Essay: How political values have affected ideologies of current UK political parties (socialism)

In this essay I will be discussing and analysing how political values and attitudes have affected the ideologies of current political parties in the UK, with specific reference to socialism.
The state of 21st Century politics in the UK is in a state of flux. In the 2015 elections, UKIP won 3.8 million votes that’s an extreme difference to the previous election where they only won 919,546 votes. From right to left, and under the threat of BREXIT, all parties are searching to redefine their values to bring them closer to the electorate. The 2017 general election was a surprise success for Labour with two-thirds of younger voters voting for Labour. Why? One significant reason for this was the feeling of disenfranchisement of people between 18 to 24-year-olds. The lack of opportunity and investment in their future fused with austerity and uncertainty over BREXIT. Labour responded, spearheaded by CORBYN, a tailored campaign focusing many of their policies towards young people. They want to abolish tuition fees and they also wanted to reduce to voting age to 16-17. One of their less spoken about policies they wanted to introduce was to allow young people to have the right to remove any content they shared on the internet before they were 18. Labour wanted to create more opportunities for young people and not to hinder their future prospects. These recent examples show how values and attitudes have changed and how adept political parties are at listening to the electorate.
This change in values and ideology can be highlighted by the battle within the Labour party to define what socialism and social democracy are in 2017 and beyond. Socialism is often defined as an economic theory where the means of creating, moving and trading wealth should be owned by the whole community and not a sole individual. The theory of socialism includes many core values some being, collectivism this means that the capacity of human beings for collective action as opposed to striving for personal self-interest. Socialists believe that people can be motivated by moral incentives and not material such as money or possessions. Equality, Everyone is equal and should be treated equally. One of their main values was common ownership, wealth is produced by the effort of many and not individuals so, therefore, should be owned by the community.
The Labour Party throughout history has been known a socialist party, the rose emblem is a symbol of social democracy in political movements across Europe after World War 2. During the war the Labour party struggled because labour members were not agreeing on  weather to support or oppose the war. The party reorganised itself, adopted a new constitution and published a manifesto – Labour and the New Social Order – which supported nationalisation of industry and the redistribution of wealth, core socialist values. Under Tony Blair as PM and leader of the labour party, they began to adapt various socialist ideologies . In 1999, Tony Blair introduced the Education Maintenance allowance, this was a payment for young people who have come from a lower income family and have stayed in education. Alongside this he also introduced unemployment benefits for those who have decided to stay in work. This policy adapts the socialism core value of equality. Blair did not want people to be disadvantaged due to their wealth or lack of. Under Corbyn, Labour has a tag line of ‘ For the Many, Not the Few’. This has been adapted from socialism as socialist strive for the idea of being a community as working towards an overall goal and not individual. ‘For the Many, Not the Few’ has affected their ideologies as the NHS was created by the Labour Party in the aftermath of the war and is still used today. The NHS is available to every resident of the United Kingdom and at no fee. Essentially the NHS is ours because we pay for it through our own taxes, we have worked for a collective goal as UK citizens. Socialism attempts to mitigate capitalism through measures like taxation.The last point i will be talking about in regards to the NHS is that the next Labour party will reverse the privatisation of the NHS and return our health service into out hands. This applies to socialism because socialists believe in Social Justice where the distribution of wealth cannot occur under capitalism as it encourages inequality.
Labour also endeavours for a more equal society, they were the party that bought in the Equal Pay Act, the Sex Discrimination Act and the Equality Acts. The idea of Equality within Socialism has affected many of their ideologies because they mainly drill equality into them. However Labour has not always exercised socialist values, Ed Miliband a Labour MP has once said he believes the private sector has a place within the NHS . This completely disregards the idea of collectivism and equality, Private sectors within the NHS encourages inequality as people who are maybe more wealthy will have better or more direct access to healthcare. Everyone pays taxes so why should someone with more money have better access to the NHS .One of Labour’s peer Mp’s Shami Chakrabarti sends her child to a fee paying school although opposing plans for grammar schools to be bought back, she claimed that they are a form of segregation. She is totally and utterly doing the opposite of what she and her party stands for. A lot of the Labour Party shadow cabinet are men and women who are left wing and went to private schools who live in very large houses and have enough money to spare yet they still talk about how compassionate they are about the less fortunate, this often distances them from their own electorate as they do not know what struggles the majority of their voters are going through.
The next political party that i will be talking about the Conservative party, they stand for expanding the free market in order to encourage entrepreneurship. They are currently the largest party in Parliament with 330 MPs and they govern with a majority. In her 2017 Manifesto Theresa May claimed that the conservative party will govern in interests of ordinary people and working families, she also then went on to say ‘ her leadership is not driven for the benefit of a privileged few but the interest of ordinary working families wh have a job but do not always have a job security’. This political ideology adapts the socialist value of collectivism because May is working with the idea that valuable goals can be achieved on shared basis rather than individual. However through my research i did find it extremely difficult to find out other socialist values that conservative party stood by.
The Conservative party often adapt the ways of capitalism, Capitalism is an economic system where the government is secondary to people. The electorate and companies make most of the decisions , own most of the property and goods are sold for an individual profit. The Conservative party are motivated by profit for themselves, many Tory Mps have shares in private industries and business. By them introducing particular ideologies such as tax cuts for big business it is clear what they are motivate by, they are introducing these cuts in order to save money for themselves. Thatcher privatised many of the public owned sectors such as rail and energy this then introduced competitions and a fight to own a certain share so you could earn more money for yourself. Still today the Tory government are making cuts to public services such as the NHS which means a lot of it is straying to become privately funded which means the electorate will have to pay for it regardless of their economic background.
All these policies clearly are everything Socialism doesn’t stand for, by encouraging private owned sectors you are not treating everyone as an equal. You are giving more opportunity to a individual due to how much money they have. What if someone can not afford healthcare? They will have to scrape by just to get something which should be a basic human right. Socialism works for the idea that you are not motivated by material incentives but moral ones and it is clear what Conservatives stand for is just based on materialistic things. This is making them even further from the electorate because they are not catering to what the needs of the majority are.
Another party in the UK that sometimes strives of Socialistic values is the Liberal Democrats, they believe that taxation should be redistributed according to your income, meaning you pay your tax in accordance to your income. This means they are accommodating to the needs of the electorate. However the Lib Dems have a more neoliberal ideology meaning that the use themselves as something that promotes freedom and opportunity ( making them sound more socialistic) however the sort of freedoms they promote are only for certain sectors of the electorate and not the whole. Lib Dems advocate for a centrist position meaning somewhere between Labour and the conservatives, instead of fighting for ideologies that promote socialism they just push for less drastic capitalist ideologies. For example less privatisation but they still agree with the idea pf privatisation. In conclusion they don’t really have a strong position on anything they just want to seem like they are less far right.
Overall Socialism is still adapted into many of the parties ideologies, but mainly the Labour Party. They want to restore the key values of socialism into the 21st century. The Labour party want to provide universal basic income ensuring that security is for all, this takes out the taint that is associated with the benefit system. They also want a universal and properly funded social care system where they abandon private owned sectors meaning everyone is equal. Labour also want to nationalise many sectors that are private, shadow chancellor if the exchequer John McDonnell said at the Labour party conference that they are going to be taking back ‘rail, water, energy and the royal mail’ meaning that if Labour party comes into power all those sectors will be state owned. This takes out competitive element of the commodities meaning everyone will be paying the same price. The electorate is figuring out how Labour are achieving 21st century socialism and are not afraid to admit it or show it.
In my opinion throughout my research i think because of recent occurrences such as Brexit, it is getting harder to drill in socialist values into the electorate. I think that this is because they feel like they are not catered for. They are scared what Brexit holds as being part of the EU was some sort of security blanket and now that is being ripped away from them. The electorate feels like they re split down the middle and are not equal. The Electorate are clearly more keen on the idea of Socialism rather than capitalism as it benefits them more and i think that they are more keen on it due to the rise of the Labour party underneath Corbyn. He has gained widespread support and he is simply just appealing to the peoples needs. His ideologies do not favour a particular individual however some may argue that he is favouring the less fortunate which could be seen as non socialist because he may not be doing much for the other classes. However i think that Socialism is not an imposition on the rich by the poor, it is an ideology simply trying to even the ‘playing field’ between them. The bigger picture simply allows the redistribution of wealth which is a core value in socialism leading to every citizen having an equal opportunity. For example Miliband wanted to implement the mansion tax so the rich would het taxed more simply because they have more BUT the money would be put back into the state ignorer to help everyone and not a sole individual.