Polly Toynbee and David Walker of the Guardian have written a complete e book to argue (a) that issues didn’t get higher quickly sufficient underneath New Labour, but (b) that another Labour government with a fresh mandate would certainly rediscover its radical heritage and enhance on every policy entrance to the satisfaction of the vast majority of its supporters. Heritage of battle. By Vernon H. Jensen. On employment regulation, two out of 4 insurance policies converge, one (access to tribunals for unfair dismissal) is subject to certified convergence, and just one (the pledge to signal the Maastricht treaty on employment) might be stated to differ from that of the Tories. Planning of land use, highway and rail transport, industrial location, and the steadiness of urban and rural activities can be subject to probably the most open examination and dialogue. The Toynbee-Walker thesis, that a brand new New Labour government would put the errors, omissions and errors of the final one behind it and interact on a new street to reform, is to ignore completely the triumphalism of Labour ministers and their single minded devotion to office whatever the worth that must be paid by the people who vote for them. Everything Blair says about the long run points in exactly the other direction, towards more privatisation, more inequality, more chaos on road and rail, much less planning, much less intervention, and a fiercer assault on what his press officer calls bog-commonplace comprehensives, bog-normal council housing, bog-standard anything which derives from the traditional cooperation and solidarity of working class folks.
If there isn’t a Socialist Alliance or SSP candidate in your area, you may want to vote for a Labour candidate because she or he is a socialist, and even simply to keep the Tories out, or you might wish to vote for an unbiased candidate who represents working class resistance – resembling Arthur Scargill in Hartlepool or Health Concern in Wyre Forest. Hay concludes, ‘Labour now accepts that there is solely no alternative to neo-liberalism in an period of heightened capital mobility and financial mobilisation’, and that ‘social democratic events reminiscent of Labour must successfully abandon their social democratic credentials’. That is Colin Hay’s assertion that there’s ‘no alternative to neo-liberalism and globalisation’. There isn’t any democratic various to Tory policies, argue the new Pessimists, so we had better settle for them even when they are carried out by ministers calling themselves Labour. On commerce union reform, 5 out of six insurance policies converge (with the other virtually fully converged). All such socialists, commerce unionists, civil libertarians, environmentalists, National Health Service campaigners, are successfully disfranchised. Tony Blair’s speeches about his subsequent time period of office carry not a whisper of commerce union reform, or of a new era of public ownership and democratic duty, or of a widening of the complete element in faculties, or of a new assault on the grotesque bonanzas of the rich.
With Labour’s link to the unions so weak and its dedication to public ownership and civil liberties reduced to the Private Finance Initiative and vouchers for asylum seekers, the selection before the voters is increasingly similar to the choice within the United States of America between the Republican Party (conservative) and the Democratic Party (conservative). No sane individual wants a return to Conservative government, led by Hague and Widdecombe, however more and more voters realise that Hague and Widdecombe have been pushed rightwards by a Labour government way more right wing than any of its predecessors – and they don’t want to vote Labour once more. Labour and Tory pension policy is exactly the same. In six main areas of schooling coverage, just one coverage (the assisted locations scheme) shouldn’t be shared by the Tories. So they are in all seven main areas of economic coverage, and in three out of four areas of industrial coverage (the fourth is the dedication to regional growth businesses which are very similar to the wholly undemocratic Tory improvement corporations). If there is no such thing as a such candidate in your constituency, find out the place there is one in your city or metropolis or county, and go to work on his or her behalf.
Apr 19, 2022: Yesterday I helped my dad and mom type out the logistics of making the home extra accessible for my mother when she’s using mobility aids. Maybe I’d, sometime, however you’ll pardon my cynicism if I harbored the suspicion my parents weren’t untouched innocents after they met. Ideas and the votes they represent can’t be isolated from the actual battles in society. Our votes are vital in proportion to their links to the true powers at our disposal. It will possibly and have to be resisted with all the power at our disposal. There may be nothing mystical or superhuman about capitalist power. But there isn’t a purpose why any of the rest of us ought to bow earlier than them. There may be loads of proof prior to now and even now that these policies can be resisted and reversed. Previously the SNP was not averse to mouthing socialist insurance policies, however instead of growing and increasing such insurance policies, the SNP has backed away from them. On the eve of a basic election, the abject efficiency of recent Labour in office has a grim implication for all these who’ve believed previously that their future depends at least to some extent on voting and sustaining a Labour government, however now now not suppose the same.