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Posts Tagged ‘Labour’

This picture of the G8 Leaders sitting around a table together, is very symbolic because whilst they can arrange a meeting and deliver a conference, the one thing that they can’t do is deliver their electorates.

Solving the Euro crisis would be simple if either the Eurozone countries opted for a “United States of Europe” where all resources are pooled, both assets and liabilities or, Germany accepted ‘funding’ such a programme without such a structure. The real problem as the election of Hollande in France and the non-election of any kind of government in Greece demonstrates is that the average European voter is not prepared to face reality.

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As a rather clear sign of what the public think about Local Elections generally, a turnout of under 30% on Thursday rather paints the picture all too well. The truth of course tells us absolutely nothing of any value because only those with some kind of commitment and/or anger, will bother to turn out. In this sense, it is rather like those unreliable “satisfaction surveys” on owning particular models of cars.

The results are always suspect because the only people who bother filling in the surveys are those wanting to ‘justify’ their original purchase decision or, those who have had reliability issues and/or bad customer service who want to give the brand a severe kicking. Whatever the motive, the results are unreliable to say the least and of no use in your decision about what car to buy next yourself.

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Many years ago when I was considerably younger, a history teacher in order to illuminate the topic posed a question concerning a specific event we were looking at: “In whose interest was it ?” Over the years when faced with complex and obscure situations, I have often applied that same question myself and do again today with regard to the witch hunt that is being built around the Culture Secretary.

Whether Mr Hunt is guilty of any impropriety or breach of the “Ministerial Code”, I don’t know but the amount of fuss in the Media generally is suspicious. As the Media is entirely an incestuous industry, many of the staff will have worked for various other titles in the past and Leveson is grinding finely with an awful more yet to come. It poses the question in my mind that the “Hunt Witch Hunt” may well be a diversion, a Red Herring built upon trying to obscure the truth…

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The other day Ed Balls admitted that if Labour came to power they would not promise to reverse the cuts in public expenditure currently being made by the Coalition Government. Frankly, the only comment one can make to that is “About time !” The reality is if and when Labour next comes to power, the political weather and economic climate will have changed, inevitably.

Although right now both this and the World generally face some difficult financial issues, these are perhaps just symptoms of other problems rather than the core disease. For a country like the UK, we are probably looking at a long term decline that started during the First world War which coincides with the rise of the Labour Party. One could speculate that solving this decline could also coincide with its (Labour’s), decline just as Communism collapsed with the Berlin Wall.

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The often repeated “common wisdom” concerning the Tories getting booted out of Office in 1997 was that following the ERM débâcle, they had lost their one trump card in the mind of the public even if those people normally voted Labour that the “Tories were good on the economy…”

Personally I never bought into this, Major had a tiny majority and a group of troublesome anti-EU MPs, I suspect that this disunity which made this Country look stupid plus they had been in power for a long time led to people wanting a complete change and a fresh start. A house divided will always fall and myopic politicians constantly riding their hobby horses are never an attractive sight…

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Yesterday on a reader’s comments section of one of the papers, a chap who claimed that he was a Tory wrote that in his opinion, Labour were “odds on” to win the next Election and it made me stop and ponder the possibility, my conclusion was that whilst all results are possible, Labour “odds on ?” I really can’t imagine that under pretty much any circumstances.

The economic situation will get considerably worse and it will lead to the greatest fall in real living standards for the vast majority of the UK population within living memory with the poorest taking the biggest ‘hit’ but that will just reflect what happens globally. In theory this should lead to lots of waving and singing of the “Red Flag” but it still won’t lead to the current Labour Party getting elected, the British public is far too sophisticated for that…

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In a sense, the Labour Party Annual Conference that runs through this week, is likely the most pointless exercise that anyone could imagine this year. Just how does any Party Leader following 13 years in power that resulted in abject failure, “Rally His or Her Troops” ? The answer of course is that you can’t except lead them off into some cloud cuckoo land where they feel ‘comfortable’.

Ed Miliband was voted in by the Unions quite cynically, they knew that any “next leader” would be a political space filler, rather like the Tories electing IDS as their leader so, why waste any effort on them, “make ‘em nice, human and we will dump them as soon as favourable opportunities arise…” It is called ‘politics’. The funniest thing that will be on view this week is Ed Miliband knowing the score, trying to make headway and upset all expectations…

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This week sees the publication of Alistair Darling’s memoirs covering the period that he was Chancellor when Gordon Brown became Prime Minister. Along with previously published tomes of the like from those who were intimately involved with the “New Labour” Government, it does not make for good reading.

That Gordon Brown was/is a dysfunctional creature with a far greater opinion of his own abilities than the facts demonstrate is by now a “given” and from that arises perhaps the most interesting question of the lot, the one raised by John Rentoul writing in The Independent on Sunday: “Why wasn’t he stopped ? http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/john-rentoul/john-rentoul-why-did-nobody-stop-gordon-brown-2348855.html

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The latest bit of scandal that has fallen into the hands of the Daily Telegraph concerns leaked papers from the “Desk of Ed Balls” that chronicle his involvement in the coup/negotiations to remove Blair and replace him with Brown after the 2005 Election. These papers include hand written notes by Brown commentating on Blair’s written proposals in a highly derogatory manner.

When approached by the media, Balls was his usual simpering, denying self, a pose we have seen before. Of course there was no plot, these were just part of the normal political negotiations between two people who disliked each other, I was just helping… Yes Pinocchio and what is this really about ?

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A rather ‘luke warm’ editorial in the Independent in the post Barnsley aftermath, according to them at least, was as follows: http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/leading-articles/leading-article-bad-but-not-terminal-in-barnsley-2232973.html

My response was simple: The result was foreknown, a racing certainty for Labour even on a very low turnout. What happened to the Coalition Parties is not very relevant and I suspect that if there were a General Election today, the national outcome would be pretty much the same as last year. The reality is that people are “waiting” on events, if things go well, the Coalition’s popularity will increase by the next General Election if not…

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