Originally Posted by
jackal2
No. That's the media narrative, and some people even get brainwashed into repeating it, but their day-to-day actions and conversations (in the pub or wherever) tell a different story, as do election turnouts.
People are in fact much more engaged with politics when they have a choice between strong opposing parties with clear water between them, led by conviction politicians who seek power because they want to achieve something with it, rather than career politicians who seek power as an end in itself, willing to flip flop from one stance to another to satisfy short-term public whims, please the media establishment and survive until next week.
Talking of which, it is large parts of the media who have sought to re-define any reasonably strong Right or Left view as "extreme", when it is nothing of the sort. The media, and the Civil Service, favour a political environment which never strays far from the centre. This situation (which pretty much existed between 1997 and 2015) allows them to dictate the way the country is run themselves, with elections occasionally thrown in to create the impression of public consent, yet in reality the public have no great choice.
For obvious reasons, this establishment hate "interventionists" (to quote a line from Sir Humphrey Appleby!) who attract substantial amounts of public support and have ambitions of changing the status quo and "running the country themselves" if they get elected.
My politics are Conservative, but that's irrelevant to this point. I'm arguing in favour of proper political parties who give people something genuine to agree or disagree with. Something to campaign for, or against. Give me the passion of a Thatcher or a Corbyn over the cynical, soulless salesmanship of a Blair or a Cameron any day of the week.