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Comment by digi_owl | Hacker News Reader

Frankly to get a grips with it all it may be best to split both the left and the right in two.

Social left and worker left.

traditionalist right and financial right.

EU has been a boon for financial right, by flagging it as a project for european peace and understanding to the social left.

But this has alienated social left from worker left, who they were close allies with after WW2.

So instead the worker left has teamed up with traditionalist right, who share their distrust of EU but for different reasons.

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You may have already seen it, but the 4 sections you describe are very similar to this: https://www.politicalcompass.org/

The basic idea is that there are two axises, not one (social and financial).

> The basic idea is that there are two axises, not one (social and financial).

Not only this but also the main divide is not left and right but liberal and conservative. In the UK, what I see most often is a divide between socially liberal but fiscally conservative and those that are socially conservative but fiscally liberal.

In my view, it's why early New Labour was successful (socially liberal but fiscally conservative) then lost it by loosening up fiscally and going to war.

Similarly, UKIP has been equally effective in taking support from blue collar workers on both left and right because they push a socially conservative, fiscally liberal agenda.

It's not the whole story. SNP have used national identity well although, interestingly their actual policies are more in keeping with this split than their rhetoric.

The EU referendum debate seems to be almost perfectly along a line between fiscally conservative and socially conservative.

I foresee political parties changing much more this way over the next few years.

I think those kinds of plots only make sense when you lay more or less in the middle. A political position is not just how you position yourself in an objective predeterminate political space but also how you define that political space.

Like how most of what is seen as right wing in the European nations, is seen as left wing in USA?

Those aren't the two axis political compass uses. The axis they use are equality (left vs right) and liberty (authoritarian vs libertarian). This still faces the same issue where many people are authoritarian about some things and libertarian about others, such as social questions vs financial questions.

I may have seen it years ago, and forgotten about it. Thanks.

I'd propose a different categorization:

- The statists that centralize power, and benefit from it (Bureaucrats and employees of state-dependent or regulated industry like banks, finance, pharmacy, media)

- The people who believe in the state.

- The people who distrust the establishment, banks, politicians

- The anarchists wanting to decentralize

They are all on the same centralization vs decentralization spectrum but the majority has no pronounced opinion and either faith or distrust in the establishment.

The anarchists are not organized and have far less influence, but since 2007/8 people have gradually increased their distrust against the establishment.

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