What's left?

Labour left blogger Bob Piper http://www.councillorbobpiper.blogspot.com/ is excited because he thinks that he's found in me the lost "right wing" of Labour.

I'm actually quite comfortable to be labelled a "Labour right-winger" in internal party terms as long as people show some understanding that objectively that still means I'm on the left side of the political debate in the UK. Having stood against Tory right-wing MPs Gerald Howarth and Bob Spink I can assure Cllr Piper that I'm well to the left of any median/mean point dividing line in the centre of British politics - either measured on where the political parties sit on the spectrum or where the electorate sits. Believe it or not, most voters if they attack Blair do so because they think he is too left wing - on Europe, crime, immigration, tax, human rights, counter-terrorism etc.

The political compass (nothing to do with "Compass") website http://www.politicalcompass.org/ is a site that tells you where you sit on the political spectrum based on a series of theoretical questions. I've done the questions and it says I'm -4.25 on the economic left-right axis and -2.56 on the social libertarian/authoritarian one - on a scale in each case of -10 to +10 (so I'm fairly strongly left wing on economic questions and a bit nearer to the centre but still a leftie on social ones). This apparently puts me in the same quadrant as Ralph Nader, the UK Green Party, Mandela and the Dalai Lama and where Labour was in 1982... so it may not be too accurate... be interesting to know where it positions other Labour bloggers.

As for Comrade Piper's claims that I am climbing the greasy pole, no Bob, it isn't people like me who are consistent and say what they think who are climbing the greasy pole - as my views can and almost certainly will be used against me in selection contests etc. The careerists are the people who rise through the party without ever uttering a political view, or who were Bennites when that was fashionable, then born again as Blairites in 1994, and are now suddenly converts to Compass etc.

I liked the post on Bob's site saying "Luke is a good old fashioned AEU loving rightist. He's a thrown back to the 1950s". The highest compliment possible.