Political Red Shift

In case you missed it I am incredibly excited about Jeremy Corbyn's Labor Leadership bid and that at the very least we have someone publicly and repeatedly getting the airtime to refute the austerity myth. I am not the only one there is a growing movement of people who are beginning to glimmer some hope and I think Jeremy Corbyn will do better than many people originally predicted.

The media reporting and general public perception of the anti-austerity movement is much more dismissive and mocking than history will be. The reality is that the idea's that Jeremy and the wider movement he listens to and dialogs with, are not extreme or overly ideological. Mostly they are not knew ideas mostly they are things that our society at some point has accepted as sensible. 

So why do so many people perceive this movement as so much 'lefter' or 'redder' than it actually is? I think the stars can help us answer this.

Red Shift is the name for the phenomenon that describes why some stars look red. When we look at stars that are moving away from us (or we are moving away from them) the light coming from them, which we know should be a yellow color, looks red. This is because the wavelength appears to look longer because the objects are moving away from each other. It's the same reason that when a police car goes past you the siren sounds with a lower pitch as it drives away from you. 

I think we have a similar situation in european politics. The right are moving to the right and arguably with increasing velocity. We find ourselves on this moving object and as we look out at alternative galaxies we our not conscious of our own position or relative direction through the political universe. As we look out at alternative galaxies many of them, that in reality have been more constant than we ever have, appear to be getting increasingly red. 

Political Doppler effect or Political Red Shift (n.): the means by which the political left appears far left because of the speed with which the right is moving far right.