Are the left the only people who can defeat the nationalist right?

The hard right can only be defeated from the left, not from the centre

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jul/18/hard-right-left-centre-party-politics-blair-clinton?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Copy_to_clipboard

Owen Jones is probably the UKs most prominent left journalist. Here he is writing about Anglo american issues and drawing comparisons berween the two situations. There seem to be a lot though they are not universal. His biggest argument here is to say that the liberal Centre have abandoned the needs of the working class and middle class people, giving the right opportunity to expoilt this. Are the left the only people who can redress this?

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firefall · 61-69, M

Calling it the liberal centre is I think a misnomer, as it is just what the yanks call the Neo-liberals, essentially rich centrists who can't bring themselves to openly join the Right. They have a lot of power because they provide so much funding to the left/liberal party(s), but are hardly undefeatable (vid: Blair).

There's a much larger liberal-but-not-left chunk of the party that are essential in fighting the hard right* - fighting them [b]just [/b]from the left has repeatedly been shown to be ineffective, so what you (we) need is an alliance of the two, but excluding the neo-liberal rich bastards from having a controlling sway.

*not that there's a non-hard right any more

Burnley123 · 41-45, M

@firefall I'm open to that and basically it's my strategic view within the Labour Party.

Left parties have always relied on a coalition between different people and that includes the centre left.

A problematic aspect is when we define what is the centre. Many politicians who define as centre left (such as Blair and the Clinton's) essentially adopted the post Reagan / Thatcher economic consensus and their heirs are still somewhat wedded to that. Corbyn became Labour leader because those from radical left backgrounds ds were the only ones offering social democratic policies. Those proved surprisingly popular in the last UK election.

Owen's article mentions the danger of a new centre party. I agree with him when he says this party would likely be socially liberal and pro austerity economics. I think such a party would be a gift to the nationalist right.

firefall · 61-69, M

@Burnley123 on that last, I heartily agree - it's essentially what's ruined the EU efforts on the economy in the last 15 years.