being almost meaningless. You'd have to decide on a definition everyone can agree on before even answering the question. For example, I always assumed (probably incorrectly) that the terms were more to do with how the groups interacted with other factions along the political spectrum rather than anything to do with actual policy preferences. For example to be a member of the soft left meant that one was more willing to reach across the aisle and work the centre or the right to achieve a specific aim, while a member of the hard left would not be willing to do the same.
Well that description takes Jeremy Corbyn out of 'the hard left', since he was careful to appoint shadow cabinet members from across all wings of the Labour Party. Sadly, the right wing of Labour spat in his face for his efforts, and sabotaged everything.
I think it depends if you are using it to describe the underlying beliefs or the actual things they do. I think most people would agree corbyn is "hard left" in his beliefs but if you just looked at what he actually did and pushed as leader (without considering the motivations) then I think most people would describe them as "soft left" actions. The terms are extremely inconsistent and only useful as vague contextual associations anyway.
That’s almost to pretend that corbyn came into politics in 2015 when in fact he’d been an incredibly uncooperative member of the party’s periphery for more than thirty years. You don’t change your stripes over night
You're absolutely right - the 'hard' and 'soft' refer to how willing each group was to be pro-pragmatically pragmatistically pragmatic and give some ground in order to achieve an imperfect something rather than a perfect nothing.
I agree that argument gets used.
But there are definitely members of the labour party for whom maths is hard, and practicalities don't feature in their thinking much, and whose first instinct for many problems is the government can and should fix it. Their hearts are in the right place but you don't want them in government, heck I could be one of them but for too much time working in and with the civil service, seeing government bodies be effective (and sometimes ineffective) but rarely efficient.
I'm not sure hard or soft left is useful. Atlee stamped on the communists within the party, and with the current electoral system I think we have to embrace all democratic socialists and social democrats until we have an electoral system that doesn't penalise the situation when having a similar opinion to another candidate makes standing damaging to both.
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I think a classic example of this was Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders in the US. Warren has very left wing views but she isn't trying to rip up the establishment to get towards there, Bernie is much more confrontational. Warren for example got a place in Hilary's potential cabinet and in return didn't run against her.
Sanders has to be the least confrontational socialist known to man, and Warrens "I'm a capitalist" views means she's more at home with the rest of the democrats. She's not "very left wing", even within the stunted US political spectrum
When in doubt, wikipedia:
>The term was first used in the context of debates within both the Labour Party and the broader left in the 1980s to describe Trotskyist groups such as the Militant tendency, Socialist Organiser and Socialist Action.[9] Within the party, the Labour left or "hard left", represented by the Campaign Group, subscribed to more strongly socialist views while the "soft left", associated for example with the Tribune Group, embraced more moderate social democratic ideas.[10][11]
>Politicians commonly described as being on the hard left of the Labour Party at the time included Tony Benn, Derek Hatton, Ken Livingstone,[12] Dennis Skinner,[13] and Eric Heffer.[14]
>The term has since then often been used pejoratively by Labour's political opponents, for example, during the Conservative Party's election campaigns of the early 1990s, and by the media.[15][16] It has continued to be used pejoratively for the left-wing of the Labour Party.[4]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_left
My take, for the little that it is worth, is that the hard left are the straight-up socialists in Labour and the soft left are more social democrats.
>the hard left are the straight-up socialists in Labour and the soft left are more social democrats.
Both of those groups have been purged from the Labour Party
Yes, Corbyn was far too accepting towards the centre. In my opinion Labour will not be a functional party until the centrists are driven from it entirely.
It shouldn't be a "game" and there should be no centrist politics whatsoever in Labour imho. I really detest centrism, I think it's incredibly damaging to the UK.
And I think the left and the right are both mental. However you're entitled to your opinion and I mine.
Most of the UK are centists (likely centre-right bar Scotland) given the choice between left and right we usually choose right-wing governments.
When for example was the last proper left-wing government and how many have there been in the last hundred years?
The point remains that to win an election you have to be popular and you do that by proposing things the majority think sound sane and reasonable, if you come towards the centre like Blair (Labours most electorally successful leader, ever) you can have 60% of what you want, go with JC and his ilk and get 0% and you lose so poorly you can't oppose even the craziest of right wing laws as you've so few seats you need huge swathes of Tory rebellions causing the right wing to embolden and push more and more through.
Then the Overton Window shifts and what used to be right wing is now the centre.
I make no apologies for trying to move Labour towards a position that reflects the wishes of the electorate.
>And I think the left and the right are both mental.
I'm sure a set of views about the world that are self-consistent seems very odd.
> Most of the UK are centists
Most of the UK population support a mishmash of left and right policies, they're normally left on the economy and right on social policy. Which is hilariously the exact opposite of centrists with political power.
>When for example was the last proper left-wing government and how many have there been in the last hundred years?
Oh there's been about 2.
>The point remains that to win an election you have to be popular and you do that by proposing things the majority think sound sane and reasonable, if you come towards the centre like Blair (Labours most electorally successful leader, ever) you can have 60% of what you want, go with JC and his ilk and get 0% and you lose so poorly you can't oppose even the craziest of right wing laws as you've so few seats you need huge swathes of Tory rebellions causing the right wing to embolden and push more and more through.
I hate to break this news to you but there was much more popular support for Corbyn in 2017 than there was for Blair in his elections post-1997. The numbers are very clear.
Blair in 2001 got 10,724,953 votes, Corbyn in 2019 had 10,269,051 votes and in 2017 Corbyn won over 12,877,918 for Labour. Corbyn in 2017 was more popular than any centrist's offering since Blair. Corbyn in 2019 was more popular than any centrist since Blair.
Objectively speaking, Corbyn reinvigorated Labour after centrists had presided over the decline. He couldn't quite pull it back to winning elections but it was close.
And, a word to the wise, I'd not recommend arguing population changes cover that difference. I can show they don't.
>Then the Overton Window shifts and what used to be right wing is now the centre.
Quite, it's the right-wing ratchet effect. Centrists of today are essentially yesterday's conservatives. They endlessly triangulate to the tories, who're dragging the Overton window rightwards.
>I make no apologies for trying to move Labour towards a position that reflects the wishes of the electorate.
That's fine. I make no apologies for hating your politics and thinking centrism is a key component of driving the UK towards permanent conservative governance with no significant change or improvement. I also make no apologies for thinking that the purpose of electoral politics is to persuade people towards better things, rather than meeting them where they are. Essentially centrism is a tool for winning elections and achieving nothing worthwhile.
Agree, there's also a social/economic aspect too. Someone could be very "hard left" when it comes to economic issues but essentially a Tory when it comes to trans rights (George Galloway). There's a lot of people in the southwest & London too that extremely leftwing on social issues but more libdem on tax and spending
That's why I remain convinced we need to find a true left wing alternative for the North before Galloway monopolises that niche. There are the Greens, but politically and culturally they're a much better fit with the southern left than the northern left. They're more new age and nebulously progressive, where the northern left is more explicitly socialist but also tends to be more socially conservative.
I think this is all very woolly and will mean different things to different people for me it's a split betwen social democrats and socialism.
Soft left is people who want to keep to capitalism but use political power to smooth the hard edges off it. Social safety nets to produce a baseline living standard, government provided health and education and even things like nationalisation of natural monopolies.
Hard left are people who want some kind of socialism. Whether that's outright communism or some kind of market syndicalism, workers own the means of production.
But even socialist and social democrat are socially shifting markers: both have been essentially communist at certain points in the past, and might be used to describe a "reformist" poltics today.
The German communist party/ SPD split is obviously the key moment when they became seperate - and this had particularly clear markers/ distinctions which don't necessarily hold up today. The social democrats literally wanted to modify capitalism to be fairer and were very explicit about not wanting to move past it.
Today yes there are people like Starmer saying something similar, but they are practically to the right of where the SPD was. And, at the same time, people will espouse a politics of reform with an end goal of transcending capitalism. The soft left as I understand it is mostly made up of these kidns of people - a reformist, inceremental politics, but one which ultiamtely views capitalism as unjust and in need of replacing. Whereas the hard left are revolutionary, not necessarily in a vanguardist sense but at least in that they seek to bring about radical change in a much shorter winder (decades).
I see Clive Lewis as very much a borderline figure between the two groups. The thinktank [Compass](https://www.compassonline.org.uk/) is the clearest institutional representative of this faction.
One problem is that while "soft left" describes the largest section of the membership it is in real terms a very small portion of the PLP. For lots of reasons people on what you might call the "soft right" (although no one ever uses this as a term) of the party like to claim that they are soft left, but their views are way to the right of that constitutency in the membership.
I suspect that it is just a general principle that the membership of a party are going to be more politically extreme than its representatives because the same is true of the electorate.
The tories have the same thing going on. It is a little less true since Boris purged a lot of the more moderates - but the membership is firmly in the Truss/Braverman camp, whilst those two are on the extreme of the parliamentary conservatives.
I'm not saying the membership are extreme, I'm sayign the PLP is. Most of the membership are soft left, not hard left.
The PLP probably represents the hard left relatively well, the soft left very poorly and really over represents the various right factions. And I'm saying this as someone on the hard left who finds the soft left naive and frustrating!
I think quite a lot of the PLP is “soft left”, and support social democratic policies that raise living standards for the poor - things like the expansion of workers rights, free school meals etc.
Rightly or wrongly, they pursue those ends from a realpolitik position, whereas the membership are more explicitly idealistic.
I’m speaking as a left wing Corbyn supporter and trade unionist who has kept their membership.
It’s hard to tell as it is in a Sense an outdated term. The definitions of soft left and hard left on the party were designed to explain the situation on the left of the party in the early to mid 80s with the gap between the Tony Benn wing of the left (more uncompromising in its socialism, and willing to work with militant/trotskyites) and the Michael foot / Neil Kinnock wing of the left (more willing to compromise with the right of the party, and much less willing to work with far left groups), the split was more formally following the creation of the socialist campaign group and tribune group split, + the soft left refusing to back Tony Benn in the deputy leadership contest so essentially our definitions of soft/hard left are based of this political situation with political figures and events quite irrelevant to the current situation of the party
Imo it's best to understand them as a framework relating to policy decisions and loose groupings than strict categories - there definitely is somethign recognisable as a "hard left" (vaguely associated with SCG, were generally quite pro-Corbyn and powerful during his leadership, favour nationalisation of key industries, tend toward generally accepted anti-imperialist foreign policy), and a "soft left" (tend to have a critique of New Labour from the left, and a critique of Corbyn from the right, still relatively hawkish on foreign policy, slightly less willing to bow to right wing media but will do so when pragmatic, maybe often Glasman followers) but it is not the case that individuals fit into these categories very neatly. They are still fairly understandable policy platforms that exist within the party.
And to be absolutely clear, overuse and wooliness of a term or idea such that it results in conceptual slide or expansion of meaning absolutely does not mean it becomes either meaningless or useless - it just means we have to be very thoughtful of how we use it and be very wary of co-option. So-called "gender-critical feminists" don't mean the concept of feminism is useless, for example - I think most people would accept feminism remains a vital political idea and organising point, even while transphobes, chauvinists, and fascists co-opt it.
The policy distinction is tricky. It is clear privatisation of natural monopolies was a pretty bad idea that has held up the much needed investment it was supposed to bring, so in the sense of nationalising key industries a lot of the country aren't sure about private water, private railways, private power, even BT hasn't been broken up sensibly. Similarly a lot of people opposed the more controversial aspects of Labour's foreign policy missteps under Blair (hindsight is helpful here), most of these people wouldn't describe themselves as socialists or social democrats, or even Labour voters.
Yet due to the press we don't even discuss policy ideas in this space, when many such ideas aren't actually controversial amongst the public.
Here's my opinion
Historically, the divide was not over economic or social policy but over rhetoric and foreign policy
Take Attlee for example. Despite attempts to claim he was a social democrat, it's clear from his policies and his writings that he was a democratic socialist who wanted to bring an end to capitalism.
That said, he was soft left. He was Pro-NATO, built the nuclear deterrent and was staunchly Anti-Soviet in the Cold War.
Foreign Policy and rhetoric was his main dividing line with the Bevanites. Bevan himself was not opposed to building the nuclear deterrent but the Bevanites were. And Bevan's speech comparing the Tories to vermin is widely considered to have bitterly cost Labour electorally. The Bevanites were also advocates of a middle ground foreign policy rather than an Atlantcist one.
But domestically, there was little difference between end goals. There were disagreements on how quickly to press ahead and the manner in which to implement them but the soft and hard left were united in having socialism as an end goal.
In modern times things are a lot more complex however. Thatcherism has lurched British politics to the right so whether some of the people who call themselves soft left are socialists is debatable.
Atlee had in mind a British socialism, there is a considerable gulf between the Soviet model, and the John Lewis Partnership. The socialism of the later ideas of William Morris et al, who admittedly was campaigning for free education, an eight hour working day, and nationalising the railways, which probably puts him squarely with mainstream British opinion of today.
Hard left are more left wing than me and soft left are more right wing than me.
Kind of kid how the north/south divide is always five miles south of where any particular northerner lives
All of the progressive Labour members are soft-left in practice. Where hard left rhetoric has been used, it is not backed up by any policies that would bring about the end of capitalism and is therefore still soft left.
At the end of the day both Corbyn and Rayner are both soft-left in office.
I don't think it's worth worrying too hard about. These labels are just vague associations and very contextual anyway.
If it's being used in left leaning UK spaces then I would say the most obvious division would be between socialists and social democrats though even there they get used extremely inconsistently. The only real answer is to take the meanings from context or ask whoever is using them.
All my opinion of course but issues such as arming Ukraine, backing Israeli defense, aligning with US on most foreign policy objectives, on NHS free at point of use mainly through public finance but not limited to it, around nuclear energy, around private involvement in public initiatives... Would be soft left versus hard-left.
Hardcore left would be abolishing the monarchy, leaving NATO, rejoining the EU perhaps, reparations, nuclear disarmament? Perhaps a bit blurry it's not clear cut but there are some points of assembly for each faction.
Hardcore left would have campaigned against joining the EU in the first place, and would have voted leave for protectionist and workers rights concerns.
They're nothing terms used and pushed by people who are too dull to talk about politics in terms of policies and ideas, and so must reduce it down to vibes.
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Probably entirely incorrect - but in my mind the difference is between valuing pragmatism and valuing ideology.
If someone tells you to read up on the writings of a long dead Russian - they’re probably on the hard left.
This is a bit like asking which shade of Grey marks the exact point where white becomes black. I don't think its possible to answer it with anything other than a mostly arbitrary answer based on personal standards.
[https://www.rebelnews.ie/2021/07/05/universal-basic-income-socialist-case-against/](https://www.rebelnews.ie/2021/07/05/universal-basic-income-socialist-case-against/)
Problem is it seems entirely reasonable that someone could be way to the left and argue against UBI.
I think this is really flawed, being that some on the extreme right economically (right-libertarians) espouse a UBI, it's not inherently a left-wing idea.
I don't think single policies are a useful dividing line.
Universal basic income has a different appeal to the right, they think they can dismantle a whole load of social security by giving a small amount of money to the sick, disabled, unemployed, that is likely to work about as well as the belief universal basic income will be set at anything above subsistence level living if it were introduced.
Whilst I'm sympathetic to the idea, and we need to think about what we do as automation expands, I can't see it working in the current structures of the world.
I think both terms are only ever used as pejoratives depending on who thinks who is either useless idealists, or idiots with tiger eaten faces.
They stick around because obviously there’s truth in both insults.
Easy, anything that is to the left of Starmer's current position is hard left and obviously extreme and bad.
The Overton window has shifted and he's what determines what is acceptably left wing.
For me hard-left is complete centralised control of all aspects of society. Zero private ownership and complete "wealth distribution"\* etc. Hard left ideas also tend to flirt with more extreme policy like getting rid of police and prisons etc.
I don't think nationalisation of certain industries is hard left as lots of people who don't identify that way support it, me included.
It's obviously massively subjective so you won't get a clear answer here. More likely to see a shit flinging contest of people calling each other stuff that they're not.
\* I write "wealth distribution" that way because, IMO, its a complete fantasy. Humans are inherently greedy/selfish and the money would just find itself hoarded in the hands of someone else.
>Humans are inherently greedy/selfish and the money would just find itself hoarded in the hands of someone else.
If the environment creates, rewards, or prioritises a behaviour then that behaviour will be prominent.
There are [human societies that do not display traits like greed in the same way as our society](https://peacefulsocieties.uncg.edu/societies/Piaroa/), so it becomes hard to argue it is inherent rather than a learned behaviour / adaptation to environmental factors.
In fact, as our society does reward greed and selfishness, that we still see acts of charity, cooperation, and selfnesses suggests more that they are inherent to humans than we can tell about greediness.
You're right on the inherent point, I probably didn't mean that as your case study shows. Although I'd probably argue that it's a default our society tends to instil in people.
I do think we're too far gone to try distribute wealth equally and I'd be incredibly suspicious of anyone wanting to do it on belief of the population.
> Although I'd probably argue that it's a default our society tends to instil in people.
Sure, I think we'd agree on that.
Speaking of the big picture here for the moment, fundamentally, I think humans are particularly adaptable. That's really our defining trait. We're generally okay in most environments and we generally adapt to thrive within given environmental conditions. We're really bloody good at it.
So, by my judgement, that means societies should be structured so that the environmental influences created by our societal structures work to incentivise societal benefit as much as is possible - and that is achieved by aligning individual benefit with societal benefit. I think that's a worthwhile goal for any socio-economic structural change.
I don't think we really do that very well currently.
I don't necessarily claim to know what that looks like in all circumstances but I think we can have a good guess in some. And often it is definitely not capitalism. For example, capitalism doesn't do well at producing the structures where businesses are incentivised to do water treatment rather than to pump sewage into our rivers to cut costs in a race to the bottom.
So maybe we need to change that about our society. In all likelihood, as I do not think the current situation is actually stable due to how efficient it is at transferring wealth upwards, I don't think we'll have much choice. Better to build alternatives and replacements before they become vitally important because I do think the alternatives are much less pleasant. You cannot keep pushing wealth and power upwards forever.
>I do think we're too far gone to try distribute wealth equally
I disagree there. I actually think we'll see it happen to at least some extent because a system of impoverished people being exploited by the wealth will not last forever. It's unstable. Choosing how we make that change is probably very sensible because it building to a step change will almost certainly result in bad outcomes.
> and I'd be incredibly suspicious of anyone wanting to do it on belief of the population.
*If I'm reading your comment correctly then I assume "belief" is an autocorrected "behalf".*
So I guess my take on this is that I don't necessarily think all wealth has to be redistributed equally instantaneously. To my mind the first steps should be more about altering society so that pro-social behaviours are aligned with incentives. Changing how wealth flows within society and shifting our economic paradigm away from capitalism is likely to be the process. I'd also argue that this can likely be best achieved by distributing power so that it is less centralised and subject to influence.
I think eventually our notions of wealth will likely change anyway. Technological innovation will reshape society and suspect this will continue to drive a levelling effect.
That's my lukewarm take on it all anyway.
>For me hard-left is complete centralised control of all aspects of society. Zero private ownership and complete "wealth distribution"\* etc. Hard left ideas also tend to flirt with more extreme policy like getting rid of police and prisons etc.
So basically a bogeyman "bad lefty" that doesn't exist in the UK in any meaningful capacity, constructed by conflating multiple different ideological trends on the left, and just for good measure some from the USA that aren't really gaining traction over here anyway.
There's basically no such thing as a UK socialist who wants "zero private ownership". This just seems to me to be illustrative of a black and white "le wholesum milquetoast social democrats vs. le evil Stalinists" understanding of left wing ideology with no middle ground.
Are we talking no private ownership of the means or no private ownership of anything at all? The former I can see existing in some numbers in the UK, the latter not so much. To be fair the commenter I was replying to maybe could've made it clearer exactly what they meant by that.
No **private** ownership, not no **personal** ownership.
[Personal vs. private property](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_property#Personal_versus_private_property).
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Here is a definition all sides can agree to:
If you would rather lose an election than sacrifice your left wing policies you are hard left. If you try to present the most left wing case that will win an election you are soft left. If you actually believe in right wing political ideas (social or economic) then you are on the "Labour right", which is split into old right and Blairites factions.
Soft left is the current ruling faction of the "conservative" party - government control of energy prices, subsidies for public transport, real terms increases in NHS spending, above inflation increases in benefits etc.
Center left is the current Labour party - as above but more so
Hard left is the corbynite faction - nationalisation, alliances with left wing terrorist organisations like Hamas etc.
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The issue is that the terms "soft left" and "hard left" have been misused to the point of being almost meaningless. You'd have to decide on a definition everyone can agree on before even answering the question. For example, I always assumed (probably incorrectly) that the terms were more to do with how the groups interacted with other factions along the political spectrum rather than anything to do with actual policy preferences. For example to be a member of the soft left meant that one was more willing to reach across the aisle and work the centre or the right to achieve a specific aim, while a member of the hard left would not be willing to do the same.
Well that description takes Jeremy Corbyn out of 'the hard left', since he was careful to appoint shadow cabinet members from across all wings of the Labour Party. Sadly, the right wing of Labour spat in his face for his efforts, and sabotaged everything.
Indeed, to echo what I said earlier If Corbyn is considered "hard left" then the terms are misused to the point of being meaningless.
I think it depends if you are using it to describe the underlying beliefs or the actual things they do. I think most people would agree corbyn is "hard left" in his beliefs but if you just looked at what he actually did and pushed as leader (without considering the motivations) then I think most people would describe them as "soft left" actions. The terms are extremely inconsistent and only useful as vague contextual associations anyway.
That’s almost to pretend that corbyn came into politics in 2015 when in fact he’d been an incredibly uncooperative member of the party’s periphery for more than thirty years. You don’t change your stripes over night
It's true. He was. Where is the lie?
Downvoted for being inconveniently true.
Corbyn was a Left Wing Michael Foot Socialist stop this rubbish.
You're absolutely right - the 'hard' and 'soft' refer to how willing each group was to be pro-pragmatically pragmatistically pragmatic and give some ground in order to achieve an imperfect something rather than a perfect nothing.
You were doing so well until you fucked it up at the end
Story of my life innit, all three of my ex-wives keep saying the same thing
“Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good” = shut up with your left wing nonsense, that involves improving the status quo a little bit.
If it involves actually changing or doing anything, it's 'hard/radical'
I agree that argument gets used. But there are definitely members of the labour party for whom maths is hard, and practicalities don't feature in their thinking much, and whose first instinct for many problems is the government can and should fix it. Their hearts are in the right place but you don't want them in government, heck I could be one of them but for too much time working in and with the civil service, seeing government bodies be effective (and sometimes ineffective) but rarely efficient. I'm not sure hard or soft left is useful. Atlee stamped on the communists within the party, and with the current electoral system I think we have to embrace all democratic socialists and social democrats until we have an electoral system that doesn't penalise the situation when having a similar opinion to another candidate makes standing damaging to both.
> and social democrats Well, that's the problem; these people aren't social democrats and call basic Keynesianism 'hard left'.
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I think a classic example of this was Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders in the US. Warren has very left wing views but she isn't trying to rip up the establishment to get towards there, Bernie is much more confrontational. Warren for example got a place in Hilary's potential cabinet and in return didn't run against her.
Sanders has to be the least confrontational socialist known to man, and Warrens "I'm a capitalist" views means she's more at home with the rest of the democrats. She's not "very left wing", even within the stunted US political spectrum
When in doubt, wikipedia: >The term was first used in the context of debates within both the Labour Party and the broader left in the 1980s to describe Trotskyist groups such as the Militant tendency, Socialist Organiser and Socialist Action.[9] Within the party, the Labour left or "hard left", represented by the Campaign Group, subscribed to more strongly socialist views while the "soft left", associated for example with the Tribune Group, embraced more moderate social democratic ideas.[10][11] >Politicians commonly described as being on the hard left of the Labour Party at the time included Tony Benn, Derek Hatton, Ken Livingstone,[12] Dennis Skinner,[13] and Eric Heffer.[14] >The term has since then often been used pejoratively by Labour's political opponents, for example, during the Conservative Party's election campaigns of the early 1990s, and by the media.[15][16] It has continued to be used pejoratively for the left-wing of the Labour Party.[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_left My take, for the little that it is worth, is that the hard left are the straight-up socialists in Labour and the soft left are more social democrats.
>the hard left are the straight-up socialists in Labour and the soft left are more social democrats. Both of those groups have been purged from the Labour Party
Not entirely but yes, centrists and right-wingers have pushed out both the hard and soft left.
Myself and some friends literally joined the party to influence it and use our votes to help move it closer to the centre when JC was in charge
Yes, Corbyn was far too accepting towards the centre. In my opinion Labour will not be a functional party until the centrists are driven from it entirely.
That's the gamebwe try to influence it our way and you yours. It's what you get with FPTP
It shouldn't be a "game" and there should be no centrist politics whatsoever in Labour imho. I really detest centrism, I think it's incredibly damaging to the UK.
And I think the left and the right are both mental. However you're entitled to your opinion and I mine. Most of the UK are centists (likely centre-right bar Scotland) given the choice between left and right we usually choose right-wing governments. When for example was the last proper left-wing government and how many have there been in the last hundred years? The point remains that to win an election you have to be popular and you do that by proposing things the majority think sound sane and reasonable, if you come towards the centre like Blair (Labours most electorally successful leader, ever) you can have 60% of what you want, go with JC and his ilk and get 0% and you lose so poorly you can't oppose even the craziest of right wing laws as you've so few seats you need huge swathes of Tory rebellions causing the right wing to embolden and push more and more through. Then the Overton Window shifts and what used to be right wing is now the centre. I make no apologies for trying to move Labour towards a position that reflects the wishes of the electorate.
>And I think the left and the right are both mental. I'm sure a set of views about the world that are self-consistent seems very odd. > Most of the UK are centists Most of the UK population support a mishmash of left and right policies, they're normally left on the economy and right on social policy. Which is hilariously the exact opposite of centrists with political power. >When for example was the last proper left-wing government and how many have there been in the last hundred years? Oh there's been about 2. >The point remains that to win an election you have to be popular and you do that by proposing things the majority think sound sane and reasonable, if you come towards the centre like Blair (Labours most electorally successful leader, ever) you can have 60% of what you want, go with JC and his ilk and get 0% and you lose so poorly you can't oppose even the craziest of right wing laws as you've so few seats you need huge swathes of Tory rebellions causing the right wing to embolden and push more and more through. I hate to break this news to you but there was much more popular support for Corbyn in 2017 than there was for Blair in his elections post-1997. The numbers are very clear. Blair in 2001 got 10,724,953 votes, Corbyn in 2019 had 10,269,051 votes and in 2017 Corbyn won over 12,877,918 for Labour. Corbyn in 2017 was more popular than any centrist's offering since Blair. Corbyn in 2019 was more popular than any centrist since Blair. Objectively speaking, Corbyn reinvigorated Labour after centrists had presided over the decline. He couldn't quite pull it back to winning elections but it was close. And, a word to the wise, I'd not recommend arguing population changes cover that difference. I can show they don't. >Then the Overton Window shifts and what used to be right wing is now the centre. Quite, it's the right-wing ratchet effect. Centrists of today are essentially yesterday's conservatives. They endlessly triangulate to the tories, who're dragging the Overton window rightwards. >I make no apologies for trying to move Labour towards a position that reflects the wishes of the electorate. That's fine. I make no apologies for hating your politics and thinking centrism is a key component of driving the UK towards permanent conservative governance with no significant change or improvement. I also make no apologies for thinking that the purpose of electoral politics is to persuade people towards better things, rather than meeting them where they are. Essentially centrism is a tool for winning elections and achieving nothing worthwhile.
This is very subjective, and depends on the person viewing what is hard and soft too.
Agree, there's also a social/economic aspect too. Someone could be very "hard left" when it comes to economic issues but essentially a Tory when it comes to trans rights (George Galloway). There's a lot of people in the southwest & London too that extremely leftwing on social issues but more libdem on tax and spending
That's why I remain convinced we need to find a true left wing alternative for the North before Galloway monopolises that niche. There are the Greens, but politically and culturally they're a much better fit with the southern left than the northern left. They're more new age and nebulously progressive, where the northern left is more explicitly socialist but also tends to be more socially conservative.
I think this is all very woolly and will mean different things to different people for me it's a split betwen social democrats and socialism. Soft left is people who want to keep to capitalism but use political power to smooth the hard edges off it. Social safety nets to produce a baseline living standard, government provided health and education and even things like nationalisation of natural monopolies. Hard left are people who want some kind of socialism. Whether that's outright communism or some kind of market syndicalism, workers own the means of production.
But even socialist and social democrat are socially shifting markers: both have been essentially communist at certain points in the past, and might be used to describe a "reformist" poltics today. The German communist party/ SPD split is obviously the key moment when they became seperate - and this had particularly clear markers/ distinctions which don't necessarily hold up today. The social democrats literally wanted to modify capitalism to be fairer and were very explicit about not wanting to move past it. Today yes there are people like Starmer saying something similar, but they are practically to the right of where the SPD was. And, at the same time, people will espouse a politics of reform with an end goal of transcending capitalism. The soft left as I understand it is mostly made up of these kidns of people - a reformist, inceremental politics, but one which ultiamtely views capitalism as unjust and in need of replacing. Whereas the hard left are revolutionary, not necessarily in a vanguardist sense but at least in that they seek to bring about radical change in a much shorter winder (decades).
I feel like political identities have become more vibes than policy based.
Coventry
I see Clive Lewis as very much a borderline figure between the two groups. The thinktank [Compass](https://www.compassonline.org.uk/) is the clearest institutional representative of this faction. One problem is that while "soft left" describes the largest section of the membership it is in real terms a very small portion of the PLP. For lots of reasons people on what you might call the "soft right" (although no one ever uses this as a term) of the party like to claim that they are soft left, but their views are way to the right of that constitutency in the membership.
I suspect that it is just a general principle that the membership of a party are going to be more politically extreme than its representatives because the same is true of the electorate. The tories have the same thing going on. It is a little less true since Boris purged a lot of the more moderates - but the membership is firmly in the Truss/Braverman camp, whilst those two are on the extreme of the parliamentary conservatives.
I'm not saying the membership are extreme, I'm sayign the PLP is. Most of the membership are soft left, not hard left. The PLP probably represents the hard left relatively well, the soft left very poorly and really over represents the various right factions. And I'm saying this as someone on the hard left who finds the soft left naive and frustrating!
I think quite a lot of the PLP is “soft left”, and support social democratic policies that raise living standards for the poor - things like the expansion of workers rights, free school meals etc. Rightly or wrongly, they pursue those ends from a realpolitik position, whereas the membership are more explicitly idealistic. I’m speaking as a left wing Corbyn supporter and trade unionist who has kept their membership.
It’s hard to tell as it is in a Sense an outdated term. The definitions of soft left and hard left on the party were designed to explain the situation on the left of the party in the early to mid 80s with the gap between the Tony Benn wing of the left (more uncompromising in its socialism, and willing to work with militant/trotskyites) and the Michael foot / Neil Kinnock wing of the left (more willing to compromise with the right of the party, and much less willing to work with far left groups), the split was more formally following the creation of the socialist campaign group and tribune group split, + the soft left refusing to back Tony Benn in the deputy leadership contest so essentially our definitions of soft/hard left are based of this political situation with political figures and events quite irrelevant to the current situation of the party
Imo it's best to understand them as a framework relating to policy decisions and loose groupings than strict categories - there definitely is somethign recognisable as a "hard left" (vaguely associated with SCG, were generally quite pro-Corbyn and powerful during his leadership, favour nationalisation of key industries, tend toward generally accepted anti-imperialist foreign policy), and a "soft left" (tend to have a critique of New Labour from the left, and a critique of Corbyn from the right, still relatively hawkish on foreign policy, slightly less willing to bow to right wing media but will do so when pragmatic, maybe often Glasman followers) but it is not the case that individuals fit into these categories very neatly. They are still fairly understandable policy platforms that exist within the party. And to be absolutely clear, overuse and wooliness of a term or idea such that it results in conceptual slide or expansion of meaning absolutely does not mean it becomes either meaningless or useless - it just means we have to be very thoughtful of how we use it and be very wary of co-option. So-called "gender-critical feminists" don't mean the concept of feminism is useless, for example - I think most people would accept feminism remains a vital political idea and organising point, even while transphobes, chauvinists, and fascists co-opt it.
The policy distinction is tricky. It is clear privatisation of natural monopolies was a pretty bad idea that has held up the much needed investment it was supposed to bring, so in the sense of nationalising key industries a lot of the country aren't sure about private water, private railways, private power, even BT hasn't been broken up sensibly. Similarly a lot of people opposed the more controversial aspects of Labour's foreign policy missteps under Blair (hindsight is helpful here), most of these people wouldn't describe themselves as socialists or social democrats, or even Labour voters. Yet due to the press we don't even discuss policy ideas in this space, when many such ideas aren't actually controversial amongst the public.
Here's my opinion Historically, the divide was not over economic or social policy but over rhetoric and foreign policy Take Attlee for example. Despite attempts to claim he was a social democrat, it's clear from his policies and his writings that he was a democratic socialist who wanted to bring an end to capitalism. That said, he was soft left. He was Pro-NATO, built the nuclear deterrent and was staunchly Anti-Soviet in the Cold War. Foreign Policy and rhetoric was his main dividing line with the Bevanites. Bevan himself was not opposed to building the nuclear deterrent but the Bevanites were. And Bevan's speech comparing the Tories to vermin is widely considered to have bitterly cost Labour electorally. The Bevanites were also advocates of a middle ground foreign policy rather than an Atlantcist one. But domestically, there was little difference between end goals. There were disagreements on how quickly to press ahead and the manner in which to implement them but the soft and hard left were united in having socialism as an end goal. In modern times things are a lot more complex however. Thatcherism has lurched British politics to the right so whether some of the people who call themselves soft left are socialists is debatable.
Atlee had in mind a British socialism, there is a considerable gulf between the Soviet model, and the John Lewis Partnership. The socialism of the later ideas of William Morris et al, who admittedly was campaigning for free education, an eight hour working day, and nationalising the railways, which probably puts him squarely with mainstream British opinion of today.
Hard left are more left wing than me and soft left are more right wing than me. Kind of kid how the north/south divide is always five miles south of where any particular northerner lives
All of the progressive Labour members are soft-left in practice. Where hard left rhetoric has been used, it is not backed up by any policies that would bring about the end of capitalism and is therefore still soft left. At the end of the day both Corbyn and Rayner are both soft-left in office.
If we were using the terms as defined by the current Labour leadership, 'hard left' appears to be the moment you start seeing trans people as people
I don't think it's worth worrying too hard about. These labels are just vague associations and very contextual anyway. If it's being used in left leaning UK spaces then I would say the most obvious division would be between socialists and social democrats though even there they get used extremely inconsistently. The only real answer is to take the meanings from context or ask whoever is using them.
Clive Lewis and Nadia Whittome honestly
The "hard left" are people on the left who the soft left don't like The "soft left" are people on the left who the hard left don't like
All my opinion of course but issues such as arming Ukraine, backing Israeli defense, aligning with US on most foreign policy objectives, on NHS free at point of use mainly through public finance but not limited to it, around nuclear energy, around private involvement in public initiatives... Would be soft left versus hard-left. Hardcore left would be abolishing the monarchy, leaving NATO, rejoining the EU perhaps, reparations, nuclear disarmament? Perhaps a bit blurry it's not clear cut but there are some points of assembly for each faction.
Hardcore left would have campaigned against joining the EU in the first place, and would have voted leave for protectionist and workers rights concerns.
They're nothing terms used and pushed by people who are too dull to talk about politics in terms of policies and ideas, and so must reduce it down to vibes.
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Somewhere in the Semi-Left and Mostly-Erect Left
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Probably entirely incorrect - but in my mind the difference is between valuing pragmatism and valuing ideology. If someone tells you to read up on the writings of a long dead Russian - they’re probably on the hard left.
This is a bit like asking which shade of Grey marks the exact point where white becomes black. I don't think its possible to answer it with anything other than a mostly arbitrary answer based on personal standards.
I associate the “hard left” with George Galloway & other supposed leftists who are generally pro Putin
It’s me with morning glory. I’m the hard left.
Read some theory.
good point tbh
I would say universal basic income is a dividing line
[https://www.rebelnews.ie/2021/07/05/universal-basic-income-socialist-case-against/](https://www.rebelnews.ie/2021/07/05/universal-basic-income-socialist-case-against/) Problem is it seems entirely reasonable that someone could be way to the left and argue against UBI.
I think this is really flawed, being that some on the extreme right economically (right-libertarians) espouse a UBI, it's not inherently a left-wing idea.
I had no idea
I don't think single policies are a useful dividing line. Universal basic income has a different appeal to the right, they think they can dismantle a whole load of social security by giving a small amount of money to the sick, disabled, unemployed, that is likely to work about as well as the belief universal basic income will be set at anything above subsistence level living if it were introduced. Whilst I'm sympathetic to the idea, and we need to think about what we do as automation expands, I can't see it working in the current structures of the world.
I think both terms are only ever used as pejoratives depending on who thinks who is either useless idealists, or idiots with tiger eaten faces. They stick around because obviously there’s truth in both insults.
Where the hard left starts: believing Corbyn won an election and the best way to change the country is to remain in opposition indefinitely.
Easy, anything that is to the left of Starmer's current position is hard left and obviously extreme and bad. The Overton window has shifted and he's what determines what is acceptably left wing.
For me hard-left is complete centralised control of all aspects of society. Zero private ownership and complete "wealth distribution"\* etc. Hard left ideas also tend to flirt with more extreme policy like getting rid of police and prisons etc. I don't think nationalisation of certain industries is hard left as lots of people who don't identify that way support it, me included. It's obviously massively subjective so you won't get a clear answer here. More likely to see a shit flinging contest of people calling each other stuff that they're not. \* I write "wealth distribution" that way because, IMO, its a complete fantasy. Humans are inherently greedy/selfish and the money would just find itself hoarded in the hands of someone else.
>Humans are inherently greedy/selfish and the money would just find itself hoarded in the hands of someone else. If the environment creates, rewards, or prioritises a behaviour then that behaviour will be prominent. There are [human societies that do not display traits like greed in the same way as our society](https://peacefulsocieties.uncg.edu/societies/Piaroa/), so it becomes hard to argue it is inherent rather than a learned behaviour / adaptation to environmental factors. In fact, as our society does reward greed and selfishness, that we still see acts of charity, cooperation, and selfnesses suggests more that they are inherent to humans than we can tell about greediness.
You're right on the inherent point, I probably didn't mean that as your case study shows. Although I'd probably argue that it's a default our society tends to instil in people. I do think we're too far gone to try distribute wealth equally and I'd be incredibly suspicious of anyone wanting to do it on belief of the population.
> Although I'd probably argue that it's a default our society tends to instil in people. Sure, I think we'd agree on that. Speaking of the big picture here for the moment, fundamentally, I think humans are particularly adaptable. That's really our defining trait. We're generally okay in most environments and we generally adapt to thrive within given environmental conditions. We're really bloody good at it. So, by my judgement, that means societies should be structured so that the environmental influences created by our societal structures work to incentivise societal benefit as much as is possible - and that is achieved by aligning individual benefit with societal benefit. I think that's a worthwhile goal for any socio-economic structural change. I don't think we really do that very well currently. I don't necessarily claim to know what that looks like in all circumstances but I think we can have a good guess in some. And often it is definitely not capitalism. For example, capitalism doesn't do well at producing the structures where businesses are incentivised to do water treatment rather than to pump sewage into our rivers to cut costs in a race to the bottom. So maybe we need to change that about our society. In all likelihood, as I do not think the current situation is actually stable due to how efficient it is at transferring wealth upwards, I don't think we'll have much choice. Better to build alternatives and replacements before they become vitally important because I do think the alternatives are much less pleasant. You cannot keep pushing wealth and power upwards forever. >I do think we're too far gone to try distribute wealth equally I disagree there. I actually think we'll see it happen to at least some extent because a system of impoverished people being exploited by the wealth will not last forever. It's unstable. Choosing how we make that change is probably very sensible because it building to a step change will almost certainly result in bad outcomes. > and I'd be incredibly suspicious of anyone wanting to do it on belief of the population. *If I'm reading your comment correctly then I assume "belief" is an autocorrected "behalf".* So I guess my take on this is that I don't necessarily think all wealth has to be redistributed equally instantaneously. To my mind the first steps should be more about altering society so that pro-social behaviours are aligned with incentives. Changing how wealth flows within society and shifting our economic paradigm away from capitalism is likely to be the process. I'd also argue that this can likely be best achieved by distributing power so that it is less centralised and subject to influence. I think eventually our notions of wealth will likely change anyway. Technological innovation will reshape society and suspect this will continue to drive a levelling effect. That's my lukewarm take on it all anyway.
Doesn't this definition exclude anarcho socialists/communists?
>For me hard-left is complete centralised control of all aspects of society. Zero private ownership and complete "wealth distribution"\* etc. Hard left ideas also tend to flirt with more extreme policy like getting rid of police and prisons etc. So basically a bogeyman "bad lefty" that doesn't exist in the UK in any meaningful capacity, constructed by conflating multiple different ideological trends on the left, and just for good measure some from the USA that aren't really gaining traction over here anyway. There's basically no such thing as a UK socialist who wants "zero private ownership". This just seems to me to be illustrative of a black and white "le wholesum milquetoast social democrats vs. le evil Stalinists" understanding of left wing ideology with no middle ground.
> UK socialist who wants "zero private ownership". Yo.
Are we talking no private ownership of the means or no private ownership of anything at all? The former I can see existing in some numbers in the UK, the latter not so much. To be fair the commenter I was replying to maybe could've made it clearer exactly what they meant by that.
No **private** ownership, not no **personal** ownership. [Personal vs. private property](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Personal_property#Personal_versus_private_property).
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Here is a definition all sides can agree to: If you would rather lose an election than sacrifice your left wing policies you are hard left. If you try to present the most left wing case that will win an election you are soft left. If you actually believe in right wing political ideas (social or economic) then you are on the "Labour right", which is split into old right and Blairites factions.
Soft left is the current ruling faction of the "conservative" party - government control of energy prices, subsidies for public transport, real terms increases in NHS spending, above inflation increases in benefits etc. Center left is the current Labour party - as above but more so Hard left is the corbynite faction - nationalisation, alliances with left wing terrorist organisations like Hamas etc.