Circling the Plughole...

Is what I feel Britain is doing at the moment.

The election of Jeremy Corbyn to Labour leader casts me back to the time when Labour were idealistic but had policies as mad as a box of frogs.

My real concern is that after decades of plastic politicians, people may actually vote Labour into power.

Ideologues are the very worst of people. Margaret Thatcher was one, so was Tony Blair. They were so fanatic in their self-belief  that no-one could convince them their path was wrong. They would quite happily ruin a whole country, make millions unemployed or got to war and kill hundreds of thousands of people just to prove an ideological point.

They are very dangerous.

Not matter how chummy, or down to earth they appear, they are dangerous. They have no consideration for the results of their actions, the path, the idea, the dogma is all and MUST be followed. Slavishly. There is no compromise.

The same goes now for Jeremy Corbyn. He has lead a life without compromise, on the back benches he has been able to get away with extremist and dangerous views and connections without scrutiny. I just wonder whether now he's on the top table will he be be a politician and ditch his dodgy historical connections, or will he be the true ideologue and hang onto them regardless.

My money is on him sticking with it and the Labour PR team labeling his fanaticism as principles.

The thing is, there isn't much to look forward to. Our economy is flatlining as North Sea Oil reserves start to decline, we have no industry to grow us out of the slump, and the financial sector still has more than a decade left of toxicity in any debts it holds on to.

After decades squandering the booty from the North Sea, using it to prop up a crippled economy and paying unsustainable amounts of people unaffordable sums to not work, making new entrants to the job market and new migrants to stay and work on minimum wages that don't raise enough tax revenue to cover the cost of increased demands on infrastructure.

We will head back to the Seventies, when we couldn't afford to keep the lights on, we were crippled by Socialist dogma and no-one had a viable plan.

The ideas were bankrupt back then and they are just as bankrupt today. The chancellors of the early Seventies spent most of their time printing more money than the country could back up just to keep things going.

These days quantative easing has pumped the same pressure into the economic system, inflating the value of everything but most substantially house prices. With the debt time-bombs of equity-only mortgages about to
go off over the next 5 or so years, I see no end to the misery.

In dire times like we'll have over the next decade, voters do strange things. Dangerous things.

Labour About to Cast themselves Back to the Eighties.

I admire the Labour party: When they fuck up, they don't mess about. The past few weeks have been spectacular.

So the parliamentary group stuck Jeremy Corbyn on the leadership list mainly to placate the lefties in the party and look what's happened: he's winning in the polls.

I'm pretty sure alarm bells and cries of "Oh Fuck!" are resounding round the labour MPs at the moment as they face casting themselves into the wilderness for several years.

The problem is Labour and its supporters currently have a split personality that no-one in the PLP can resolve. There are areas of policy where their supporters are more to the right than Labour are at the moment and they need to readjust rather than crash further to the left.

Labour need to resolve these key issues:

Immigration. Lots of low-paid and young people are seeing huge numbers of immigrants coming in from Eastern Europe taking their jobs. Immigrants will come in and sleep 20-30 to a house (usually illegally) to share the rent so their overheads are low compared to a single British guy trying to keep a flat on minimum wage. British kids are being failed by an education system that is more concerned with box ticking than actual education which opens the door for better educated immigrants to take those precious jobs.

There's also the "dark" economy where criminal activity is also being overtaken by foreign gangs coming in from the East. Imagine how depressed the local skally is if he can't make an honest or even a dishonest living.

Of course Labour are in favour of the EU and the open door policy. The problem is it doesn't benefit their core supporters, it benefits big business who get cheap(er) labour.

The Labour party HAS to change it's stance on this. They have to disassociate immigration from racism, a meme they've been throwing at the Tories and UKIP and which is now backfiring on them.

They have to understand that the open door policy is against the workers and for big business, but at the same time promote the fact that Britain should be accomodating to those that bring skills and jobs and integrate into society..
It's not quite as far to the left as their current policy but it needs to reflect the nature of their supporters.

Benefits. This is another area of disassociation between Labour and it's supporters. Are they really saying that there should be no cap on benefits? Are Labour saying to people on the minimum wage that it's fine for people on benefits to have an unlimited salary? What do they think someone on a £15,000 salary will think about someone getting the equivalent of a £50,000 salary for doing nothing? They will rightly cast the party promoting that view into the wilderness.

Also, how is someone on the equivalent of £20,000+ supposed to cope on £15,000 when they get into work? The fact is once they are getting 20 grand for doing nothing they won't want to take a pay cut.

That's the problem Labour have to get round with regard to benefits.

Public Services. A great deal of wailing comes from Labour about cuts to public services. The Tory's 1% pay rise for public service workers has come in for a lot of criticism from the left. Well get real guys, I've just had a 2% pay rise, the first in 3 years so you're doing a damn sight better than me.

Labour need to get real when it comes to public service. There are plenty of their supporters in the private sector in a worse position.

Also when it comes to cuts in front line services, there needs to be a focus on what is being cut and what's being kept. For instance its quite common when the Tories are in power and reducing payments to local councils for Labour controlled councils to cut front line services first before non-essential services in order to prove a political point. That has to stop, especially when those at the top of the council are collecting six figure salaries. Labour councils should be leading from the front when it comes to fat-cat salaries for those at the top. The normal response is they need to recruit the best and compete with the private sector. NO THEY DON'T! They need to employ people with a public service ethos, not someone who's out for as much as they can get.

In conclusion there are a load of things that Labour will only make worse with a lurch to the left. But hey, it'll make for great commentary for political bloggers for the next 5-10 years...

I just wish the Labour party could see sense and not swerve from left to right all the time. Just some MODERATE adjustment is all that is required to bring them into synch with the majority of the population and make them electable again.

Like Lazarus, I have Risen...

Well, that was interesting... The election, that is. And I just have to comment on it.

The Conservatives are handed a majority and are now able to run amok with whatever plans they have for reducing government spending. Brilliant. I may just have to resurrect this blog for good to comment on what a shit option that is.

The real story is that voters are wary of a coalition they can't control. If there was an option on the ballot paper that stated "more of the same please" then you would have probably got that ticked more than any.

But the thing is, with the current system you can't guarantee the numbers will work out so that the Conservatives don't quite get enough to make a majority and the Liberals get enough to hold them to ransom.

Instead people voted for "Not Labour" in as manifestly emphatic and desperate way they could. Liberals switched to Conservative in huge numbers, simultaneously locking out Labour and chastising their own for not going far enough while in coalition.

Up in Scotland the "Not Labour" vote was big enough to create a one-party state. It will be interesting if the "Not Labour" vote continues when it comes round to voting for MSPs. Only the diversity of Holyrood will save Scotland from disaster. If it goes the way of the general election and does create a one-party state then the Scots will only have themselves to blame for what happens afterwards. Never put your eggs in one basket and always keep your options open is something that should be taken up North of the border, but unfortunately the passionate Scots never do things in moderation.

Before I talk about Labour's performance, let's dwell on what should happen to the Liberals now. First the bad news: they don't have enough MPs from which to chose a viable leader. I see no-one in the group of elected MPs that anyone would vote for in significant numbers. They have all been pretty faceless and uninspiring. Only politicos in the bubble would put forward any of them as a potential leader. Sorry Liberals, you are going to have to bite the bullet and maybe elect a non-MP leader in order to make up ground in future. You know, someone with charisma and that has lead a life.

Now Labour. What a sorry mess that party is at the moment. The only constituencies that voted Labour are the ones where you could stick a Labour rosette on a pig and they'd still vote for it. No thought, no intelligence, just mark the Labour box on the form "Because that's what we do round here, stick up for't working man".

Except Labour hasn't been sticking up for the working man for at least two decades as far as I can recall. Not since the times of John Smith have Labour really, truly followed that path. Instead they work for the corporations just like the Conservatives do, providing pigs in rosettes for Labour voters to crayon their cross by.

I mean, look at the options people are really putting forward as replacements for dead Ed. All of them professional politicos. I doubt any one of them has toiled 12 hours a day wiping bums and drool off the sick and old for minimum wage, none of them have cleaned public toilets in order to make a living like I have in the past. I really doubt one of them has brought up a disabled child, seen how shit the benefits system really is and how discouraging high tax rates are for those that want to get on. I have. I've been at the bottom and I've been at the top and the faces of the people put forward as potential Labour leader show they have lead a lifeless life. They are ideologues with no clue about what their party should stand for. Okay, maybe they know what it should stand for but are unable to enact it. Who knows. All I know is that the Labour line that they stand up for the working man is a croc of shit. These days they are more likely to stand up for the non-working man (or woman), the immigrants and the big corporations. i.e. anyone but the working man (or woman).

Instead they quote party history like the good little test tube MPs. Not one of them quotes from actual experience. They spout dogma to convince the faithful but their actions betray what they are actually about.

And that my friends is why dead Ed failed and why the next rosetted pig they put in place will also fail. Only some places will vote for that pig wearing the rosette, the others have a brain and still retain the ability to analyse and choose. Maybe not wisely, but between the lesser of two evils.

Oh, and the Ed Balls moment.... how sweeet was that? It's pity the one eyed buffoon decided to retire or we could have seen the same happen to him.