"Whether the Labour Government has two or seven years left in office, its strategic goal must be to embed and Tory-proof a progressive Labour legacy against future political change," said Sunder Katwala, the Fabian Society's general secretary.
There we have the core vision of New Labour. Not the provision of government in keeping with long-settled and agreed constitutional practices; not delivery of manifesto promises to reduce poverty, improve education, assist the people as the global economy asserts itself to cope with changing economic opportunity and protect the country from adverse effects. Not opening choices and chances in life to all of us. It turned out to be the few, not the many who benefitted from 10 years of Brown's chancellorship. Never has inequality been so marked and increased so fast, since the watershed of 1945, as it has in this last decade. We are indebted, impoverished, and have done nothing to reconstitute a manufacturing and industrial base to replace the aging, collapsed industries and infrastructures that failed in the 70s and 80's. Where are our new coal, ship building, steel, processing industries? Where are our machine tool, vehicle production, new textiles industries, our advanced research and design-based technological development sectors?
Other countries in Europe have them all. It isn't true that China and India are the workshops of the world. New Labour have created a vast tax haven and its concomitant services, and an equally vast welfare-dependent bureaucracy and workless underclass client voter-base.
They would, wouldn't they? Their purpose is to embed Labour against future political change - to end democracy itself in our country and turn us into an administered province of the European Union, with their nomenklatura running this sector.
This is one of the last, unreformed, votes in our country. It may be local, limited in its scope, but it is also occurring across the country, and is as concerned with the vaunting of democratic practice as it is with electing particular candidates.
Angels voted.
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3 comments:
Yes, that's all it seems to be about. Here, since buying a house in this very safe Labour constituency in 1984, I've never seen my MP or his local vote-gatherers. What farmer lowers himself to consult the sheep? But I shall vote today, in the local elections.
Yes, you're right, and 'twas ever thus. Safe Labour seat here and not a peep from the old MP or the current one. What farmer consults his sheep? But I shall vote anyway, in the local elections today.
Yes! S. A vote counts in many ways. We were talking about this while eating this evening and the point was made that if the east Europeans had been offered the opportunity to vote available in England today they would have turned out to the last elector. They went to church to protest their dissent (as so many before them), they paraded through their cities, at great personal cost, to protest, they fought Russian tanks to protest. We do not need to fight the tanks yet, but we need to get them off our lawn.
We need to use our votes to speak, not just to elect.
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