Mapping my Political Compass

I've been reading Iain Dale's weekend post entitled 'Why the BNP is Left Wing (And Fascist)' which i entirely agree with.

Iain has since followed up with a post today in which he uses the website Political Compass to back up his point that the BNP is indeed left-wing and fascist. He also uses the website to plot his own position.

Political Compass takes the view, correctly in my opinion, that it is far too simplistic to just identify parties and individuals on the old left-right spectrum. Consequently it asks a series of questions to plot your or your party's position on a economic and social x,y axis graph. See below:

Political Compass places the UK's parties in the following areas:

This is the graph that Iain includes on his blog post. Clearly the BNP is authoritarian/fascist on the social scale but it is also left-wing when it comes to measuring its economic stance.

One thing i wasn't particularly happy with the above graph was the position of the Conservatives. Political Compass had them as more authoritarian than New Labour which i thought was absurd given David Cameron's support for civil liberties and Labour continuing to ride roughshod over our freedoms in the name of security and national databases.

However, i've found on the Political Compass website another graph which plots the changing positions of the three main parties over the last few years. This one is much more representative as Labour is seen as more authoritarian than the Tories which i believe reflects the true positions of the parties. See below:

Finally, as Iain has put his own graph up showing where his politics stand, i thought i'd do the same for those wondering where my politics lie. It came out as expected, putting me on the Libertarian Right. It is a similar position to Iain Dale though i share his concern that it puts us in Lib Dem territory - so perhaps Political Compass is not infallible after all!

If you want to see where you stand, take the Political Compass test by clicking here.