The reason I'm on the liberal left is because I believe in humanism, empathy, reason, evidence and positive OUTCOMES. I don't agree with any ideology that harms any of those five things.

Which can mean right wing ideology... or, yes, left wing ideology.

Human beings are a complex mixture of all sorts of different things. We want to work, play with, help and love others; we also have individual desires, aspirations and dreams. Any ideology which does not account for all of this is bankrupt and will fail.

Which is why neoliberalism is bankrupt and failing... and is also why Communism has constantly failed wherever it's been tried.

And no amount of "but it wasn't REAL Communism!" will ever change that. Communism fails because people are not the same.

Socialism? I'm sympathetic towards its aims. The problem is applying it in a globalised world with no Bretton Woods system in which companies and individuals simply up, leave/and or move their funds elsewhere if taxes go up and/or capital controls are introduced.

What we're left with as the best option, which gets the best outcomes, is slowly eroding Scandinavian social democracy... but it's doubtful even that can successfully be implemented in the UK. Here's why.

Name me one country anywhere which both lacks inequality AND is very multicultural. Canada is the best I can come up with. The world's most equal, happy societies are also very homogenous. That's true of the country I live in: far more equal than the rest of this continent.

Those countries which are most multicultural and historically dependent on immigration have also been the most 'capitalist', ie. with flexible markets and a spirit of competition.

Another reason neoliberalism fails is it DESTROYS competition and results in corrupt monopolies.

Britain, historically, is an extremely liberal, individualistic place. There's a reason why the US is built on laws and values associated with 'English liberty'. The only time Britain has ever been socialist was in the 1940s, for what should be obvious reasons.

Then socialism slowly declined in Britain - and why? The other side of the human nature equation. People wanted things: homes above all else. They wanted credit, they wanted appliances, they wanted access to mortgages.

None of which is any different now.

In fighting for something which only applied once - during and after a world war - you're fighting against at least part of human nature itself.

But the reason people are so sick of neoliberalism is... it ignores human nature too. Horrendously so.

It destroys communities and families. It atomises the whole of society. It wrecks the high streets and small businesses; it is the cause of a global epidemic of loneliness and misery. And it's even destroying the planet itself.

But I'm also going to broaden this out. Because another problem with ideology is how often it completely blinds people to supporting 'our side' and opposing 'their side'. Which results in all context and nuance being systematically ignored.

If you're opposed to Israeli apartheid in the occupied territories, good for you. But if you're not also opposed to evil mass murdering bastard Assad and evil mass murdering bastards Hamas, bad for you.

Hamas aren't 'freedom fighters'. They're monsters.

If you disagree, could you tell me why Hamas didn't allow elections for 15 years? And let's see how they react if Fatah win in May.

There's also something much more fundamental in all this - which regularly pisses me off.

The reason you or I are able to say what we damn well like on this plafform is... freedom of speech. Democracy itself.

So why do so many turn a blind eye to so many regimes which don't allow any of that? How would you cope under such a regime?

It's not good enough to take some myopic view of "X says it opposes the US and imperialism so I agree with it". It's ludicrous.

The US has done constant appalling things throughout the world. But I know I'm not looking forward to a China-dominated world.

That's China: which is just as imperialist, brutally suppresses minorities, kills its own doctors when they raise the alarm about a global pandemic, has a 'social credit' program which excludes any citizens it doesn't approve of, and which slaughters those opposed to the regime.

You want to live under that? I bet you don't.

You want, alternatively, to live in a country with thousands of per cent inflation and which also terrorises and suppresses political opponents - Venezuela? I bet you don't, for all the constant romanticising of it.

And by the way: mostly in the increasingly distant past, the US also did lots of good for the world.

Like helping rid Europe of the Nazis; like rescuing Western Europe from Stalin; like protecting Europe economically and militarily.

It's one thing to hail the Red Army for its quite colossal contribution to defeating Hitler. Good: celebrate that.

It's quite another to then defend the Soviet Union and its denial of rights to anyone who so much as said boo to a goose.

The Soviet Union held the whole of Eastern Europe down by force for almost half a century. If you opposed it, you were tortured, exiled and/or murdered.

And if your ideological blinkers lead you to defend those responsible in any way... well, take those blinkers off FFS.

There are many things hideously wrong with our world and the economic system we all live under.

But there are also many more things right about that system than the ultimate alternatives. The job of the left is to find a credible, pluralist, humanist alternative to neoliberalism

Starmer is failing on that quite miserably right now so I'm increasingly sceptical about him.

Corbyn failed on that too because the British públic, for all sorts of reasons (some reasonable, many unreasonable), were more than sceptical about him.

But under capitalism, people will simply not vote in their droves for 'revolution' or anything akin to it.

And the most recent British experience of something radical - Brexit - makes them even less likely to vote for the unknown as we move forwards.

Revolutions - always underpinned by ideology - so often result in something far far worse. France 1789. Russia 1917. And in its own relative way, Brexit too.

Because the ideology ignores reality. Ignored, in Brexit's case, the never-ending lies, greed and grift.

And when that reality involves 63% of households being homeowners, screaming and shouting at them to vote for something against their financial interests isn't going to get you anywhere.

You have to find a way to bring them with you.

And they're not the problem for sticking to what they know.
YOU are, for failing to persuade them otherwise.

The reason I'm not totally opposed to Starmer - yet - is because I do believe he sees that reality. Too many pretend it doesn't exist.