[The Slim Reaper]

Originally Posted by Toy Soldier

You're only looking at one side of the coin and it's not even sociological realistic. The general population has not "become right wing". Parties like Labour and the Democrats in the US adopted rhetoric (not economic, social) that they MISTAKENLY thought was popular/vote winning and it was not; it was loud voices. Loud voices on the far right, loud voices on the far left, but few in number, not the tides you need to consistently win elections. The bulk of the population - which is dotted around the centre - stood relatively still but found themselves with no political home on the left so moved over to the right under the guise of them "speaking sense". They were duped, of course, but that's largely irrelevant to this part of the discussion.

I can tell you who are the far right politicians, why they are far right, and what policies they espouse. I'd just like for someone to talk directly about who these folks on the far left are, and what are their policy aims. Until you or anyone else is willing to do that, then it's a discussion based around make believe.

If folks around the centre keep voting tory, then they are not in the centre (that would be the same if they kept voting labour, and that's a major problem with centrism, it's little more than status-quo protection, with zero policies and zero ideas). If we'd had labour govs for the majority of our lives, the centrists would align closer to labour.

When the lib dems got a whiff of power they went full on right wing. I remember them bragging about trading a 5p cost on plastic bags with making it harder for disabled people to claim benefits. That's centrism in a nutshell.

When the world skews one way or another the the centre skews itself too.