Thread by @swardley

X : Do you not like any Conservatives?
Me : Of course I do. Being Old Labour (Socialist), I have a closer affinity to many One Nation Tories than I do with Blairites, Thatcherites or Communists. Vice versa One Nation. We value the market as a tool, society matters more.

X : So you think the current One Nation Gov is ok?
Me : Most of the One Nation Conservatives were kicked out of the party. Largesse with the Gov purse in a "Chumocracy" is not what Disraeli meant by "One Nation".

X : I don't understand the point you're making?
Me : Both parties - Labour and Conservative - have tended to be broad churches. You'll often find agreement within groups from multiple parties and infighting between groups within a party.

... so when you say "Do you not like any Conservatives" then you're making two assumptions - that Labour is one thing and that Conservatives are one thing. It's not the case, never has been.

You choose a party, a broad church, based upon general consensus i.e. you agree with more of their policies than you agree with some other party's policies. That doesn't mean you never agree with the other party's policies or people within the other party - of course you do.

X : Does that mean we should re-organise the parties?
Me : A "new liberal" and a "social capitalism" party?
X : Yes
Me : Bad idea ...

... as we know from biological systems and the work of CS Hollings (I've tried to summarise) then diversity (including diversity of thought) is needed for resilience of a system. You don't want to encourage cults and single dogma. Broad churches are more resilient ...

... and that actually hits at one of the problem of our economic systems. We try to use one size fits all approaches, when we should be using context specific approaches based upon how evolved something is.

Which is why we should learn from China on this, they seem to have a good handle on the issue with the Gov not only acting as a VC (special economic zones etc) but nationalising utilities when needed (i.e. Alibaba). They use the market as a tool, where appropriate.

X : There are at least two strands of Liberal. You're just using Clegg style yellow book liberalism.
Me : I was keeping it simple to explain a point, the main party's are broad churches and not one thing. I agree that liberals have many facets.

Me : A fairer criticism would probably be ... "where's the SNP"?

The SNP is at least more politically relevant but as I said, I was keeping it simple.

X : Isn't socialism nearer to communism.
Me : No. Well ... that depends upon your perception i.e. economic thought is distorted between regions. You can see this by sticking to Western philosophy and comparing US to Europe and their perceptions of China and economic thinking.

X : Does that mean your map of political thought has bias?
Me : First, it's not a map - it's simply a diagram to express a point. Second it is loaded with bias from perception, even the axis (e.g. the economic axis) is loaded with bias towards a more European centric view.

X : Well, at least individualism vs collectivism is understood.
Me : Not really. In the US, when politicians talk about "together" they often mean "a group of individuals" ... these words can have very different intentions.