Here is a small polemic engendered by a desire to remind myself of some of the events of recent times that have infuriated me in time to help me cast my vote on 6th May.
I am a natural Labour Party supporter and was once a member but I now declare that I will never again vote Labour until all Blairite entryists have been purged and the party returned to its proper purpose, that of being the political representatives of the organized working class. I would also be much happier if the Conservative Party came clean about who it represents and if either of them says we want to represent everybody I will go and get a gun.
In the beginning, when we were pulling out of the belt tightening and public sector cuts imposed by John Major and Kenneth Clarke after their artificial financial crisis, Gordon Brown announced that the new Labour government would maintain the Tory spending limits for two years. So, after eighteen years of Thatcherism the new Labour government was going to follow exactly the same policies. In fact they went on to maintain those policies right up to the present day. When we had the fastest growth in Europe, when banks and industry were making enormous profits from 1996 till 2008 I had pay rises amounting to 1.5% per year. Now, after the latest crash, I can expect no pay rises and reduced public service support for the foreseeable future.
While I was employed in the fire service, the Labour government promoted a procession of second rate political opportunists to ministerial rank with the mission of breaking the union with threats, spin and dirty tricks to pave the way for the same restructuring and downsizing policies that they had inflicted upon less well organized workforces. This was an eye-opener for many fire service staff including management, often people who had supported and worked for the Labour Party. Even without doing research I am certain that they are using all those tricks today against the rail workers and BA cabin crews.
Later, I was employed in the security industry where it was just being realised that around five hundred thousand people were being employed on low wages and with few regulations to protect key installations and properties that probably should be looked after by police or soldiers. Labour had a quick remedy of course, they handed the Licensing Authority contract to the lowest bidder who then paid themselves huge salaries, lost hundreds of vital personal documents like passports and birth certificates, gave badges to illegal immigrants and terrorists and, brilliantly, got every individual security employee to pay for the whole fiasco to the tune of £390 each just so they could go to work.
I cannot forget the lies and obfuscations that were employed to involve Britain in military posturing in Afghanistan and Iraq in which all the main parties were complicit. I remember being promised an ethical foreign policy. I cannot take it on trust that the sacrifice of lives and the enormous percentage of my taxes that have been diverted to offensive military capability is for my benefit. Looks to me like I am paying for someone else’s seat at the top table.
It has cost me over £30,000 to keep my daughter in higher education not including the student loans that she will have to repay. We will have paid to make the Labour Party look good for increasing the number of mickey mouse degrees offered by second rate colleges posing as universities, and we will have paid to delay her appearance on the labour market by five years. This has always been normal behaviour for the elite classes but the Labour Party have frightened the working class into pauperising themselves in an attempt to give their children an edge over the foreign workers enabled and encouraged to come here by both the Labour and Conservative parties to serve the prime directive of the bosses i.e. to keep down wages.
I remember a slogan – joined up thinking. The new third way would deliver policies based on expert advice. Then against expert advice, draconian laws involving far reaching changes to civil liberties were enacted against smokers, drivers, recreational drug takers and people sharing their music collections. The only advice the government listened to regarding the Digital Economy Bill came from Lord Mandelson after being entertained by a millionaire lobbyist for the recording industry.
One of the reasons that stories like these are not considered particularly outrageous is that they happen to small, separated communities and at different times. Anyone who has ever been close to actual events is always dismayed at the apparently deliberate failure of the media to convey the truth and meaning of those events to a wider audience so, inevitably, it takes a long time to identify the patterns of ineptitude and corruption that are in fact routine. When, finally, we arrive at that realization and we cast around for alternatives we are faced with career politicians on a gravy train who could fit into any of the main parties with no loss of ideals. This has caused widespread cynicism about the political process and it is obvious to many that mainstream politics is unprincipled, corrupt and, perhaps most seriously, incompetent, and that our democracy is incapable of curing these problems.
When I look down the long list of candidates in the polling booth will I see any salvation? In what way would voting for any of them make a difference?
I see no salvation but I do see an opportunity to shock the shoddy consensus of the main parties and I think this time I will take it. You know what I mean. Think Weimar and be scared.
