Political Compass test

The left to right wing scale is often used to define someone’s political opinions, but it’s too simplistic. When we define someone as either ‘left wing’ or ‘right wing’ we reduce a number of complexities into a simple term which doesn’t take enough factors into account.

The Political Compass test is the most comprehensive quiz which does this. Not only does it define the position of world leaders and key political figures past and present, but allows you to take a fairly comprehensive test in order to determine your location on the grid.

Here is my result:

1st April

 

Updated: 30th July (slightly more left economically, a bit more libertarian socially)

27th October- moving towards the centre: noticeably less Left economically, slightly less libertarian.

The Left to Right scale represents economics – far to the left would be Communism, whilst far to the Right is Neo-Liberalism, with very little control in the markets. The vertical scale Authoritarian to Libertarian represents the amount of state control in people’s lives, with the top being a very pervasive and controlling government, and the bottom being little or no government and state control at all.

Most political parties and leaders fall within the blue box – allowing Capitalism to grow largely unrestrained and with minimal wealth redistribution, and with a fair bit of government control in social aspects (such as drug laws, and police powers – particularly since the terrorist attacks.)

When comparing my place on the grid – left economically, and mildly libertarian socially – with that of UK political parties, it is clear that, by the analysis of the Political Compass, there are no longer any mainstream parties which have principles and policies that fit with my stance:

We can see that the most stark change in parties has been Labour. According to this analysis, Labour of the 1970s and 80s – when it was still Labour and hadn’t become New Labour . Today, it’s very close to the Conservatives – it’s moved upwards on the vertical scale to assert more control over people, and vastly towards the right economically, as Labour began its quest to  reinvent itself, appealing to business and the middle class. The movement of the Conservatives is less pronounced – they have remained within the same area for over 30 years, more recently moving downwards slightly on the vertical scale, probably due to their desire to hand power back to people. However, the most noticeable movement of the Tories is from 1972 to ’82 – when Thatcher led the party and engulfed it with Thatcherism, taking free market principles to a new level.

So, where do you stand? You can take the test to find out – it’s always interesting to return a few months later to see if your position has changed.