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| Liberal guilt is over cosying up to the corporate elite | Liberal guilt is over cosying up to the corporate elite |
| (4 months later) | |
| Letters | |
| Fri 6 Oct 2017 18.35 BST | |
| Last modified on Mon 27 Nov 2017 15.49 GMT | |
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| Devorah Baum (The long read, 3 October) refers to the guilt which modern-day liberals feel because they have lost faith in utopian politics and realise they are acting out of self-interest. The guilt, she concludes, is a sign of the gap between the empathy which liberals feel for others’ suffering and the little they can do to alleviate it. But this personalisation of liberal guilt is in itself a cop-out. It is not so much that liberals feel guilty, since they also experience great anxiety at their reduced status and relative income, but fear that it will only get worse if they take sides against the corporate elite. Liberals and centrists have played an honourable role, with support and pressure from organised working people, in wresting valuable reforms from the capitalist class. But mainly their history is one of cosying up with that class in the interests of preserving the privileges of the middle classes. These days, liberals are most likely to be found defending the actions of people like Clinton and Obama or, in this country, Tony Blair and the liberal social democrats whose pursuit of neoliberal policies has done so much to produce the present broken societies. Donald Trump and Jeremy Corbyn, with their quite different political agendas, have been able to take advantage of the mess they have left. Hedley TaylorYork | Devorah Baum (The long read, 3 October) refers to the guilt which modern-day liberals feel because they have lost faith in utopian politics and realise they are acting out of self-interest. The guilt, she concludes, is a sign of the gap between the empathy which liberals feel for others’ suffering and the little they can do to alleviate it. But this personalisation of liberal guilt is in itself a cop-out. It is not so much that liberals feel guilty, since they also experience great anxiety at their reduced status and relative income, but fear that it will only get worse if they take sides against the corporate elite. Liberals and centrists have played an honourable role, with support and pressure from organised working people, in wresting valuable reforms from the capitalist class. But mainly their history is one of cosying up with that class in the interests of preserving the privileges of the middle classes. These days, liberals are most likely to be found defending the actions of people like Clinton and Obama or, in this country, Tony Blair and the liberal social democrats whose pursuit of neoliberal policies has done so much to produce the present broken societies. Donald Trump and Jeremy Corbyn, with their quite different political agendas, have been able to take advantage of the mess they have left. Hedley TaylorYork |
| • “Pity centrist dads,” says Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett (4 October), having in mind ageing anti-Corbyn Labour party members who “cannot come to terms with the world and politics changing”. Well, as a “centrist” grandad and longtime Labour party member, that’s not my problem. Rather it is the attitude of Corbyn and his followers to Europe that makes me despair.Dr Nick McAdooLondon | • “Pity centrist dads,” says Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett (4 October), having in mind ageing anti-Corbyn Labour party members who “cannot come to terms with the world and politics changing”. Well, as a “centrist” grandad and longtime Labour party member, that’s not my problem. Rather it is the attitude of Corbyn and his followers to Europe that makes me despair.Dr Nick McAdooLondon |
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