After today's local elections we will have a good idea how bad a mess the Labour Party is in (even if this also refracted through local issues).
This weekend will also see a tsunami of commentary about the Labour Party leadership for sure; but much of this will continue to treat politics as a soap opera that takes place in the Westminster village.
For many voters this is exactly the problem they see when the mainstream media & parties claim the 'insurgents' are not fit to govern...
@ChrisMayLA6 You are a wise man! It would be interesting to have a top class scientist look into this. How come our current generation of political leaders, regardless of color, are so incompetent, so bad, and so distanced from the population?
I don't know anyone who dreams of becoming friends with politicians, or is naming their children after them.
Naturally this leads to politicians then closing themselves off from the public, and the echo chambers is then complete, which furthers the
@ChrisMayLA6 downward spiral.
If I were to guess, I imagine that the new greens are way closer to "the people".
yes, i think they are for now.... but sadly, the logical progression of the Greens will be as they approach power so they will become more insulated from the general populace & more part of the inner elite - it may take time & there may be a window of opportunity before such shifts are complete, but my pessimistic self sees this as inevitable, even as my optimistic self hopes a new politics can emerge for resisting the sirens of the political class (so avoiding the rocks)
@ChrisMayLA6 This sounds like it surely is some kind of discovered political law. if you want your party to grow, broaden it, leave the grass roots, alienate the original founders. If you want your party to fight for the original ideals, it will remain small.
A beautiful example of this can be seen in the swedish nationalist party. In the beginning they were fiercly anti-immigration, and anti-EU. It took them at least a decade, or maybe it was 2, to reach about 4% and enter the parliament.
@ChrisMayLA6 after that, the journey to the mainstream started, and the journey to the founders wealth also started.
Today they are somewhat anti-immigration, and very happy to participate in the EU.
This led to a spinn-off party, true to their roots, that hovers at around 0.1 to 0.3% while the rest marched on to wealth and becoming more mainstream.
I think this happens in every party that wants to grow. The ideological and "true" parties remain forever small.
@ChrisMayLA6 Yes, I'm also sure of it.
@ChrisMayLA6 From AI, so caveat emptor!
There isn’t one universally agreed-upon name for this exact phenomenon, but in political science it’s usually described through a few closely related concepts:
The “catch-all party” phenomenon — coined by Otto Kirchheimer.
This describes how parties that want to grow beyond a small ideological base tend to dilute or soften their ideology in order to appeal to a broader electorate.
Hmmm.... not sure that quite captures what we were talking about which seemed to me to focus on the 'distancing' from the electorate as the party became bigger/more successful
@h4890
Yes, I think it may well be some sort of political law (but I'm betting somewhere in political science - although I really cannot be bothered to look - someone has formulated it into a law).... and it certainly seems to have some explanatory value.