http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/08/19/t...-excluded/
Quote:The irony of the so-called “big tent†politics of New Labour is that in reality it works by drastically reducing the population addressed by party politics since its concentration on the “center ground†disenfranchises whole social strata, and indeed entire national populations (its holy grail is “middle England†after all, not middle Scotland or middle Wales). Labour’s abandonment of social democracy means that a series of nearly identical political parties—all closely aligned with the corporate agenda—are offered to the electorate, and those who can’t find their vision or concerns reflected there are simply excluded. Or in the case of Labour Party supporters, told to keep voting for policies that actively privilege corporate profit over human development, debilitate working class communities, increase social inequality, undermine civil liberties and human rights, and weaken the democratic process.
The second answer relates to the practicality of Corbyn’s proposals. The neoliberal project weathered the massive global recession it created in 2008 because it has managed to convince not only elites but large sections of the population in the US and Europe that there is no alternative, a dictum promulgated so successively in Britain by Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair. Corbyn’s modest proposals to boost economic activity and raise living standards by curbing austerity are deeply practical and pragmatic: it is austerity itself that has prolonged the recession, providing a cover for the dismantling of social provision and the rerouting of taxpayer funding to subsidize corporate profits