I shall watch Dispatches tonight to see yet more evidence that New Labour epitomise the takeover of British politics by those simply seeking personal financial gain through promoting corporate interests.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article7068820.ece
But none of it compares in horror to Blair’s multi millions, made especially from those whose interests he forwarded in Iraq by the horrible deaths of hundreds of thousands.
If anything can have been more sickening that that, it was Brown’s thwarting of government controls over hedge funds and prtivate equity bubbles that cost ordinary taxpayers billions, put thosands out of work and make a small number in the City of London mega-rich.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/mar/21/gordon-brown-hedge-funds
I cannot for the life of me conceive how anybody in their right mind, other than their corporate backers, can even consider voting New Labour, let alone the working people whose hopes they have betrayed.
We get the government we deserve. We are scum.
I am considering voting Labour on the grounds that, when it comes to increasing taxes and cutting spending, they are likely to do so marginally more equitably than the Tories. I fear they are the least worse option. Much as I despise them it is possible that by voting them out we may quickly realise that we have cut our nose to spite our face.
Craig; I agree, but still people do vote for them.
ook at Glasgow, which has been a Labour hegemony for almost a century (old and New Labour), yet has gained virtually nothing but decay. Even when the troughing of Michael Martin and David Marshall, they will still vote for them. It’s like Captain Ahab and Moby Dick…
I can’t conceive how anybody in their right mind would bother to vote.
It is all a load of bollocks anyway.
People who think things will change when they put a little cross on a bit of paper are like people who write letters to santa.
At least people who write letters to santa some times get what they ask for from their dads.
No one ever gets what they ask for from Democracy. It is a myth made up by people who want to make sure you all behave and be good little boys.
Democracy is santa without the presents.
MJ – do you work in the public sector?
No.
MJ: I don’t care if the Tories will be worse, at this stage. The most positive thing we could see for British politics right now is the total destruction of the Labour party.
Labour needs to die and make space for something better. We don’t need two Tory parties, which is what we have right now.
Which isn’t to say that I’ll be voting Tory but I sure as hell won’t vote for Labour, either.
I see that they mamanged to deport a gold medal winner, without much opposition from our usual suspects of NGO’s trying to support this mans case.
The trick was to call the mans driving whilst disqualified, a’serious criminal offence. he’s got five month in prison for this serious criminal offence and was sent to Dover’s Immigration removal centre for deportation. They could not admit a man without the use of his legs and just sent him brixton prison. In Jan. 2008 he was granted bail, but then rearrested in Auigust after being called in for an ‘interview’. He has been in detention since and the Home Office is committed to his deportation.
I question our human rights organisation and their sometimes blinkered approach to campaigns. His MP Bridget Prentice, did not intervene until the late stages and his letter, written in desperation to Gordon Brown still awaits answers. I cannot imagine that Amnesty has never heard of Vincent Onwunbiko. Maybe his win of five medals for Britain confused them and they thought this native Nigerian to be well settled in the country.
It is not!
The britsh Government in a show of gratitude has granted three month worth of pain killers to this para Olympian, in recognition of his past services, so when he comes back to his native Nigeria, he’s got nothing to fear.
Vincent has got an 11 year old daughter who is at school here, how can this possibly be the right decision?
I’m with @Leo on this one. With no offence at all to @MJ intended, I think voting Labour at the election is almost as socially irresponsible as voting Tory, in terms of substantially worsening the income distribution gap. Where it matters in the Labour Party, there does not appear to be a drop of working class consciousness left, or any genuine solidarity with the poverty and disenfranchised classes. Sure, the media have created a monster in all the political parties, all of whom have slowly shifted rightward over the last thirty years, but I am not sure encouraging them is a good idea.
The “Toynbee formulation” is to “vote Labour whilst putting a clothes-peg on your nose”. However she was rightly ridiculed in Private Eye – turns out she’d urged disillusioned Labour voters, in various opinion pieces, some 20 or 30 times to “give the party another chance”.
I think angry progressives should vote Lib Dem if they must, or Green/Respect et al according to preference. Then, if our old friend Eddie is right, and the Tories get in on the abandonment of the incumbent, we can say to the Labour Party, “look what you’ve done”, in all sincerity.
Leo: “Labour needs to die and make space for something better”
Labour died when Blair became leader.
“Which isn’t to say that I’ll be voting Tory but I sure as hell won’t vote for Labour”
But one or the other will win, whoever you vote for. We must decide which of the two we would really prefer.
Jon: “I think voting Labour at the election is almost as socially irresponsible as voting Tory”
That ‘almost’ is rather important I feel.
@MJ – I should add, I am a middle-class white-collar thirty-something professional, so perhaps my “crash and burn” approach – with a resultant Tory win – would not harm me as much as it would the abandoned working classes. I would accept that criticism. But I fear that allowing the war-mongers to have their murderousness vindicated by another electoral win is too much to bear.
Aha, posting cross-over! I appear to have posted a suitable response accidentally 😉
“But I fear that allowing the war-mongers to have their murderousness vindicated by another electoral win is too much to bear”.
Do you really think the Tories will be any different? And once we’ve come to hate them just as much (after about four days) then what?
I think the Tories would have felt pressed into the war as well, so we agree in part. Though I am slightly inclined towards the view that the internal democracy in the Tory party is actually slightly better than Labour since Bliar/Campbell decimated the latter, though I am not sure that there would have been enough against-war voices in the Tory party to influence policy.
That all said, if the Tories were in power in 2003, I wonder if a Lab-Lib grouping would have come out forcefully against the war on Iraq, thus nipping it in the bud. That is not intended to offer a defence against support for imperialism amongst the Tories – just that history would, of course, have been different.
If we are agreed then that the Tories would be (nearly) as bad, then – in a fit of pique – I say let them have it. We’ll protest against the worst injustices they intend, just as we would under neocon Labour, but we have the added advantage that Labour are out on their ear.
That would be a greater incentive for Labour to follow a progressive path next time. Needless to say, I am not happier about this Hobson’s Choice than you are. But it’s what we have.
If everyone votes for the lesser of two evils we will wind up with evil.
I’ll be voting for ‘not evil’.
“That would be a greater incentive for Labour to follow a progressive path next time”
Yes, that’s a good point. It’s possible that in being voted out Labour would transform itself again and its historical core principles would re-emerge. I’m not holding my breath but it’s possible. Thanks Jon.
“I’ll be voting for ‘not evil'”
Not an option I fear. Unless the Natural Law Party are still going. Don’t think they are.
Never voted Labour, certainly not about to at the next election.
But I don’t agree with you about hedge funds being the cause of the financial crisis. They are a convenient scape-goat for precisely the reason you outlined, that they represent some of the wealthiest people in society – but on the list of reasons for the financial crisis, they barely register as a factor. Whatever Brown’s motives for kicking hedge fund regulation down the road, the idea that enhanced hedge fund regulation should be a priority is putting populism ahead of sound policy.
This is not meant to be Eurocrat bashing for the sake of it, but the Alternative Investment Directive is going to be an ugly mishmash of incompatible agendas, whose net effect will be to stifle the activity of a part of the financial industry most capable of blowing the whistle on corporate fraud and corruption. This is not to say hedge fund managers are doing this out of public service, but they are incentivised to spot the crooks and charletans in the market-place, far more so than bankers and infinitely more so that the governing establishment who always claim to have things under control.
Where I live we will have the option of voting for our local independent association which will represent local people and not the big political parties in London. I live in Stockton South with a sitting Labour MP although we already have 16 independent coucillors which is a great start.
Watched the video of Byers boasting about how he and his pals fooled the public by pretending to be for tough regulation of rail companies while taking their money in return for doing nothing to stop them ripping taxpayers and people travelling by train off twice – with government subsidies for costs(while the private firms take all profits) and fares rising way above the rate of inflation.
This probably isn’t illegal or a criminal offence. It f*cking well should be.
We need modest public funding of all candidates’ election campaigns (independents and political parties) and it should be a criminal offence for an MP or political party to accept any money from any private individual, company or organisation. If found guilty an MP should immediately be out of his seat and banned from standing for public office for a decade.
Jon and MJ,
in all this wrangling between Labour and Tory, I think situations vary between constituencies. Voters should assess their candidates and inspect their voting records. Seeing politics as nothing more that a battle between labour and Conservative is all part of the problem. And there is a good chance of a big swing away from Labour / Tory this time, I think; let’s not scupper it!
Ed,
the lack of regulations on hedge funds; did it help any alarm bells to ring before the latest crisis?
Hear, hear, Duncan McFarlane. There should be a range of penalties, including prison. What did Lord Taylor get? So many months suspension from the Lords?
..and Blair is being brought ‘on board’ to ‘make carefully timed interventions’ in the runup to the election.
http://tinyurl.com/evil-bliar
I want to know if this bloody murderer is being paid by the Conservative ‘backers’ to kill Labours chances considering all of middle England despise Blair. Brown would of course get a cut!!! – and a money earner on the US circuit.
Can we trust them – absolutely not!
My local freebie newspaper has a financial page sponsored by Barclays Bank. The editorial comment was about class. Non-working class, which should be incentivised to go to work. Working class, stretching from gang labour, through minimum wage to top bankers with million pound bonuses, and moneyed class who don’t have to work at all. It’s nice to know that the honest sweat of the rich banker is equal to the unemployed labourer’s when he travels on the overcrowded undergound, in the eyes of some.
I don’t think that, at this stage of society’s development, at this particular time, that the political parties are particularly relevant anymore, simply because they are all really part of the same mega-party, the business party, which has successfully eradicated the opposition, or any substantive alternative, from Parliament.
We now have parties, but no politics to speak of anymore. The central debate among the three factions of the ruling party, is about who has the will and guts to most effectively cut living standards for the “working class” and impose the will of the market most effectively.
In fact, writerman, since all structures in society will tend to regress to the mean and so will come to be assembled on the template of the dominant underlying structure accordinly to the distribution of power, your last paragraph, above, might be extrapolated to cover all aspects of society. The arts in particular (you knew that was coming, as you heard the clippety-clop of my hobby-horse! But like Peter Finch in that iconic film, I am mad and getting madder).
The longer I watched Dispatches, the sicker I felt. I could not decide which one of them was the most disgustingly greedy and amoral.
I think the media is manipulating us into believing that there’ll be a hung parliament so that when the election results are fixed we won’t be surprised.
I expect Mandelson to become the Prime Minister and that, thereafter with the parties visible as one, it may well be our last election. A triumvirate to front those who really control our lives.
Ruth – i don’t mean to be offensive, but i think you’re being defeatist. The big problem isn’t that elections are rigged – some of that goes on by both main parties but not enough to decide an overall election result usually.
The main problems are
1) Most people don’t know what’s happened in the past or what’s going on now, whether because they’re too over-worked and stressed to find out or because they can’t be bothered finding out
2) Most people assume a vote for a small party or independent candidate is a ‘wasted vote’, which becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy