Left and right still tell you which team someone is on. They no longer tell you what anyone believes - and the gap between those two jobs is where Britain's worst arguments live.
Crossbencher · 14 July 2026
Left and right still work perfectly - as team colours. They have almost stopped working as descriptions. And nearly every rotten argument in Britain now happens in the gap between those two facts.
The old words earned their keep, and the defence of them is real. Politics is coalitional: millions of people have to act together somehow, and a one-syllable flag that lets them find each other isn't nothing. Ask a pollster - where someone places themselves on the left-right scale still predicts how they vote better than almost any other single question. As a jersey, the label does its job.
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