Left-wing Vs Right-wing: where do you incline?

UK – Determined for Conservatives to win, I posted my picture with a caption ‘Vote Conservative’. Beneath the image, with a lot of comments, the genuinely puzzled inquiry but more often an implied; ‘Why the hell are you posing as a Tory?’

            It amazes that a majority of ethnic minorities are conservative along with several dimensions, but their sense of group identity restricts their self-identification into party identification. I belong to a Nepalese community and it doesn’t surprise me to see the majority as labour voters. We have an issue in our community; many think right but vote left?

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            We tend to believe that human beings share the same set of values and motivations, but this isn’t the case. Your Left or Right ideologies are not a choice rather a born personality trait. There are a lot of diagnostic tools to test your beliefs. Out of curiosity, I used the Big Five Personality test to experiment with my political inclination; Openness to experience, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Emotional Stability. My Low Openness and high Conscientiousness, separately, both produce a conservative temperament. Paired together, they are strongly associated with social conservatism. I quote, “You can’t make a dog happy by forcibly wagging its tail. And you can’t change people’s minds by utterly refuting their arguments.”

            Ethnic minorities should step forward to counter stereotypes and assert a political identity very different from the usual assumption that all minorities are Democrats or Labour party supporters. 2019 election reflects that Labour won 64 percent of the ethnic minority vote and the conservatives on only 20 percent. In the long run, the ethnic minority population is growing in this country, not solving the problem of how to appeal to ethnic minority voters is an issue for conservatives.

            Despite the great offices of the state held by a Home Secretary, Chancellor, Business Secretary and Attorney General from immigrant backgrounds, people still complain about this visible example of representation. The Conservatives have broken through Labours red wall and race barriers; instead of celebrating this diverse cabinet in British political history, the left continues to use ‘Identity Politics’ to overshadow these positive achievements.