…the danger of referential definitions is that they are liable to change when the position of the reference does, or perhaps when the reference is no longer relevant.
I have this thought mainly with regard to the whole business of the UK Labour Party leadership elections. The task for any candidate in such a situation is to differentiate their position from other members’ positions - positions fundamentally similar to their own (after all they are all members of the same party). Once the process of referntial positioning is complete you almost inevitably end up with policy exaggerations, personality cariacatures and insde-the-box thinking. It’s no good, but I can’t really think of another way of doing things. Perhaps if party members were forced to submit their candidacy along with a manifesto of key policies in secret before a deadline? After the deadline the candidates, along with their manifestos, would be released to the public. It would be harder for such a leadership competition to degenerate into demagoguery, hopefully, as candidates would be incentivised to run on their true values…maybe.
Anyway, I find myself in a similar position, only really considering my political beliefs when challenged with somebody else’s. And thus because I am only thinking in terms of the position with which I have been confronted, my views change pretty much dependent on the person I am conversing with. So I am now the floating, rootless demagogue, positioning myself in whichever way makes the case against the opposition of the day. I suppose I still have some rooted views, but these are really tradeable on the margin - a bit of point scoring here and conceding there and I’m centre-right one day and centre-left the next (but always damning the bureaucrats in Brussels…always).
Anyway, Ed Miliband has won against the lefties and the righties. So maybe he’s more of either than he could admit for the sake of defining himself clearly. Ah yes, that’s the point I was trying to make…when the references are no longer relevant, the real definition can turn out to be far too nuanced (or not nuanced enough) to suit the people whose support you have gained on the campaign trail. I suspect this will be the case with Ed and his supporters (the Unions) in the next year or so. But we shall see.
