Quote Originally Posted by Furunculus View Post
i take it dev-dave is saying that champagne-socialists have a hard time understanding the concerns of their working class electorate, or possibly that a wealthier electorate is less appreciative of social-democratic politics.
I liked the monacle

but with your comment i am stretching........... do you mean that pro-immigration policies commonly espoused by left-wing parties have back-fired because their core electorate, the poor working class, are the first to suffer under high immigration regimes?
I think Le Pen getting the vote in France and the breakdown of the progressive left are intertwined. In a welfare state you make some tradeoffs and one of those is usually a higher rate of unemployment. Add in a group of people whom are radically different than you, coming in mass numbers, in a financial breakdown and you get reactionary xenophobia which isn't very conducive to an old style socialist.

Now, personally I think this threat is by in large imagined but it should come as no surprise that working class in Britian is much more apt to be swayed to right policies when there are barabrians on the border so to speak.