Sticking to one's principles

To tell the truth, I have doubts from time to time about neo-liberalism. Are the failures and abuses we are seeing the result of institutional corruption and the moral failings of individuals (politicians, bankers, etc.), or are the background assumptions of the centre-right fatally flawed? Is the whole financial system (including the monetary system) flawed in some fundamental way (morally or otherwise)? I don't know. Some kind of market-based system must be allowed to operate but I am uncertain as to its potential scope and limits.

Some people, though, seem to have no doubts about the rightness of their ideological position – like the hard-left British MP, Jeremy Corbyn, who is currently favoured to become leader of the Labour Party.

In this amusing piece, Janet Daley recalls her experiences living under a local council dominated by the hard left (and notably by one Jeremy Corbyn). It is a story, as she puts it, of "class hatred, the indulgence of unionised labour, and the Soviet-style handing out of favours to party loyalists on the council payrolls."

Corbyn often boasts that his political principles have not changed. Daley concludes: "Take that as a threat."


Footnote: Daley's piece is concerned with some of the themes I typically deal with on this site, but it also has an oblique and tenuous link to the site's name. As I note on the 'About' page, the title 'Conservative tendency' was meant to ironically echo (for those who knew the history) the term 'Militant tendency'. The latter term came to refer to the very elements (Trotskyist, entryist) which Daley describes in the article. The fact that Corbyn is currently the leading candidate in the Labour Party leadership battle suggests that times may not have changed as much as I thought they had.