Graeme Chetcuti

Leftie Centrist

Politically, I lean left of the UK. I understand the right-wing notion that if things are more privatised then they are paid for by the people who use them, and the notion that market forces such as competition encourage more efficient spending of money, making them more accessible. This means lower taxes and more money in your average person’s pocket leading to what seems like more personal freedom to choose how your money is spent. However, it is my belief that this does not work for all fields.

I misleadingly call myself a “centrist” because my views are far away from communism which, at a national scale, seems rife for abuse, but I am also far away from free-market which allows for large companies to achieve just as much tyranny as seen under communism. My “centre” however is far left of where the UK currently is, especially after 14 years of primarily Conservative rule.

Some people will commit crimes what the hell, but in countries where healthcare is private the high price of medicine often drives good people to commit crimes to save loved ones. Profit is esteemed more highly than people’s lives by the very companies inventing the medicine to save lives. I would rather live in a society where no-one can afford a Ferrari, than one in which one single person cannot afford their cancer treatment. Better access to food, health and other necessities allows for safer society.

Private education leads to unequal education and citizens are less likely to live by the rules of a society that never gave them a fair chance in the first place. Having equal access to education leads to lower crime rates and we all benefit from that, including those who benefit from better education because in a world of fairer access to education, they are less likely to be the victim of crime since there would be less crimes occurring. It is my understanding that the main means to reduce recidivism (repeat offending) in the UK prisons, is literacy which is extremely low in prison.

Privatisation of access to running water led to water companies recently prioritising profit over prevention of polluting. Many of the UK’s rivers, lakes and beaches are now filled with dangerous chemicals and disease-ridden water. It would seem the government might suffer significant costs to rectify this so they have not saved the public purse by privatising it. The fines being levied on the water companies are now to be paid by the public who did not benefit from the profit gained from dumping the waste rather than fixing the disposal mechanisms. This is a clear demonstration that market forces are not always good for efficiency.

Also electricity companies pushed themselves to bankruptcy, in 2023, by trying to meet demand for cheaper energy through price comparison sites. Again market forces do not work everywhere. It would seem public infrastructure such as water, electricity, gas and public transport do not benefit from competition.

Privatisation of Royal Mail lead to massive delays which disrupted legal cases and caused massive government expenses and huge strikes. Royal Mail is also at an all time low in terms of profitability and the companies which own it are struggling to get their money back. So I further conclude public infrastructure which includes mail should be state owned.

And finally, privatisation of the train system and public transport really hasn’t benefitted from market forces since it is cheaper to drive to Manchester with one person in the car than to get a train by about £30. In fact, there have been a number of times when it was cheaper to fly two people to Spain or France and get a hotel for a couple of days than for one of them to get a train to meet the other for a weekend. The right wing Conservative party thought that privatisation would allow competition to force people to make spending more efficient. However I don’t pay attention to what company is getting me from A to B, I just buy a ticket and go. Running multiple trains from different companies on the same lines at the same time would be an inefficient use of fuel so that would override any potential efficiency brought about by the market force of competition. Again this is an area that cannot benefit from privatisation.

I often describe myself as a centrist because I am far from being a Communist. I really enjoy my access to property and my ability to choose how I spend my wages. I really believe that if I cut my spending and work hard then, I can achieve a better life. I went from being a Civil Servant with a low wage to doubling it in a few years by training myself in the latest computer technology and building things to prove my skills. Often in true communism, there is poor career mobility. Communism works on a small scale however as a national system of government it is ripe for abuse and arbitrary control of the populace. I’m far left of what is called centrist in the UK, but I am in the socialist centre critical of both free market and communism. I will defend that position fervently.

For some reason, right-wing politics has often also been associated with less freedoms for LGBTQIA+ people which is strange because their systems seem to hinge on individual power rather than collective power, but the right-wing parties are often the first to legislate against LGBTQIA+ people. This is damaging to people like me. Recent proposals about transrights could severely limit my ability to go to restaurant with my friends because they might not be able to go to the toilet with relative ease and that seems horrifyingly unfair. People in my community might be sent to a prison where they are almost guaranteed to be the victim of rape and violence and all done because they are painted as the abuser which statistically they are not. If they are the victim of domestic violence, new legislation could threaten their access to charities in place to protect them. Often trans people are painted as predators when statistically they are more likely to be the victims of violent attacks. This is an area where I align entire with far left parties of government 100%. I don’t understand how the Conservatives voted 60% against same-sex marriage and 80% against civil partnerships and less than 30% of them showed up for gender recognition and 55% of them voted against it. They want to market themselves as the party of free market and free from legislative restrictions so this actually goes against their other policies, but they seem to hate my community and want to restrict our rights to be less than others.

Finally benefits. The benefits system is broken. It is hard for people to get the money they need to live when they have no other means of getting it. After months of jumping through all the hoops too many benefit claimants feel they can finally relax because they achieved it. There is no encouragement to improve their situation and often they risk losing their income if they improve so it keeps them stunted. However, if we all received some form of Basic Universal Income that was a liveable amount no matter what the situation or income then we were all taxed to pay for it then poorer people would be encouraged to increase their situation without the fear of losing their income. This would also significantly reduce benefit fraud because people would not need to exaggerate their situation. Also, there would be a huge reduction in the overhead for determining the allocation of benefits since you simply needed to prove you existed in order to get the benefits. This freed-up infrastructure could be reallocated to supporting people to get jobs.

So we can see quite obviously that if we cut public spending on education, health, transport and infrastructure for electricity, water, gas, mail and more then we seem to save taxes in the short term. However, as an individual, we are more frequently victims of crime and/or we need to pay more in insurance to protect ourselves and crime-preventative measures. Our access to health suffers so we end up needing to “top-up” our health access with some kind of health insurance. Our transport and electricity bills skyrocket as companies make a profit out of us. So we need to pay more taxes to actually SAVE us money in the long run.