Between December 2006 and April 2007, I was sent to the UK three times by my Big Evil Company employer. The first trip was a stop over on my way to Algeria, while the latter two trips were made to backfill for my counterpart while he took time off for knee surgery and for paternity leave. I spent a total of nine weeks over in the Sceptered Isles.
While I was on the other side of the pond, it was impossible not to notice the amount of environmental hysteria that was being broadcast in the news, whether watching the BBC or reading the newspapers. Hardly a day went by where it seemed that there wasn't some reference to the Kyoto Treaty or that the Labour government was working towards some commitment to cutting greenhouse gases and telling the public that it must have shared sacrifices and belt tightening, all in the name of the Greater Good.
Well, lo and behold, here were are in July 2008 and we now hear of the news that in a recent by-election, the Labour Party lost a stronghold Parliamentary seat in Glascow. For those of you who are not quite up to snuff on your British politics, the world - very broadly - breaks down like this. The Labour Party has long held a very strong grip on Scotland and the north, while the Conservatives do better in southern England. To reiterate, this is a generalization, but as a broad picture statement, it does hold true. Hence, the fact that the Labour Party lost a long time seat to the Scottish National Party is quite a shocker.
As things stand now, the Labour Party majority in Westminster is now down to about 60. When Tony Blair first ascended to power in 1997, Labour had 418 seats. Now Labour has under 350 out of some 646 seats. It is in this context that the loss of a seat in Labour stronghold does not bode well for the Party come 2010, which is when the next general election must be contested. However, it may well be that there may need to be a coalition government formed in order to maintain a majority in the next general election.
But circling back to Labour's woes, much of the political commentary has been centering on the idea that people are starting to get fed up with paying high taxes on fossil fuels, all in the name of environmentalism. One adviser to the Labour government, Richard Parry Jones, warns that if Labour does not ditch its heavy taxes on automobiles, then UK voters are going to throw them out at the next election.
This is a fate that has happened to the Socialists in France and in Germany, where Sarkozy's rightists outright defeated the Socialists and Angela Merkel came to power via a grand coalition. As as this article points out:
In recent years, almost all of Europe's social democratic parties have lost in national elections. The collapse of support for Gordon Brown and his policies reveals a general decline of Europe's social democracy as a whole.
There are many good reasons for the deterioration of the centre-left's political influence and power. But perhaps one of the most crucial is the abandonment of their traditional core value of progressive optimism. After all, the left used to derive large amounts of its popular appeal from a firm belief in social and technological advancement, a political philosophy of societal optimism and hope. During the last couple of decades, however, it has eagerly adopted a green ideology that has replaced its confidence in future progress with the ever more intimidating prediction of climate catastrophe and environmental disaster, culminating in calls for economic sacrifices and collective belt-tightening.
In short, Britain's Labour Party has discarded its "progressive" principles for environmental fear-mongering and salvationist rhetoric in the expectation that voters would accept that only government control, central planning and higher taxes could prevent global disaster.
...
Eighteen months ago, Labour's David Miliband proposed the introduction of carbon "credit cards" that would be issued as part of a nationwide carbon rationing scheme. He suggested the allocation of an annual allowance for basic needs such as travel, energy or food. Two days after Labour's disastrous defeat in the local elections, the whole scheme was hastily abandoned.
Motorists in the UK are paying the highest fuel taxes in Europe, an average of almost £900 annually. In the name of climate change mitigation, the government has progressively increased fuel, road and car taxes. It has burdened companies with a so-called Climate Change Levy and introduced an emissions trading scheme -- costly policies that have had damaging effects on British competitiveness, energy prices and living standards. As a direct result, a record number of people, particularly Britain's poorest, oldest and most vulnerable, are increasingly falling on hard times. As many as five million households, more than 20% of the UK's population, are today living in "fuel poverty."
Progressives in America have, in many ways, followed a similar pattern. It used to be in the early years of the 20th century that progressivism meant that there was a belief in scientific and technological progress that would make our world a better place. This belief would be coupled with some kind of redistributive and social safety type measures to uplift the poor and catch those who had fallen through the cracks. Instead, it seems that Progressivism now substantially means that technological advancements are not to be pursued because of fears or objections to science and technology. Instead, we are told that we have to cut back, all in the name of saving the planet from some imagined environmental catastrophies, damned the cost.
All the Wizard has to say is that Progressives had better take a look at what has happened across the water and pause, lest they find that voters decide eventually to drive them off of political agenda.
Wizard
Posted by The Mighty Wizard at July 27, 2008 01:28 PM