In my hands (or, rather, on my car windscreen) last weekend fell an A4 leaflet of the New Left, entitled: The 6+1 priorities of the New Left to change our lives. The flyer isn’t anything special and special to grab your attention, but it’s… OK. It ends with the main message of the party, at least for this period: “Politics is back. To defeat the right. For the life we deserve!” Along with a qr code, which takes you to the New Left website.
I usually throw all these advertising/promotional/party flyers in the first recycling bin. This particular one (which looks like it’s printed on “ecological” paper – don’t let the environmentally sensitive ones scoff) I said I’d study it. Let me see, a month and a half before the European elections, what are these priorities and what are the proposals of a political formation, which has the “new” in its name and some persons from interesting to likeable, at least to me.
As you can see in the photos, the 6 priorities are:
1. War on accuracy
2. Taxation of wealth
3. No to F35 – Money for Health and Education
4. Just green transition
5. Shelter for all
6. Church-state separation
Each of the priorities is analyzed in a short text. The first 6 headings are on a green background, which I find right and fair, in the sense that they pay tribute to PASOK, from the “deep” to the GAP, but also to the present (and forever). Okay, the “not on the F35” is timeless KKE, but the bottom line is that in all of this there is nothing that differs from the positions of the puppet PASOK – KINAL. Neither in the headings nor in the texts that follow.
And probably they would not differ from the positions of SYRIZA either, if Kasselakis had not emerged. But then there probably wouldn’t have been a New Left, and we wouldn’t have wasted our time reading pamphlets that, although they touch on cutting-edge issues, say nothing new, propose nothing new, and don’t have a single original idea that could to stir the waters and from which someone could be “caught”.
The icing on the cake is always red, so is the title in the 7th, rather the 6+1 priority: “Cover Up End”. If you can read in detail from the photos, it refers mainly to the tragedy of Tempe, but also to “wiretapping, police arbitrariness, violations of the rule of law”. I think that red, the main color of the party, together with green, was put here to differentiate itself somewhat from PASOK, which, because of its leader, clearly has an advantage in the world’s consciousness, at least in the matter of wiretapping…
As in any activity, so in politics, the narrative matters. The story, in other words, that you tell and communicate, the messages that you send out, in order to convince the world to “see” you, to distinguish you, to identify with you and to vote for you. Because the goal of the politician is one: to vote for him. To be elected, or, even if not elected, to have left a mark, to have somehow, to some, felt his presence, to show that he differs from others, even (or much more) from those who are ideologically close…
I assume that this is also the purpose of the New Left and this particular leaflet a means to achieve it. Which brochure, however, not only does not add not a single new proposal in the political dialogue, not only does it not contain not a single specific proposal, so, to stand out, but it is not even mentioned in our upcoming (Euro)elections, the first in which this new party will be exposed to the citizens’ vote! It is unlikely that they forgot it, perhaps they judged that other matters took precedence and left it for the next pamphlet.
Whatever has happened, Europe and its serious issues are not currently a priority for the New Left. It remains to be seen whether the New Left will be among the priorities of the voters or, the deep yawning that accompanies its so far (short, it is true) journey, will “return” to the polls. Together with the deep PASOK…
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