Labouring Under An Illusion:

With just over 15 months to go until the next General Election and four months until the Euro Elections, no doubt millions of potential voters are anxiously awaiting the opportunity to cast their vote, as a means of ridding the country of the ghastly Conservative & Liberal Democrat Coalition, which they believe has caused so much devastation to our country since they were first elected in May 2010.

 

Many of these same voters will have been persuaded to consider voting for the Labour Party once again, forgiving-and-forgetting the party's previous 13 year term of office under the leadership's of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, but choosing to believe perhaps that the new Labour leader, Ed Miliband; and his team of Shadow Ministers, are somehow different to all those who have been and gone before.

 

In reality of course, they are nothing of the sort. The message may have changed, the various departmental spokesmen and women might be different, the emphasis on policy might have been altered, but fundamentally the party remains what it was under both Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, a free market enterprise party, much the same as its rival, the modern day Conservative Party.

 

Most recent opinion polls undertaken by various agencies in the UK would appear to suggest that come May 2014 (European Elections) and May 2015 (General Election), Ed Miliband's party will emerge as the largest single political force in the country, which begs the rather obvious question. Why?

 

Why would a majority of the British public choose to vote for a largely unreformed Labour Party? The same Labour Party that sold off the nation's gold reserves at a bargain price, the same Labour Party that wilfully set out to create a brand new "knowledge" economy without having any real concept of how it would adversely affect millions of people's lives? The same Labour Party that continued apace with the NHS's "internal" marketplace, putting vital healthcare services into the private "for profit" arena, the same Labour Party that continued to pursue the previous administration's costly Private Finance Initiatives, which has led to hugely expensive schools and hospitals draining the spending budgets of local authorities throughout the country.

 

Why would a majority of the British public choose to vote for a Labour Party that introduced the bulk of our country's green energy levies, the same ones that have caused everyone's household bills to become so horribly expensive over the past few years. The same Labour Party that promises to build 200,000 new homes every year for a five year period, but forgets to mention that under their own Pathfinder Housing Regeneration Scheme, they demolished 10,000 homes and replaced them with only 1,000, leaving a shortfall of 9,000 homes, so destroying homes, rather than creating them.

 

Why exactly would a majority of the British public choose to vote for a Labour Party that got our Armed Forces involved in at least two bloody military conflicts in faraway lands, on the pretext of fighting and defeating foreign enemies that posed no real threat to our nation? Would this be the same Labour Party that only recently has found the courage to publicly admit that they deliberately flooded our country with overseas migrants, ostensibly to "rub people's noses in diversity?" The same Labour Party that told us only 13,000 Polish migrants would enter our country under the auspices of the EU's freedom of movement, only to find that hundreds of thousands came and settled? The same Labour Party that gave away a significant chunk of our country's European Rebate, on the basis of reforming the Common Agricultural Policy, only to fail to ensure that any such reforms took place?

 

Why would a majority of the British public choose to vote for a Labour Party that created the illusion of economic growth by borrowing to invest in a burgeoning public sector, creating unnecessary jobs in order to offset the failures of its new "knowledge" economy policy? The same Labour Party that helped to make widespread surveillance of the native population a routine of daily life, whilst at the same time curtailing the right of the citizen to free speech, especially in matters pertaining to race, colour or creed? The same Labour Party that attacked people's private pension funds with a range of new stealth taxes, leaving elderly investors to face their later retirement years, worrying about how they would afford to manage financially?

 

So, with both May 2014 and 2015 fast approaching, just why would a majority of the British public choose to vote for a Labour Party that has played such a pivotal role in creating the socio-economic nightmare that our country is currently looking to escape from?

 

One would imagine that for many British voters, any party other than the current Conservative one led by David Cameron, is a highly attractive choice; and as the only other major political force in the country, then for those given to making easy choices, there probably isn't an easier choice, black against white, red as opposed to blue, cold as against hot, etc. Of course, many of these same easy choosing voters will be the first one's to scream to the rafters, if and when their party of choice turn out to be just as bad as the last lot, reaffirming the commonly held view that "they're all as bad as one another", or "they're only in it for themselves". Obviously they never happen to see that they; along with their own easy attitude to selecting a political candidate, for the serious business of government, lies at the heart of our current problem.

 

Labour and Conservative parties have both become accustomed to the expectation of parliamentary selection and government, so much so that if they had their way they wouldn't bother going to the trouble of consulting the people; and only baulk at the prospect of removing that fundamental democratic right, for fear of being described and known as as an un-elected dictatorship. Harsh opinion of politician's you think? Well, it was only days ago that that Dark Lord of British politics, the former Peter Mandelson, the Labour Party's arch spin doctor of the Blair Brown era was bemoaning the prospect of a public referendum on our membership of the European Union, to be held in 2017. Along with many of his esteemed colleagues in that wholly un-elected house, it was publicly stated that such decisions, like our continued membership of the EU, were far too important and complicated for the ordinary British person to understand, let alone make a pivotal decision about; and so a choice on the matter should be denied to us, the people of Britain.

 

Other's amongst the majority of British people who are reportedly going to vote Labour in both 2014 and 2015 will be the traditional or "tribal" voter, who will cast their ballot, for no better reason than that's what they have always done, no rhyme, no reason, just through sheer basic habit. Rather foolishly perhaps most will still choose to believe that the Labour Party of today, still represents the working classes, which of course it does not. Although some former Labour Party members will know better than me, when exactly the party abandoned any pretence of of representing the working classes, it is now a matter of history that Tony Blair and Gordon Brown were influenced by and followers of the free market enterprise policies, first pioneered and enacted by the Conservative leader Margaret Thatcher in the early 1980's. From Tony Blair onwards, all Labour leaders are "Thatcherite" in their political leanings; and it should therefore be no surprise that the current incumbent of that office, Ed Miliband, will pursue the same sort of economic and social policies that were so assiduously followed by his own political mentor, the former chancellor and Labour Prime Minister, Gordon Brown. Only this week, Mr Miliband has made plain where his electoral priorities lie and it's not with the working classes, the poor and the unemployed, whose onerous and desperate plight can be traced directly back to many of the policies and strategies of the last Labour government.

 

No, Mr Miliband's priorities do not lie with the most needy, but rather they lie with the middle classes, the aspirational middle classes, those professional workers who aspire to own their own homes, who aspire to take foreign holidays once or twice a year, who aspire to have buy and own the latest consumer products, who aspire to see their children gain a university education, who aspire to retain more of their hard earned incomes, who aspire to influence political leaders like Mr Miliband. Tony Blair's Labour Party was the party of the middle classes, as was Gordon Brown's, as too is Ed Miliband's.

 

It makes grim reading indeed to realise that despite thirteen year period of financial waste, political misrepresentation, bloody wars and the social destruction of our country caused by their party's multicultural gerrymandering, that so many ordinary people would consider handing the levers of power to the same old Labour party once again, this time in the shape of Ed Miliband, As Noah Chomsky said "If we choose, we can live in a world of comforting illusion" and it seems to be the case that over the period of the next year or so, if you choose to believe the latest opinion polls, more and more people in our country are going to vote for what is a highly illusory Labour Party, rather than a more realistic UKIP one, which if it turns out to be true will be a real shame for our nation.