Someone was going to use it in a title, so there it is. Bear with me here, the argument of this article takes quite a while to get going...

This post started out with the intention of arguing (in an analagous way to how Francis Fukyama discussed history) that the left-right political spectrum is dead. However, en route it became clear that this view was untenable; it exists alright, but in a definitively different form. It would be easy to point to consensus as the end of left-right, but Thaterism exposed the political bergschrund of the spectrum and reopened the debate once more; indeed, consensus only became a universal term for 45-79 after Thather had mixed things up.

My argument would have it that the old Left, the John McDonnells and such of Britain, and the "Third Way" followers (proponents of Anthony Giddens), who, with the David Davises and Thatcherites of our nation, make up the left-right picture, are competing for the same ends justified by differing means. Old left-right politics was about the Right, conservative, traditional parties, competing for a strong system of law and order, strong defence and strong moral values, competing for these ends against the liberal, open, equal, and pacifist Left. Of course the lessons from totalitarian Communism obscure the open and liberal properties listed above. But the message is the same; the political spectrum wanted different outcomes. The Attlees wanted social justice and equality in a war-torn economy, whilst the right wingers believed in stopping immigration, and restoring the class system society. The expansion of the franchise brought about the mellowing of the left-right I would like to explore.

A proletariat numerical voting majority, along with the crucial rise in people power and consumer sovereignty in the 1980s and 90s, has forced governments to be far more accountable to societal wants. Britain is centrist, by spectrum definition, unless the unlikely "median voter theorem" is believed, and as such, both main parties, evidenced by the rhetoric today, are also obliged to be centrist. Unlike the past, the left and the right both aspire to the same ends, by increasingly confused means. The Conservatives want climate action, they want social justice, they want equality of life, and so on. In true Paternalistic One Nation Conservatism, the rhetoric is working. (New) New Labour are talking of social change to electoral accountability, and so on. Both parties are aspiring to give power back to the people, reducing the Westminster Leviathan, and here lies the clear-cut evidence tha would make one believe left-right is dead. But it isn't. The differing means by which we achieve these social ends are still evident.

Tories are generally, today, Thatcherite on economic matters. And economic matters are the means to deliver different social ends. They act on poverty, the need for a welfare system, to cost of the NHS and public services. In short, economics now steers the spectrum. But, here lies, finally (!) my argument. It is confused, mismanaged, and generally bad economics that fuel this debate. Tories are right wing economist. But they don't know why. They just are. Labour is generally, not holding the Blair crew, left wing in economics (although they have been very clever, and very acceptable to the right under Brown), right down to the Fabian Ed Balls, orchestrator of the Brown Chancellorship. But again, with the exception of Balls, they don't particularly know why. Both parties have formed a political identity, and have taken their economic beliefs as part of the baggage.

The title of this post means to ask how confusion of economics, and electoral vote buying, is killing the true message of left-right. The central evidence is the appointment of Alistair Darling as Chancellor. Continutity in the two greatest offices of state has been a central tenet of the New Labour success story, and as such it would be "prudent" for Brown to have selected a Chancellor he wished to keep. Ed Balls is a Harvard and Oxford educated economist, and would possibly be the best placed man in London to take over at a Labour Treasury. But, pragmatism in the voting system and electoral experience denied him this job. The path by which a Fabian means to a common ends could have been achieved was blocked, meaning confusion as to the true economic message of the left now rings out. The Tories too have little idea, it seems, of their economic gospel.

The conclusion here (yes, there is a conclusion somewhere in the above dawdle) is that political pragmatism is ruining the only visible way in which left-right can now be observed. Ends on social issues have converged but the economic locomotive of means have not, yet an incoherent economic message is blocking the way to even witness the true intentions of the left (or right) on economic matters.