Coping With Cameron

So the Liberal Democrats have made their choice, betraying their progressive roots, their progressive membership and the progressive mandate given to them by 52% of the voting population, and have decided to get into bed with the Tories.  David Cameron is now our Prime Minister.

But this is not all as terrible as it seems.

First: the obvious.  Instead of May 12th, 2010, being Day One of a Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition government, we must never forget that, had the election gone differently, May 12th, 2010, could have been Day Six of a majority Cameron government. 

Let no-one tell you any different: the Conservatives did not get a mandate in the General Election and the country has not shifted rightwards in response to their disillusionment with Labour.  The country – 52% of them – voted for a distinctly un-Tory flavour of change, maintaining the progressive values that saved this country after the ravages of Thatcherism.  David Cameron as our new Prime Minister is a pretty scary thought – but it would have been even scarier had he done it on his own instead of with the help of the Quisling Liberal Democrats.

Which brings me to my next point…

While it is easy (and comforting) to call the Lib-Dems traitors for doing a deal with the Conservatives instead of Labour (and certainly, if you were foolish enough to vote for them, they have taken your anti-Tory vote and shat on it), there is actually nothing at all traitorous about it.  As long-time proponents of Proportional Representation, the Liberal Democrats are a political party inherently at ease with the concept of coalition governments with strange and uneasy bedfellows.  If PR were introduced to the country by the next General Election, parties like the Tories would not magically disappear, and if you are committed to the notion of proportionality in political representation then that means understanding that you must work with all parties in order to govern.  There will always be a right-wing in any country, and there will always be those with whom you are diametrically opposed ideologically; but the cooperative spirit of the kind of coalition governments usually yielded by PR means that their actual political power is kept in line with their true level of public support.  If 36% of the population want a Tory government, then there should be some proportional share of representation of those views in government.  Importantly though, PR and coalition government is about compromise and tempering the extremes.  It is about finding common ground and working through party differences for the good of the country instead of clinging to myopic tribalism, and it ensures a more rational and reasonable political dialogue than the black/white, yes/no, left/right dichotomy of our current first-past-the-post system.

On May 6th, we were offered a false choice: are we fed up with Labour?  If so, then we must vote for a party, the Conservatives, who are so fundamentally different ideologically that they see the world in a completely backwards way to our every political instinct.

What about those of us, like me, who were fed up with Labour not because they weren’t right-wing enough, but because they weren’t as left-wing as I would have liked?  Because their taxes on the rich were too low, because they were too in bed with the bankers and the businesses who robbed our country dry? 

That sort of nuance is incapable of being articulated in a first-past-the-post, winner-takes-all system.  My disappointment in Labour could not be expressed effectively by anything other than voting for Labour in opposition to the more extreme right-wing alternative.

The Liberal Democrats have long been aware of the inefficiencies and unfairness of our current voting system and have campaigned against it for years.  Part of that desire for a “new kind of politics”, however, does involve working with other parties, even parties who you are not naturally inclined to work with.  Proportional Representation means coalition governments, and coalition governments mean compromise and give-and-take.  The Lib-Dems siding with the Tories over Labour does not mean that the Liberal Democrats are now duty-bound to support every insane Conservative policy that comes along; it means engaging in conversation with their Conservative Cabinet colleagues and limiting their excesses whilst making small progressive inroads of their own.

That they ultimately opted for a Conservative coalition instead of a Labour one is disappointing, yes, and it will certainly stop me from ever voting Liberal Democrat in the future, but in the long-term it was the best thing that they could do if they are serious about bringing this “new kind of politics” to Britain.

First of all – by choosing to form a government with the most difficult and unlikely of the two courting parties, the Liberal Democrats will show, if the coalition works, that coalition and compromise is possible and desirable within the UK.  If political enemies like the Lib-Dems and the Tories can work effectively side by side and the country does not fall apart, then when the referendum for a new voting system occurs they already have a fantastic body of evidence to point to in its favour.

Related to this was the question of legitimacy.  Although intellectually and ethically it is quite clear to me that a Lib/Lab deal would have been absolutely legitimate on paper (a majority coalition representing the 52% of the country who voted against a shift to the right), legitimacy ultimately rests on public perception.  From the moment the idea was seriously broached, the media were all over it and denouncing it as a possible “coalition of the losers”.  Furthermore, with Gordon Brown resigning, there would be no possible way of carrying out the Lib/Lab coalition with an elected Prime Minister.  Again – although that is intellectually and ethically acceptable, and there is no constitutional or legal requirement for the direct election of a Prime Minister in our Parliamentary (not Presidential) democracy, public opinion – shaped and twisted by the media – was that one of the central failings of Labour over the past few years was the unelected nature of Gordon Brown’s ascent to power.  That opinion was, in my view, wrong, and even irrelevant, but it is what it is: the public were fed up with a man in Downing Street that they did not have a say in voting and to replace one unelected Prime Minister with another would have been both a Public Relations and a Proportional Representation disaster.  Public Relations because it would look like the Lib-Dems were propping up an unpopular and rejected Labour government (even if, in actual fact, that wasn’t what was happening at all; the slavish Conservative media would be sure to promote that narrative regardless) and Proportional Representation because when the inevitable referendum occurred the Conservative argument against it would be clear: unelected leaders, unpopular governments propped up by minority losers…this is what PR would mean for the country.

We must remember – a referendum on PR is not a vote for the House of Commons to make, and it doesn’t matter how much political support it can muster.  It is a public vote, and how the public perceives the issue will be crucial.  On this point, I believe that the Liberal Democrats have been quite savvy.  They will lead by example: show that they are capable of compromise and that PR and coalition does not mean that we can’t have strong and stable government.  By doing this, they will take away from their main political opponents on the issue – the Conservatives – the validity of much of their opposition; when the referendum comes their argument will look flimsy and out-dated. 

The final reason why the Liberal Democrats’ decision is not an absolute disaster is this: it gives the Labour Party time to regroup.  They can listen to their base, build on the support that they received on May 6th, woo former Liberal Democrat supporters disgusted with their party for the deal they have done with the Conservatives, elect a new and electable leader, clean off the stench of the last thirteen years, and generally sort themselves out to come out fighting by 2015 – or sooner if the coalition breaks down.

Certainly the lesson they must learn from this election is that progressive politics has not died out in this country, despite Tony Blair’s best attempts to assimilate the party into the right.  Labour made two major mistakes: illegal and unjustified wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and not regulating banks and businesses sufficiently to stop them from playing roulette with our money.  Their downfall came from their own flirtation with the policies of the right and their revival must come from recognising the appeal of the left, capitalizing on the exodus of Liberal Democrats angry at their party for selling them out, and then offering a genuine leftist alternative to the Conservatives and the soiled Liberal Democrats by the time election day comes.

Had they not been offered this opportunity; had they clung on to power against media and public opinion and been demonized for their actions, tarred with their record and attacked by Conservatives at every turn, you could be sure that the postponement of their demise by a Liberal Democrat deal would have led to a much greater death down the line, and a possible banishment to the political wilderness from which they might have never recovered.  As it is, they have managed to bow out of the government just in time to not be burdened by the unpopularity sure to come once “savage cuts” in public spending occur, and they have allowed the country to be reminded, over the next five years, why it was that we ejected the Tories so unceremoniously back in 1997.

Theoretically – a five year recharge and revitalization of the party, helped along by continuing demonstrable evidence of the paucity of the Conservative vision – could leave Labour primed to reclaim power in 2015 and fix the inevitable mess.  And if the Lib-Dems play it right, and that election is fought under rules of Proportional Representation, we could see the next five years become nothing more than a Conservative swan-song.

Of course I’m angry that we now have a Conservative Prime Minister.  If you voted Liberal Democrat on May 6th then you must feel incredibly cheated and let down.  But this is no ordinary Conservative Prime Minister – this is a Conservative Prime Minister kept in line by a Liberal Democrat Deputy, leading a Cabinet watered down by a handful of Liberal Democrats.  I don’t believe Nick Clegg’s decision was the right one, but I do think it was the best one he could make under the circumstances.  Whatever happens over the next five years, I’m fairly certain that British politics will never be the same again, and whilst this may look like a disaster in the short-term, in the long-term this could be the greatest gift the progressive left have ever received.

 

Technorati Tags: General Election 2010,General Election,UK Election,Politics,UK Politics,David Cameron,Nick Clegg,Labour Party,Liberal Democrats,Conservative Party,Progressive Majority

Prime Ministerial Debate III: Question Time

Watching the BBC debate show, Question Time, is a frustrating experience at the best of times. More often than not the panel of political representatives and media personalities are so busy spouting out their own sound-bites and prepared talking points that you are left screaming at your television set that they are not answering the question, or that they are lying, or that they have no idea what they are talking about, or that the views they are expressing have been outdated and discredited for twenty years… And even though the audience are allowed to speak and call these people to account, what usually follows is simply more of the same evasiveness and spin: the audience-member feels wonderful that their view has finally been represented, but the panellists air-time is longer and their voices carry more weight. The question is forgotten and only emptiness remains.

Last night’s episode of Question Time was doubly frustrating, because instead of being at home, where you are buoyed by a certain sense of detachment and the ability to turn the sound down, I was in the studio audience at Birmingham University and watched the entire thing live.

You would have thought that this would make it far less frustrating: instead of watching in futility at home, unable to get engaged with the debate and call the politicians on their spin and manipulation, in person I could actually put my hand up and get involved. I could ask my questions, I could state my opinions.

But I discovered last night that there is something much more frustrating than the impotence you feel at home when you see an entire panel of liars and idiots and there are no means of having your say: actually being in the audience, with your hand up for sixty minutes desperate to put forward your opinion, and not being called on throughout.

I’ll blame it on my positioning. We had no real choice in where we were seated and unfortunately I found myself at the far left end of a row quite near the back, not only out of the sight of most of the cameras, which concentrated mainly on the central section, but crucially – because of the placement of one of the main cameras that filmed the panellists – often out of the sight of David Dimbleby himself. Though he looked in my direction several times, for whatever reason, I wasn’t asked to participate. And so I had to sit, with my arm aching in the air, listening to hollow lies about the debate earlier that evening, awful and – yes – bigoted rubbish about immigration, the various ways in which the parties plan to cut public spending instead of taxing the rich and how democracy had changed for the better because of the implementation of vacuous television debates.

Still, despite not getting to add my own venom and bile to the vibrant melange of misinformation and spin, I had a thoroughly enjoyable time. It was nice, if nothing else, getting to boo Liam Fox in a roomful of people and hearing David Dimbleby tell us to “just bloody enjoy yourselves” before we went on air. It was also nice, in the sound-check portion of the technical rehearsal, to be able to ask a question of the fake stand-in panel even if I didn’t get to do it on TV. We were told we couldn’t address anything that might actually come up in the show, so I contributed this little enquiry to the proceedings: “This week, Stephen Hawking has told us that if we came into contact with aliens, it is highly likely that they will be hostile. Liam Fox, as Shadow Defence Secretary, should we go to war against the aliens?”

A heated debate ensued, with audience members and fake panellists suggesting that the rationale for war might be different if we knew that the aliens had oil and once we knew just exactly what the alien weaponry was like…and if they had weapons of mass destruction.

It was a hell of a long evening though. We arrived at the University at 5:45pm and didn’t leave until midnight. Once we’d arrived, we were bussed (quite needlessly – it was about a two minute walk) to the venue, where we sat around tables getting to know each other, eating free sandwiches and coffee and writing our second Question Time question.

We had already been asked to email a question earlier in the week. The question I had sent in was this: Would Conservative proposals to give parents public money to set up experimental new schools take vital funding away from the schools that we already have? I thought it would be something likely to come up being as how the Schools Secretary, Ed Balls, was on the panel, and there had been such an excellent furore about the issue earlier in the week that saw Michael Gove absolutely eviscerated on Radio 4.

It didn’t, and I wasn’t asked to read the question. But my second submission was this: Is it really so wrong to call a person “sort of bigoted” after they have just expressed some “sort of bigoted” views?

That obviously didn’t fit in with the editorial take on the whole “bigot-gate” incident though, because the version of the question ultimately asked in the show was: Are you a bigot to ask the Prime Minister about immigration? With not a single person on the panel (including Ed Balls), or Dimbleby himself, attempting to clarify the fact that Gordon Brown did not explicitly call Gillian Duffy “a bigot”, but rather described her, undeniably “sort of bigoted”, views as “sort of bigoted”.

After the coffee and question-writing was done, we moved into the real studio, where the alien-based technical rehearsal occurred and people were told whether or not their questions had been chosen. Sadly, after spending the earlier part of the evening with a great group of left-leaning people (utterly by accident – we were obviously drawn to each other), somehow I ended up sitting next to an excitable Tory guy who clapped vigorously at every empty trope Liam Fox uttered all night and tried to convince me that David Cameron had “won” the Debate.

Indeed – the Debate. Before Question Time began, we had a giant screen brought into the makeshift studio and watched the entire Prime Ministerial Debate live as an audience. This was actually pretty cool. Unlike watching at home, with just me and my wife grumbling to each other, or even watching it live in the auditorium, where you are not allowed to make a sound, watching the debate cinema-style in a big room full of people meant that we could boo and cheer as we pleased to the various points the leaders put across. We could clap when they said something sensible and we could call out “RUBBISH!” when they said something we disagreed with. Unfortunately, it was quite depressing to see how many people cheered and got excited when David Cameron laid into the usual Tory memes of immigrants and people on benefits. Indeed, on Question Time too, my heart sank at how deeply so many people feel this hostility towards immigration.

Still, the biggest cheers of the night went to Clegg, and when we were polled later via a show of hands, in our room, Clegg won. If I were a focus group manager for Gordon Brown I would point out two major observations from last night: Gordon Brown smiling makes the entire audience laugh, and not in a good way. And everything that he says – no matter how valid, reasoned and true it may be – simply does not connect with voters who have been misled and lied to by a promise-breaking Labour government for thirteen years. If anything loses him the election though, it will be the shit-eating grin he whipped out right at the end of his atrocious prepared final statement. The statement was bad enough – an attack on Clegg and Cameron instead of a robust defence of Labour and positive reason to vote for them, that ended with him telling people he was “desperate” – and then when he smiled I have never heard such a groan fill a room. Just terrible, and I actually thought he did really well once you take presentation out of the equation. That said, I was fairly disgusted that he failed to point out the fundamental, £40 a week better off in work guarantee and rise of the minimum wage, that, according to the two manifestos, separates Labour policy on cutting benefits from the Tory one considerably. In a bid to out-Tory the Tories, he simply pressed on about “no life on the dole” and forcing people to work. That correlating rise in the minimum wage and promise that when you are forced into a job you will be guaranteed to earn at least £40 a week more in work than you would on benefits, however, makes the Labour policy much more humane, but not a single voter watching the Debate last night will know about it.

I also can’t believe that the opinion polls have Cameron winning the Debate last night. What did he actually say that was any different from any of the two previous Debates, or indeed from the Conservative manifesto? Absolutely nothing. I guess it just proves that old adage that if you repeat a lie long enough, people start to believe it as truth. He was evasive, he offered platitudes instead of arguments, his policies don’t add up and all have fundamental flaws, and yet he drills through all the sound-bites and pounds them into your head and by the end of ninety minutes you feel like you’ve been convinced; a sophistry of the highest order.

It would have been nice to have said that on Question Time too – but I guess there’s always next time.

I just hope that next time it won’t be Prime Minister Cameron I will be talking about, and that on May 6th, even without having heard me speak on TV, the great British public will show me that they’re not as dumb as I think they are, and go to the polls and vote for our future, instead of our draconian past.

Technorati Tags: Question Time,UK Politics,Politics,General Election 2010,General Election,Prime Ministerial Debate,Gordon Brown,Nick Clegg,David Cameron

Prime Ministerial Debate II: The Quickening

Some thoughts on last night’s 2nd Prime Ministerial Debate:

Whilst David Cameron continued his efforts to manipulate and con the British public into anointing him Prime Minister through shallow sound-bites and comforting repetition, Nick Clegg and Gordon Brown actually offered meaningful policy discussions on some of the major issues of the day.

Quite frankly, Cameron infuriates me.  After last week’s ridiculous and transparent anecdote about a “black man” who supports immigration (a 40 year old black man who Cameron claimed had served in the Royal Navy for 30 years – making him, at most, 10 years old when he joined!), this week we had an even more annoying gaffe: when Gordon Brown laid into Nick Clegg about his opposition to Trident, Cameron said – in a very well-rehearsed way - “I have never uttered these words before…but I agree with Gordon.”  A funny line in light of last week’s “I agree with Nick” catchphrase, but an absolute heap of rubbish because just a few minutes before, on a question about Afghanistan, Cameron had said “I completely agree with Gordon Brown” about how brave and heroic our troops were, and how we must continue to fight al-Qaeda around the world so that they cannot commit atrocities here in the UK.  The news agencies this morning have not seemed to pick up on this blatant bullshit, however, because it gets in the way of a good sound-bite.

I also found much of what Cameron said last night to be completely void and empty: tried and tested Tory tropes about “people who work hard and save hard not getting punished” under a Conservative government, “people who do the right thing their whole lives not losing out”, and how, if a thousand business leaders think something must be wrong, then clearly it must be. 

In many ways it was like seeing a magician try to do magic after you’d read the book on how all the illusions are performed: the newspapers and websites yesterday were full of inside information about what Cameron’s team were going to try and do in order to improve his performance from last week’s, and he did exactly what they told him.  Talk more directly to the camera (he did), paint a picture of the Conservative Party as being the only real possibility for breaking free of Labour (he did), sell the terror of a hung Parliament (he did), and tousle your hair a bit (he did!)  It was an absolute master-class in vapid talking points and well-rehearsed spin, which reached its crescendo when the same man who tells us that “Gordon Brown’s jobs-tax will kill the recovery” and that a hung Parliament will destroy the economy, accused Gordon Brown of scare-mongering!  Brown, who stated – quite reasonably – that the Conservative Manifesto makes no mention of free prescriptions or eye-tests for the elderly, was taken to task for leaflets which therefore claim that a Conservative Government would take medicines away from the sick.  This is apparently scare-mongering, whereas the entire Tory campaign, which is based around the fundamental premise that “we can’t go on like this”, is not?

But enough of David Sham-eron.  What of the other contenders?

Well, once again Nick Clegg showed that he was a serious political candidate and that the Liberal Democrats are a genuine party to vote for.  The only people to be amazed by this fact continue to be the media, but  nevertheless, although lacking in the novelty-value of last week’s debut (and in the willingness for Brown and Cameron, fearing a potential hung Parliament, to suck up to him) Clegg remained sound and innovative on policy and fresh and bold on politics.  Continually, he discussed new and practical ways of getting difficult things done, and showed that there were real alternatives to the fictional limits on action set in place by the traditional two-party system.  He not only did well, he did amazingly well, considering that both Cameron and Brown were out to get his blood.  After last week’s disastrous schmooze-fest, the game this week was expose the Liberal Democrats as a flash-in-the-pan novelty, and at that task, both Cameron and Brown epically failed.  When questioned and scrutinized about Liberal Democrat policies, Clegg had answers; when grilled and interrogated about the nature of his character, his opponents were forced to fabricate fictions and put words into his mouth.  No one managed to win a knock-out blow on Clegg, and far from showing he was a one-trick pony, he used this second debate to clarify and expand on positions put forward last week.  Indeed, his performance was decidedly Prime Ministerial.

Which brings me to Gordon Brown.

Gordon Brown is the man who bank-rolled the two unjustified and illegal wars on terror, continued the Tory economic policies of the 80s and 90s, and sat back and made friendly with bankers instead of giving them more regulation…yet last night, and the week before, I couldn’t help but be impressed by his contributions to the debate.  Just as I felt when reading the Labour Party Manifesto last week, whilst there have certainly been some tremendous failures and nightmares brought about by Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, since 1997 the Labour Party really have done so many wonderful things for this country: be it the implementation of the minimum wage; furthering the equality of women, homosexuals, the disabled, and ethnic and religious minorities; providing better benefits for the elderly; improving health and educational services; attempting to shake-up the House of Lords; the Freedom of Information Act…the Labour Party have by no means got everything right (and even in their successes there could have been much bigger improvements and much better means to achieve them) but what they have done right has been important.  Crucially, it is these areas of social reform that are most at danger with a Conservative victory (we all remember how things were under Thatcher and Major), and I thought that last night Brown managed to remind us of Labour’s successes, admit to some of their failings, and put forward an clear and appealing vision of the future. 

When it came to substance and policy – Brown was a machine.  He gave figures, facts, agendas and aspirations, and he did it all whilst pointing out the stark ideological differences between the right and the left in 2010.  “Not everyone has the answers,” he told us, right off the bat, “but I say get the big decisions wrong and Britain’s security and jobs are at risk. Get the big decisions right and we can have a prosperous, fairer, greener and better Britain. Like me or not, I can deliver that plan and the way to do it is with a majority Labour government.” 

And that is Gordon’ problem – nobody seems to like him.  He could sit down and rationally explain an absolutely cast-iron solution to all of the world’s problems with a thoroughly costed ten-point plan of exactly how that agenda would be achieved by the end of the first year of Parliament, and still people would shrug their shoulders and say: “well how can we trust him?  We’ve been lied to by Labour before.” 

If anything is the subtext of this election it is that: Labour have badly let us down since 1997, we all know it, and we are desperately looking for an alternative.

Now, that alternative could be Nick Clegg, or it could well be the Labour Party themselves.  A revitalized and re-energized party, starting a new chapter in their political lives and admitting to the mistakes of the past with the first General Election of the Gordon Brown era.  Don’t forget – the past thirteen years were largely on Tony Blair’s watch, and because of the weird way in which Gordon Brown became our Prime Minster, he has never really had a mandate or opportunity to truly lead the party. 

It could, of course, all be bullshit, but the 2010 Manifesto suggests a Labour Party that is changing – a more responsive, more democratic Labour Party, that has looked itself in the mirror, been woken up and shaken about a bit by the fallout of the expenses scandal and the war in Iraq, and wants to remember why it was put in government in the first place.  In thirteen years the social and economic advances that the Labour Party have brought to this country have been significant and they have been welcomed.  They have not all been perfect, and there has been their fair-share of mistakes, but the good things that Labour have done have been entirely the result of the significant ideological differences between a party on the right and a party on the left.

The Conservative Party, ideologically, do not care about social justice.  They do not care about economic justice.  They do not care about equality, the environment, multilateralism, or human rights.  They simply care about what they have always cared about: keeping the better off, better off, and helping the rich get richer.  Yet I truly fear that on May 6th our disillusionment and cynicism with Gordon Brown and the Labour government might deliver this country in David Cameron’s hands.  When you’ve been raped and beaten for thirteen years, you don’t really care who rescues you, so long as you are saved.

No matter how much sense the Labour Party talks, and how much it fights to remind us of all it has done for us, the fact of the matter is this: thanks to Iraq, thanks to rendition, thanks to the economic crisis, and thanks to a thousand promises un-kept, the Labour Party is a broken brand.  It’s like Toyota – they can make the best cars in the world over the next few years, but because of the problems of the last few months, nobody will really want to buy them. 

“I’ve met some of the people who have rightly complained about the abuse that they were subject to when young” said Gordon Brown early on in the debate, discussing the Pope’s imminent visit to the UK.  “It never leaves them, it’s something that is with them always and no matter what you can try to do to help, there is always this problem that they have to face up to every day that they were abused, cruelly abused, by people in whom they placed their faith and trust.”

As much as I hope it isn’t true, and as much as I wish for a Labour or Lib Dem victory in two weeks’ time, there was a part of me last night that thought Gordon Brown speaking of the cruel abuses suffered by people in whom they had placed their faith and trust was like a eulogy for his own party.

  

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After the Debate…

If ever David Cameron was exposed it was last night, and boy did he look worried under the bright lights and scrutiny of the first ever UK election debate between the three contending Prime Ministerial candidates.  The format was perfect for perforating through all the Conservative sound-bites and exposing the hollowness of their “Big Society” programme, and both Nick Clegg and Gordon Brown, in my opinion, demolished the Tory candidate at every turn.  If it isn’t clear to you now that the Conservative programme is nothing more than empty and unworkable promises, arbitrary and compassionless punishments and stale and outdated rhetoric masquerading as something new, then you can’t have been paying attention.  There is nothing new here in David Cameron’s Conservative Party that hasn’t been tried and discredited already in the 80s and 90s, and the entire 2010 Tory campaign just a shameless grab for power based on a manipulative and dishonest platform of old wine in new bottles.  That said, there were some very sage words from Tom Clark in The Guardian today: "Amid the renewed excitement about breaking the mould, progressives would do well to remember that they will pay a high price if they forget the psephology of their own seat. They are desperate to smash an electoral system that forces them to choose between their heart and their head. But they will not succeed if they forget to follow their head in the meantime."

Along with what seems to be the majority of the country right now, I left the big debate last night thinking how nice it would be if Nick Clegg and the Liberal Democrats could actually win the General Election in three weeks time, and as someone who has voted Lib Dem in every General Election since I was old enough to vote, I began to ponder the possibility of actually voting with my heart on May 6th here in Selly Oak instead of holding my nose and voting tactically for Labour.

“I agree with Nick” is clearly the “I Like Ike” of our generation (at least until some hideous BNP supporter co-opts the phrase for the wrong Nick and puts it on a racist tee-shirt), and it amazes me that by simply being given some air-time in which to lay out the policies already available in the Liberal Democrat manifesto, the British public are finally waking up to the realization that this election is a legitimate three-horse race.  The media last night were quick to say things like “in many ways the debate served to introduce Nick Clegg to the British people for the very first time” and the question I kept asking myself was: why?  Why had the media done such a bad job up until now in portraying a central political party in our supposedly democratic country as somehow being outside the scope of electability despite their rising poll numbers each and every year?  As recently as Monday, I watched Jeremy Paxman interviewing Clegg for the BBC, and he was basically ridiculing him for daring to believe he might actually become Prime Minister.  It was disgusting, and I’m glad that this watershed moment has seemingly sky-rocketed the Liberal Democrats into contention and made the derisive and mocking commentators out there finally listen up.

However, as much as I would love to vote Lib Dem on May 6th, the fact of the matter remains that, in my local constituency, historically the Liberal Democrats have never even come close to winning a seat here.  Indeed, whilst the leaflets and letters from Conservative, Nigel Dawkins are endless, and Labour’s Steve McCabe is sending out mail-outs and pressing the flesh all over town, our Lib Dem candidate has been highly conspicuous by his absence.

If I thought he had a hope in hell of winning here, I would vote for him, but right now it seems highly unlikely, no matter how well Nick Clegg did on TV last night, and this is an important point to remember for whatever constituency you may be voting in.

For a political party to win a General Election, they do not need to win every seat – they just have to win a majority of seats.  If you think your local Lib Dem candidate could actually win the seat in your area, then you should do everything you can to make that happen if that is the outcome you wish for.  But if you are living in a seat, like me, where a Lib Dem victory seems improbable, then there is absolutely no shame in voting Labour to keep the Tories out.  Indeed, by keeping the eye on the prize – if either Labour or Liberal Democrats get in, they have both promised massive electoral reform; if both get a lot of votes but there is no clear majority, it is highly likely they will work together to form a coalition government – you make sure you avoid the worst of all scenarios: another George Bush moment.

For those who don’t remember, America in the year 2000 wasn’t a particularly inspiring place.  Eight years of Bill Clinton hadn’t really given the country the massive social reform that had been hoped for on the left, and the Monica Lewinsky scandal had left a bad taste in everyone’s mouth.  Meanwhile, on the right, some clown named George W Bush was seeking to fill the shoes vacated by his daddy just eight years before.  Ralph Nader and the Green Party, therefore, thought it was high time to step in and try to force the issue of third party politics and offer the voting public a real alternative to political business as usual.

It was an admirable effort, and if I were registered to vote that year the chances are, I would have voted for them too.  The problem was though, that with an uninspiring Democratic Party to vote for, many of those who would have voted Democrat voted Green instead because they were so disillusioned with the party, whilst those who would have voted Republican continued to vote for George Bush.  What that meant in real terms was that the Greens still didn’t get enough votes for serious Presidential contention (because not enough new or swing voters signed up alongside the disillusioned Democrats), but as a result of the exodus towards the Greens, the Democrats lost a lot of their support.  We all know what happened next: the Supreme Court made George W Bush President, and one of the key reasons this travesty occurred was because the difference in votes between the Republicans and Democrats was so slim.

Now, this isn’t to blame Ralph Nader, as many have done, as some kind of “spoiler” in that election – if the Democrats had wanted their Green Party votes back they shouldn’t have sold their supporters down the river and conceded so much to the Republicans during the Clinton years (sound familiar?)  But it is a warning about voting with your heart instead of your head: if people like me on May 6th vote Liberal Democrat without being cognizant of the specific circumstances of the constituency in which they are voting, instead of shocking the world and getting the Lib Dem MP that they want, it is much more likely that they will split the Labour vote and return an unwanted Conservative to the seat.  And that would be a terrible thing in our first-past-the-post, majority-take-all, electoral system.

This needn’t be seen as cynicism, nor as the claim that a vote for the Liberal Democrats is a wasted vote.  It isn’t.  I expect a lot of people to vote Lib Dem on May 6th and in a perfect world, they would even win.  But it is an endorsement of voting smartly instead of stupidly.  I agree with Nick as much as the next guy…but I agree with Gordon a hell of a lot more than I agree with David Cameron, and if it comes to a choice of risking a Cameron victory by taking an unwise gamble on Clegg, I think it’s far safer to stick every time.

 

Technorati Tags: Politics,UK Politics,General Election 2010,General Election,Debate,Prime Ministers Debate,Nick Clegg,Liberal Democrats,Tactical Voting,Steve McCabe,Gordon Brown,David Cameron,I agree with Nick

Why I’d Rather Vote For A Mass-Murderer With An Ostensible Conscience, Than One Without…

This weekend a fantastic sequence of events occurred and, in their occurrence, I was reaffirmed in my self-hating decision to vote Labour in the General Election.

My decision to vote Labour in 2010, despite being disgusted by their nearly thirteen years of continuing the exact same foreign and economic policies as the Tories, and never before voting for them in my life (thus far it’s either been Lib Dem or Green all the way), is one I’ve discussed several times on this blog.  The basic motivation – to remind the long-term-memory-deficient – is to put up a strong front against the expected Conservative victory by voting tactically for their closest opposition because, though Labour are bad, the Tories are arguably worse, and I’d rather vote Labour and get Labour, the lesser of two evils, than vote with my heart and allow David Cameron to win by default.

Still, it makes me feel dirty to lend my support – if only strategically – to a party and government responsible for so much death and destruction during their time in power.  From Hawk Jets to Indonesia, to the ongoing horrors of Afghanistan and everything in between; from tuition fees and the private finance initiative to academies and the new deal; the Labour Party might well be the lesser of two evils in that, under an ostensibly left-wing government there are always superficial yet significant real-world improvements alongside the business-as-usual thrust of continuity capitalism, but don’t let that fool you into thinking that they’re not still an evil.  I do not support the Labour Party; I merely oppose the Conservatives. 

But when I read the paper on Saturday morning and re-lived Gordon Brown’s shameless and unapologetic defence of the Iraq war during the Chilcot Inquiry, there was a very real moment of despair.

I can’t vote for these blatant murderers, I thought.  I really can’t, in good conscience, place a cross in the box for a man who bankrolled the illegal and unjustified invasion of a sovereign nation and still cheerleads that decision today…

But then I read the story underneath the report on Chilcot.

The one about the Young Britons’ Foundation.

The Young Britons’ Foundation, according to the Guardian, are a right-wing group “whose leadership has described the NHS as ‘the biggest waste of money in the UK’, claimed global warming is ‘a scam’ and suggested that the waterboarding of prisoners can be justified.” They also have suggested that police should shoot down protesters. 

At least eleven prospective Conservative Party candidates running in the upcoming General Election have undergone training at the YBF, a group that it’s chief executive, Donal Blaney, calls a “Conservative madrasa”, designed to “radicalize” young Tories into extreme neo-conservativism, and at the recent annual YBF parliamentary rally at the House of Commons, shadow defence secretary, Liam Fox and Conservative Party chairman, Eric Pickles both spoke.  Former YBF speakers include David Cameron’s former chief of staff, Alex Deane, shadow education secretary, Michael Gove, shadow arts minister, Ed Vaizey, Andrew Rosindell, Conservative MP for Romford, and former Tory ministers, John Redwood and David Davis.  In other words, if you vote for the Tories this spring, then you will be getting graduates and supporters of this rather ugly neo-conservative boot camp, with close links to neo-con groups in the States, forming your next UK government.* 

That’s why I’ll be voting Labour – because as bad as Labour is, the Conservatives are still worse.  Gordon Brown might be a murderer, but at least he’s an accountable murderer. 

And just to punctuate the point that a right-leaning left-wing government is still better than a right-leaning right-wing government, lo and behold a leaflet for the BNP came through my door the very next day.

I’ve said this before, but I’ll say it again: the ideas expressed by racist and fascist groups like the BNP are so detestable that I always assume some level of sophistication in the way that they manipulate and recruit people to join them; so it always amazes me when I read some of their moronic campaign literature and realize that it is simply written by idiots, for idiots.

“Thousands of pensioners freeze to death every winter because Labour cares more about foreign aid than they do about our old folk.  The BNP would put British people first”

No.  Capitalism is what causes pensioners to freeze every winter, because utilities companies care more about profits than they do about human life.  The extortionate price of gas bills have nothing to do with foreign aid, and if you wanted to subsidize the elderly and give them free heat during the winter you could do that by taxing the rich, properly taxing businesses, decreasing the military budget, and a million other simple solutions that have nothing to do with decreasing the pitiful amount of money we give to countries like Haiti and Chile when they need help.  The real undertone here is clear: we hate giving foreigners money and think helping old people makes us sound caring.

“As a working family we know what it’s like to be taxed to death and what effect Labour’s mismanagement of the economy has had on our house price.  The BNP would ensure British jobs for British workers.”

Can you see the theme emerging?  Here it is even more blatant than in the last one, because giving British jobs to British workers really has nothing to do with the tax policy the BNP is ostensibly aggrieved about in the first passage of this promise.  A logically coherent second sentence would read something like: As a working family we know what it’s like to be taxed to death and what effect Labour’s mismanagement of the economy has had on our house price…therefore we promise a progressive new scheme of taxation whereby working people won’t be taxed so much and rich individuals and corporations will be taxed much more.  Even a traditionally racist BNP approach of …therefore we will increase the taxes paid by foreigners living in the UK by 2000% and lower the taxes for “indigenous whites” because we hate foreign people and have no meaningful sense of history or mathematics would have made more sense than what was actually written.  But the BNP weren’t looking for “sense” here, or coherency; they were just looking for invoking that now-familiar racist undertone: the needlessly proffered fear of “British” jobs being lost out to “foreigners”, and an even more insidious allusion to house prices falling – a common refrain for racists who believe their neighbourhoods to be “overrun” with ethnic minorities.

Speaking of which…

“The government prioritises immigrants when it comes to housing.  The BNP will house British families first – it’s only fair.”

Actually, it’s not “only fair” to house British families first over immigrants who may need the housing more desperately – it is prejudiced and discriminatory.  And as the leaflet provides no real information or statistics to prove that the claim the government prioritises “immigrants” over “British” families is true, then we have no real reason to believe that it is.  Also, it should be noted that for the government to have anything to do with an “immigrant” in an official capacity, then it must be presumed that the immigrant in question is a legal immigrant, working within the system and not outside of it, in which case, technically, they are now a British family too, and any housing they are given is therefore going to a British family.  The BNP do not really mean “immigrant” here though – they mean: people of colours other than white. 

“The NHS is in decline and many of our friends find it hard to get operations – yet we’ve fought for this country and paid in all our lives.  The BNP is the only party that listens.”

Considering that the NHS is mentioned by every political party during election time, the BNP are demonstrably not the only party that listens.  They are, however, the only party who randomly invoke the idea that “we’ve fought for this country” in the middle of an argument about underfunding of the NHS.  Because that is the cause of the NHS’s “decline”: underfunding.  A solution, and easy way of improving the service provided by the NHS (which, despite all its faults, is still a million times better than any private alternative) is – and now you might spot my recurring theme – more taxes on big businesses and the rich, and a change of priorities in the budget so that more is spent on healthcare and education, and less is spent on defence and corporate welfare.  The money is there if only it was spent correctly.  Parties like the BNP (and the Conservatives) are only too happy to harp on about the cost of benefit cheats on taxpayers, but when you consider that, in 2009, individual benefit fraud cost UK taxpayers just £900 million, whilst corporate tax evasion, tax avoidance, and tax “efficencies” cost us £18.5 billion each year, it is clear to say that the real criminals are getting away with defrauding our system, including the NHS, year after year after year.

The BNP’s statement about the NHS, however, is not a meaningful policy statement regarding our health services.  Nor is it intended to be.  Again, the undertone is clear: they do not point to the causes of NHS “decline” or offer any solutions.  They simply say: “we’ve fought for this country and paid in all our lives”, which is, again, code for the idea that those who haven’t fought for this country and those who haven’t paid in all their lives – read: bloody immigrants! – are somehow coming over here and taking away our emergency services, so now grandma can’t have her knee operation.  The ignorance is astounding, and it only gets worse:

“We have children and we want them to be brought up in a Christian country and taught about our religion, culture and traditions in school.  The BNP opposes the Islamification of Britain”

Well, firstly, let me just say that I went to a state school in the UK where the Christian religion, culture and traditions were first and foremost on the agenda (“Nothing without God” was our school’s motto).  We also learnt about other religions and cultures in RE lessons, but the primary spiritual concern was Christianity and the Christian faith.  Despite the school’s best efforts at indoctrination though, I came out the other end an atheist.  The reason being: we are a free society and not a fascist state, and despite all the best propaganda in the world, we are still free to choose what we believe.

This is the reason why the UK today is a very different place culturally, ethnically and spiritually than it was, say, fifty years ago.  Not because bloody immigrants have come over here and corrupted our children with their crazy foreign gods and cultures…but because, as life has gone on, society has evolved.  We’ve learnt more about other cultures, religions and traditions, we’ve re-assessed our own, we’ve integrated the bits that we liked and we’ve ejected the pieces that we didn’t.  We are in a constant conversation with each other and that conversation has allowed new ideas to flourish, old ideas to adapt and grow stronger, and a diversity of equally valid lifestyles, beliefs and value systems to blossom and evolve alongside each other for the common good. 

The fact is, the BNP may want their children to be brought up in a Christian country, but in 2010 the UK is simply not a Christian country.  And this is a good thing.  Christians can still be Christians here, but now also Hindus can be Hindus, Sikhs can be Sikhs, Jews can be Jews, Buddhists can be Buddhists, Atheists can be Atheists, and, yes, Muslims can be Muslim.  The existence and acceptance of other religions within our society has not diminished the Christian church at all, but it has freed up the spiritual life of British individuals and shown them a variety of different options of belief.

The biggest threat to the Christian church today is not Islam; indeed the same thing which threatens Christianity is equally a threat to Islam, and is taking believers away from the Qur’an as much as it is from the Bible: it is atheism.  It is the fact that we, as a culture, are slowly moving forward, out of the intellectual dark ages, and as people like myself grow up and re-think the superstitions of our elders, we begin to grow out of these silly and outdated religions and seek a non-religious spiritual and ethical alternative for ourselves.  Sadly for the BNP, this exodus away from religion and into the realm of the humanist and the rational is nothing to do with immigrants, Muslims, or any of the other usual scapegoats of the far-right, it is simply the result of free-thought and free-will: two innate human capacities fascist groups like the BNP seek to wipe out.

“We opposed the war in Iraq and now in Afghanistan.  British troops are losing their lives for a war which only serves out-of-touch politicians.  The BNP would bring our boys home NOW!” 

This final statement is seemingly meant to be the BNP’s big selling point in 2010.  Indeed, the cover of the leaflet says in big, bold writing: “PUTTING BRITISH PEOPLE FIRST! NO to Crime.  NO to Immigration.  NO to EU Rule.  NO to High Taxes.  YES to Bringing Our Troops Home!” all written over a patriotic backdrop of soldiers in the desert sands.  The back of the leaflet says: “BNP: THE ONLY PARTY COMMITTED TO BRINGING OUR TROOPS HOME…Our troops are being sent to their deaths in the Middle East for a political crusade which serves no British interest.”

Now, ignoring for a moment the historical ignorance here which shows the BNP clearly have no real idea why these wars are being fought (the “British interest” at stake here is what it always is in unnecessary foreign invasions: political power and economic gain.  It is not a war which “only serves out-of-touch politicians” – it is a massive albatross around most politicians’ necks and will probably cost Labour the election.  It is a war which, like all wars, serves their capitalist masters and the geo-political dominance of elites, and which we need a massive overhaul of the political and economic system to change); the first question one has to ask here is why exactly the BNP wants to bring our troops home?  One dreads to think what uses Nick Griffin would put our armed forces to at home if he were in power, nor should one be surprised that a fascist party wants to make sure a well-armed military is at their domestic disposal and not stranded overseas where they can’t be easily deployed.

Although the anti-war message is populist at the moment, the philosophy behind it from the BNP is severely hollow.  They are not opposed to the war because it was wrong, unjust, illegal, or immoral.  They are not opposed to it because we have destroyed Iraq and Afghanistan and murdered countless numbers of Iraqi and Afghan civilians.  They are not even opposed to it because they disagree with invading foreign countries so long as it is in the “British interest”.  No.  They are only opposed to it because “our boys” are being killed over there for what seems on the surface – if, like the BNP clearly do, you believe the propagandist lies of our government – a war to help out undeserving nations in the Middle East.  In other words, it’s the same old racist undertone that we found in all the other promises: why should we help those brown-skinned people over there?  Why should our troops be dying just to save a bunch of Arabs from themselves?

The BNP leaflet exposes the emptiness and the prejudice of their policies, all wrapped up in a Union Jack and garnished with creepy master-race-style pictures of smiling all-white families.  That people might actually read it, and choose to vote for these racist thugs on the basis of the ill-thought-out drivel inside, speaks more to the stupidity of our nation than it does to the skillful manipulation of the British National Party. 

Still though, again, it was a gentle reminder of why I must vote for the warmonger Brown on election day, despite opposing so much of what he stands for.

Though Labour might be despicable, they at least operate on a level where you can have a serious conversations about their actions, and they have a political base they must appease with social programmes, welfare, diplomacy, and all the other expectations of the left, even if it goes against their elite power-interests.  When you get Labour, you get disappointment, but at least you have a basic framework of shared social understanding – rights, duties, responsibilities, ethics – if only on the surface, by which you are to judge them. 

With these hooligans on the far-right, however, and their more respectable brethren in the official opposition, it is like undoing decades of social progress and starting again from square one.  It is championing ignorance, greed, selfishness, meanness, cruelty and stupidity.  It is voting for racists.  It is voting for homophobes.  It is voting for delusion and pig-headedness.  It is voting for oppression, intolerance, violence and brutality.

The Labour Party might well be a shell of their former selves, and they might even betray everything that they once stood for – but at least there is a shell and a sense of betrayal – with the Conservative Party, and especially with the BNP, you are simply getting exactly what you voted for. 

Voting for Labour might make us feel temporarily dirty, but a Conservative victory will never wash off.

*As I wrote this blog, Conservative Chairman, Eric Pickles, denounced the YBF and tried to sever Tory links with the group following the report in Saturday’s Guardian.  Though the move may be politically expedient now that the YBF have come under fire, it does not really explain why the Conservative politicians listed were happy talking and training with the YBF until it became politically damaging to do so.  I suspect here not a change in belief and policy, but a change in public perception that has necessitated a public distancing from the controversial organization, but not from the ideas which first brought these two groups together.

Technorati Tags: Politics,UK Politics,General Election,Labour Party,BNP,Conservative Party,Gordon Brown,David Cameron,Nick Griffin,War on Terror,YBF,Young Britons' Foundation,Democracy

Throwin’ Out The Trash #1

Late Friday afternoons are traditionally the time that politicians, businesses, celebrities, etc, release bad news to the public in the hope that they won’t see it.  Season 1, episode 13, of The West Wing calls this “Take Out The Trash Day”, and with that in mind I give you the first instalment of a new semi-regular feature on the Blog: Throwin’ Out The Trash.

Each week, there are so many fucked up stories and newsy bits and pieces that cross my path in this 24/7 media blitzkrieg that we’re living in, and I simply do not have the time or inclination to write a full-on commentary piece about all of them.  Throwin’ Out The Trash is my chance each week to clear the decks of all these niggling odds and sods without ignoring them completely…

*

So, multi-millionaire pop mogul, Simon Cowell, has decided to release a charity pop single of REM's classic song, "Everybody Hurts", in order to raise some much needed funds to help the devastated victims of the January 12th Haitian earthquake.  A nice idea, and a lot of people are out there doing what they can to raise money to help with this terrible tragedy.  But when the guy proposing the charity single has a personal fortune of £120m – and just signed a brand new £100m deal to bring his television show, X-Factor, to the United States on the very day that Haiti suffered the earthquake – you have to wonder why he isn’t just putting a hand into his own pocket to help out the aid effort instead of making us, the not-so-wealthy British public, do it for him?

To put this into perspective, whilst Cowell could personally afford to give several million pounds to the Haitian aid effort if he wanted to without the British public spending a single penny, Peter Kay’s 2009 charity single for Children in Need, released last November, raised only £170,000.  Cowell’s own recent charity efforts have done a little better, with last year’s X-Factor single for Great Ormond Street raising at least £200,000 in its first week, and the 2008 single raising over £1m for Help for Heroes and the Royal British Legion.  But the fact remains that Cowell himself could personally contribute the amount of money earned by all three of those charity singles to Haiti combined, plus an extra million, and still have a very comfortable £117m to live off without the generous British public having to give a thing. 

 

*

If anyone out there reading this still thinks that free-market capitalism is a great idea, maybe they can explain to me why I should support an economic mentality that sees stock-prices drop and Wall Street panic when the President finally says that he’s going to do something about the dangerous financial de-regulation that so recently brought the world economy to its knees?

For the majority of Americans, and people all around the world, the last year and a bit has been a hellacious time of recession and unemployment.  Life has become a struggle, work has become scarce, homes have been taken away and dreams have been shattered.  All of this misery and turmoil – every single bit of it – was down to the rapacious greed of an unregulated financial industry who sucked the economy dry and then had the temerity to ask us to bail them out or die. 

This wealthy minority of money-obsessed gamblers and con-men (or “motherfuckers”, if you want the correct term) essentially gang-raped the world’s economy for their own material gain and sent the globe into a depression-risking downspin and yet, yesterday, when the President finally announced his plans – at long last; a dollar short and a year too late – to place some much needed restrictions on the out of control banking industry, they responded by sending a petulant and unrepentant message to the Whitehouse that, if he dare tell them to curb and regulate their greed, there would once again be hell to pay.

The worse thing is, the media actually reported this bullshit tantrum as news.  A bunch of out of control wealth-addicts get told they’re going to have some restrictions placed over their previously unfettered playground of destruction and they throw their toys out of the pram in protest?  Good.  It’s time these fat-cat motherfuckers felt some of the same ramifications from what they’ve done as the rest of us, instead of thinking that cutting their bonuses down to a measly $498,000 per person counts as suffering!

*

David Cameron today cynically used the recent case of two school-aged brothers from Edlington violently torturing a nine year old and eleven year old boy as proof that Britain under Labour has fallen into “social recession”.  The case was horrific – the work of two very disturbed young sadists who left their victims for dead after 90 minutes of reprehensible cruelty – but the argument that this anomalous case of horror is a sign of the times under Labour must be dismissed as spurious when we remember that the equally horrific Jamie Bulger case (in which a much younger boy – a two year old – was actually murdered by his equally sadistic young attackers) happened in 1993, under a Tory government in its fourteenth year of power.

If anything, under Labour, society has gotten better by Cameron’s preposterous argument, because the Edlington victims survived whereas Jamie Bulger did not. 

The use of this meaningless and emotively charged example is hollow opportunism at its most base and ridiculous, and it is a travesty of the highest proportions that the ghastly ordeal of two unfortunate children is being exploited like this by a man who thinks himself suitable to be our next leader. 

 

*

Finally, if you didn’t think that corporations ruled the world already, well…they will do pretty soon.  The US Supreme Court, this week, made a landmark ruling to remove the limits corporations previously faced on how much they could spend to elect and defeat candidates running in US elections.  That’s right – multi-billion dollar corporations can now pay whatever they want to the campaigns of the candidate of their choice to ensure that the “right” guy gets into office.

Oh functioning democracy – we hardly knew ye…

 

Technorati Tags: Throwin' Out The Trash,Simon Cowell,Haiti,Obama,Banks,Edlington,Supreme Court,Capitalism,David Cameron,Links,UK Politics,US Politics

Cold-Snap Election

During the recent snowmageddon that hit the UK a few weeks ago, I wrote this sketch as a submission for last week’s episode of Newsjack on BBC Radio 7.  It didn’t get on the air, but I still think it’s funny.  So here, for your edification and entertainment is a random political comedy sketch about the snow…

Cold-Snap Election

By Daniel McKee

JUPP: The most shocking news of the last week came from Westminster, when it transpired that, in a bold political move, Prime Minister Gordon Brown called for a January 6^th snap election, and nobody heard him.

The news, given at an ill-attended Cabinet meeting on the evening of January 5^th, was missed by most major broadcasters, newspapers and websites, due to the much higher priority given to stories about snow. Even the Conservative Party and Liberal Democrats were unaware that an election was going on.

BROWN: I think that settles the argument

JUPP: Said a victorious Brown from the doorstep of Number 10 the following morning. Though, at the time, nobody really knew what particular argument he was talking about, and so quickly went back to looking at pictures of snowmen and sledding taken on mobile phones.

Whilst some critics are calling the move “cynical”, others are praising the strategy.

ADVISOR: What Brown did was a stroke of genius!

JUPP: Said one senior advisor.

ADVISOR: He heard about the weather during a privileged MET Office briefing and went straight on the offensive. Even if voters had known it was Election Day they wouldn’t have been able to get out and vote: if they weren’t already snowed in, the majority of the schools we traditionally use as polling stations were closed. It was brilliant!”

JUPP: In total there were only thirty-six votes cast on Election Day, all in favour of Mr. Brown’s party, and all sent in by text message from Whitehall.

MANDELSON: It’s a referendum by the British people!

JUPP: Said Peter Mandelson.

ACADEMIC: It’s not even legal.

JUPP: Said one leading academic.

When the news finally came through that he had lost a General Election he hadn’t even known was taking place, a red-faced David Cameron was left almost speechless:

CAMERON: Inquiries shall have to be made.

JUPP: But there are already rumblings within the party about a new leadership race now that the Tory’s latest hopeful delivered the Conservatives their third consecutive electoral defeat since 1997.

SOURCE: It’s done him a lot of damage.

JUPP: Admitted one source close to the Cameron camp.

SOURCE: You can get away with a lot of things as a politician these days – mistresses, duck ponds, illegal and unjustified wars – but being less interesting than snow to the majority of the population? I don’t think he’ll come back from that.

 

Technorati Tags: UK Politics,General Election,Gordon Brown,David Cameron,Snow,Comedy,Newsjack,BBC

David Cameron’s (Empty) Pledges

So I received a hilarious (and glossy) newsletter the other day from my local Conservative councillors here in Birmingham, and on the back of this dull piece of dross about 20mph zones and anti-social behaviour orders was the most hilarious political “filler” I have ever seen.

Entitled “David Cameron’s Pledges”, this third of a page is, I assume, meant to be the early yawning-signs of an ambitious party coming to life before a general election, but all it really is, once they are actually thought about, is a collection of empty platitudes that are as hollow as they are meaningless.

“If you save money your whole life, …you will be rewarded” goes the first one.  Well, great.  But that’s not really David Cameron’s pledge is it?  That’s the pledge of basic economics.  If you save money your whole life, the reward is all that money you saved.  End of story.

“If you are frightened, …we will protect you”

Well…I hope so.  That’s kind of the government’s job.  The State provides police, armies, social services…you know, all the things that we use to protect ourselves against the things that we fear, and these same protective social institutions have existed under twelve years of a Labour government too.  Last I heard, I don’t recall Gordon Brown saying that a re-elected Labour government were not going to protect us in the future?  Do you?

“If you want to raise a family, …we will support you.”

Yeah, because for twelve years the Labour Party have been doing their level best to dissuade us from raising our families.  Since 1997, prospective mothers and fathers have become social pariahs all across the country, spat at for wanting children, reviled for keeping a pet…  And all those various tax credits and benefits that Labour have implemented for working families (and that the Tories want to take away come 2010), they have been designed specifically not to support families under a Labour government. 

Meanwhile, let us not forget, it was eighteen years of a neo-liberal Conservative government between 1979 and 1997 that brought us to our current situation, where it now requires two wages per family to bring home the same amount of real-term money that just one wage would have brought in during the 1970s.  Ah progress, don’t it taste sour? 

“If you risk your safety to stop a crime, …we will stand by you.”

Because the running theme of the past twelve years has been the Labour government jailing and condemning those who risk safety to stop a crime?  Under David Cameron’s new government, I can only assume that this means he is condoning carte blanche for Watchmen-style vigilantism. 

“I injured my arm hitting a cricket bat into the hoodie’s skull after he terrified our neighbourhood by…gasp…riding his bike!”

“We will stand by you!  No jail!  More cricket bats!”

“If you start your own business, …we will be right behind you.”

Ignoring how sinister that sounds (right behind you…lurking; right behind you…ready to skim off our 10%), again, we have the false impression that somehow the Labour government are not right behind small businesses.

Every government in living memory has paid lip service to the idea of being “behind” small businesses whilst, in reality, helping to finance the mega-corporations that crush them.  The Tories did just this from ‘79 to ‘97, and Labour have continued from ‘97 to the present. 

The stuff about high taxation, etc is all a misleading red herring – the real reason small businesses often fail is not because of the overheads they couldn’t afford, but because of the monolithic competition they have no feasible means to defeat!

“If you risk your life to fight for your country, …we will honour you.”

Great.  Because Labour have spent the eight years of the war on terror publically spitting on soldier’s graves, haven’t they?

Any idiot can honour the dead (Gordon Brown, Tony Blair, and John Major all did it last week – callously placing poppies in “honour” of the innocent people they knowingly sent off to die in unnecessary wars to protect the economic interests of a small minority of powerful elites); the trick is keeping these people alive, not unnecessarily sending them into harm’s way.    

Yes – the war on terror transpired under Labour’s watch.  But let’s not forget, it was with the full, unwavering support of the Tories.  And as for Iraq – we would not have been there in the first place had it not been for the Tories’ original invasion back in ‘91.  A war which, technically, never ended until the 2003 invasion.

A lot of dead soldiers have been “honoured” by Conservative and Labour governments alike over the years…few have been spared their unnecessary sacrifice in the first place, and that’s the real missing pledge.

“We will reward those who take responsibility, …and care for those who can’t.”

If you’re interested in how this pledge pans out, see UK History, circa 1979 – 1997.  At its heart, the guiding Conservative philosophy is simply incapable of achieving this goal.  A more likely scenario, therefore, is: “we will reward those who take responsibility, …and demonize those who can’t.”

Remember kids: those who don’t remember their past are condemned to repeat it.  And those who are taken in by David Cameron and his empty, meaningless pledges, will be condemned to experience a brand new, 21st Century version, of one of the 20th Century’s last great living hells.

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