Quote Originally Posted by ragingpup View Post
If you call making me laugh as upsetting me, then yes you have.

I would accept that traditionally Tories favour low taxes and small government whilst labour favour higher taxes and big government. But that wasn’t what you said. You defined the tories natural ground as encouraging self-reliance, independence of state (don’t have a problem with that) etc but, and this is the big problem, you defined Labour’s natural ground as encouraging reliance on the state with “high level of benefits”. These are your key defining features of what Labour stand for?

I would go with a less biased, blinkered definition of what Labour stand for. Keeping it nice and simple from ‘Simple Politics’: “They believe in tackling inequality and want society and the economy to be run in the interests of working people”. I would argue that this is their natural ground. I don’t have a problem with you defining a natural ground – it’s your awful, loaded definition of the Labour natural ground, that would have given Fire an erection, that I take issue with.
Well if you wanted to simply regurgitate inaccurate and self-contradictory soundbites about what Labour stands for, why didn’t you just do that instead of asking me to justify positions that I don’t hold on electoral bribery? It would have been a lot easier, don’t you think? Why waste both our time?

In getting all waspish and hot under the collar, you miss obvious points. For example, in a society in which self-reliance is to the fore, the danger is that those who cannot, for whatever reason, be self-reliant are at risk of being left behind. In addition, in a society in which the state is too small, there is a risk that the tools that people need to advance themselves might not be readily available to some.

Try those for size rather than coming out with Momentum generated babble.