New Age Politics

Politics in today’s world seems to be taking a new dimension. Everywhere you look there is a major shift to a new phase of political view. Starting Greece, earlier in January a left wing politician of the Syriza party was voted into power as the Prime minister. He received a huge support from the people of Greece on the promise to put an end to Austerity and a better life for the people. In Nigeria, sometimes in May, the opposition party (APC) took over from the ruling party for the first time in their democratic history. The opposition leader Mohammodu Buhari received a huge support from the people of Nigeria because of his integrity figure and leadership experience. Turkey’s ruling party lost majority seats to opposition party and could not form a government till now and they are on the verge of a civil war.

Here in the United Kingdom, the old left wing politician and a socialist Jeremy Corbyn won the leadership election of the Labour party. Many political analyst and politicians never believed he could win. He was actually tagged “unelectable”, even the odds from the bookies was 100/1. To everyone’s disappointment, he won gallantly by almost 60% of total votes. This is a huge victory! I watched on BBC as many of his supporters were so excited about this victory, many of them were of the opinion he is the right man for the job because he stands for what he believes and he will never compromise. His major political view is that “austerity is a political choice for any government and he will never support austerity”. He promised to renationalise some privatised sector of the economy and introduce more Quantitative easing to build more infrastructure, increase tax on the rich and a better welfare for the most vulnerable in the society, he also intends to put an end to investment in military weapons and war. The prime minster tweeted earlier in the week that “Jeremy Corbyn is threat to national security and economic security”. From my point of view I think this left wing politician will be a big threat to the Tories and he might likely win the next election because his political ideologies are more for the middle and lower class which occupies a bigger fraction of voters.

In the United States, Donald Trump is leading all major polls regarding republican election and general election. He is ahead of Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton. Many think he is a joke and he knows nothing about politics, but polls are saying something different. His policies are majorly to deal with china and the high earners by increasing their tax rate.

One thing I could understand from the new global political era is that people want leaders who are bold and will stand up for what they are preaching just like Donald Trump will always voice out is mind publicly. He says what everyone knows but they don’t want to say it.  People do not believe the game of politics should be exclusive to politicians and finally, I think an average citizen of the world dislikes austerity.

However, some policies of these left wing politicians might have negative impact on the economy. Jeremy Corbyn intends to embark of direct Quantitative Easing through the Bank of England and also to increase tax rate on business and re-nationalise the energy sector. This will likely increase the public debt of UK, discourage investment and also some sector might become less effective. Most of the new world leaders do not really support the idea of capitalism and saving, they want to spend more and save less.