Er, plenty of countries have adopted them. The more successful countries. Indeed, the French president who was just elected is far more extreme than I am.

You’re of course completely unable to defend on the merits anything which is not “gimmie”. Moreover, you’re of course using your own revolutionary ideology, rather than my gradualist one.

The fall of New Labour is directly related to their abandonment of left-wing ideals. The fact that Labour are not recovering is also due to the same.

Let me ask you this. If the policies you advocate would so clearly win elections, why has no-one adopted them?

Incidentally, let me remind you of just one of your “entirely moderate” views -a trebling of inheritance tax to 75%.

I’m not inviting a debate on the merits of that policy. I’m merely pointing out that is not a moderate position; an overnight trebling of anything is an extreme position.

Patrick, the MODERATE left are sitting at home. It’s why the Labour vote collapsed, and is not recovering nearly as strongly as they need it to.

Keep advocating centralist shadow-boxing, it’ll lose you the election.

That you can dismiss my views as not entirely moderate just shows how lost to sense you are. Keep on supporting social cleansing, accepting the Tory cuts and bashing “scroungers. Labourite.

But hey, inconvenient truths. It’s very much at the stage where most of the party belong here little more than the Tories, sadly.

Yes, really.

Consider the maths. Most people remain loyal to an ideology and party and do not change their vote. These people are therefore irrelevant in deciding elections, and all political parties know this. The only people that matter in deciding elections are people who swing between parties. But these people don’t swing wildly between extreme ideologies. Conservative or liberal democrat voters don’t swing over to the extreme left. Similarly, labour voters don’t swing to the extreme right. Those are facts, and they explain why neither the BNP nor the Socialist Workers will ever be elected as a government.

It was the reason why Labour had to remove the militant element -simple maths indicated that it was impossible for them to be elected when they were perceived as extreme. It was only the movement to the middle ground under Blair that meant they were electable, because they could appeal to swing voters.

The comments you have posted on these on these boards concerning markets, state control, taxation, wealth redistribution are not ‘moderate’ statements. You may consider that they are, in relation to some of your more extreme friends, but your view of how moderate they are isn’t the measure that counts. It is how they are viewed by the swing voters. And by that measure they certainly are extreme, and therefore it is impossible that they could ever be adopted by an electable party.

Oh, really?

Because, again, Labour’s vote is utterly stagnant, while millions of the moderate left, MY kind of left, sit at home.

What you mean is that your gerrymandering and anti-Union tactics will ensure your One True Party wins every time. Just gotta shed those pesky Scots and Welsh…

The kind of left you support will never be elected in this country. There simply aren’t enough of the people who swing elections who believe in it. That was the reason for New Labour in the first place.

Ah yes, “re-engage with reality”, i.e. be a right winger. Typical. The second a FRACTION of your hyperbole is used you hop up and down and scream about PC.

It’s no difference to your labelling. And of course I’m going to take it as an insult you lump me in with a party who I have very little in common with!

And simply because you don’t choose one of the varied options (Tory, LibDem, BNP (or soon EDL, UKIP…) doesn’t mean that there are not right-wing options.

There are NO left-wing options for the English voter. (And no, Centralist Labour and the Anti-Science Green are not left-wing options)

The situations are not even remotely the same!

Please re-engage with reality, assuming you ever were among us. Labelling people as BNP voters, as you seem to be fond of doing, is just bizarre.

I know you’re not a Labour voter. You’re a “left winger” – I get it. I didn’t mean ‘your’ party. I could, more accurately, have typed ‘one’s party’, but thought that would be too stuffy. Honestly, if I’d known you’d take it so badly I’d have written in a more formal fashion!

I don’t have great faith in Cameron et al. I just happen to think that they’re the best of a very bad bunch. I’d probably join you in the “none of the above” party. Just as there is no party to cater for the left in Britain, so too are the right unrepresented.

My own party? You mean “none of the above”. I see.

BNP (since you can’t understand I’m not Labour. I’ll be as accurate as you) trolls like you were wiped out, and rightly so.

And your economic policy has caused a double dip. More, you’re going to kill more of your own kind with starvation than those dirty “foreigners” who’ll help each other.

Livingstone’s pie in the sky policies couldn’t have been effected, even if people had been stupid enough to vote for him. At least Boris is committed to investing in the tube system. Wasn’t it Gordon Brown who used to bang on about the importance of investment (even if he did, all too often, conflate it with simply spending)?

He tried to wriggle, and you can continue making your excuses for him, but on tax he wasn’t whiter than white. And he needed to be, given his well publicised comments on his fellow tax avoiders. Silly man.

Whether Boris scraped through or not is immaterial. He beat Ken by a perfectly satisfactory margin, given how well Labour performed elsewhere (and in London’s local elections too). With a different candidate, Labour might have pulled it off. Thankfully they stuck with a dinosaur. Lord Sugar, Dan Hodges etc were right. And if you can’t convince members of your own party, you’re really in trouble.