Centre-left politics

Centre-left politics lean to the left on the left–right political spectrum but are closer to the centre than other left-wing politics. Those on the centre-left believe in working within the established systems to improve social justice.[1] The centre-left promotes a degree of social equality that it believes is achievable through promoting equal opportunity.[2] The centre-left emphasizes that the achievement of equality requires personal responsibility in areas in control by the individual person through their abilities and talents as well as social responsibility in areas outside control by the person in their abilities or talents.[3]

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The centre-left opposes a wide gap between the rich and the poor and supports moderate measures to reduce the economic gap, such as a progressive income tax, laws prohibiting child labour, minimum wage laws, laws regulating working conditions, limits on working hours and laws to ensure the workers' right to organize.[2] The centre-left typically claims that complete equality of outcome is not possible, but instead that equal opportunity improves a degree of equality of outcome in society.[2]

In Europe, the centre-left includes social democrats, progressives, greens and the moderate Christian left. Some variants of liberalism, especially social liberalism, are described as centre-left, but many social liberals are in the centre of the political spectrum as well.[4][5] In the Americas, in relation to economic policy, the center-left also includes economic progressive forms of Christian democracy, some of which may be politically syncretic mixing in the social conservatism of the center-right.