Labour - What is the Point?

There was a time when there was a rationale for the Labour Party. It used to have principles, an identity, an image and a purpose. It also had a definable constituency and it stood for something. Perhaps most importantly, it represented people, working people, the poor, the disabled and the unemployed. Nowadays it displays open hatred and contempt for such people, represents no-one and goes to extraordinary lengths to disassociate itself from the people who gave it birth and who continue to support and finance it. Labour are the party who famously told us that they were quite relaxed about people becoming filthy rich. What they neglected to tell us was that they are also the party who are equally relaxed about people becoming filthy poor. In September 2010 in his first address to a Labour Party Conference since becoming leader of the party, Ed Miliband told the party that he would not support "waves of irresponsible strikes."  He went on to tell the conference that Labour had to win public support and avoid alienating people and adding to the book of "historic union failures". I paused when I read that and considered that the party he was addressing must now rank as the union movement’s greatest historic failure. He continued, "That is why I have no truck, and you should have no truck, with overblown rhetoric about waves of irresponsible strikes.” He went on "The public won't support them. I won't support them and you shouldn't support them either." I was left wondering what his attitude was to irresponsible managers, employers and government policies that have devastated millions of jobs, workers terms and conditions and laid waste to whole communities? I was also left waiting for a suggestion about what the union movement was supposed to do to remedy such conditions if they are not supposed to embark on ‘irresponsible’ industrial action?

Miliband then told the mindless mass that poses as a political party that it was vital that workers had a voice to speak for them, regaling the conference with anecdotes about the exploitation of dinner ladies and care workers who had to buy their own uniforms and who didn’t have a decent living wage and who only wanted someone to help them get basic standards of decency and fairness. At this point I had to stop and check that this was indeed the Ed Miliband who had just left office three months earlier as a member of a government that had been in office for thirteen years. I thought he must be blaming the Tories for this disgraceful state of affairs, but no, I was right, it was Labour that had presided over the situations he was complaining about. Yes, it was Labour who supervised the exploitation of the dinner ladies and denied the care workers of a decent living wage, and it was Labour who, in thirteen years of government failed to establish basic standards of decency and fairness, I wasn’t imagining it! What makes it worse is that there were trade union leaders sitting listening to this appalling drivel and applauding him. Am I alone in thinking that there is no-one left in the Labour Party with even a vestige of self-respect or shame?

So, what can we expect from a Labour government in the way of decency and fairness, of the prospect of a living wage for everyone? Well nothing actually, because Labour has just signed up to the whole of the government’s economic programme if they take office in 2015. We now have the spectacle of Labour announcing that they will adhere to the coalition’s spending plans, with Ed Balls telling the press that the Tories spending plans were acceptable for a period of three years after the next election. In addition, they will keep the benefit cuts in place, and they will keep the benefits cap. He also announced that he plans to attack the state pension. So, why on earth would you vote Labour; if these policies are so right and necessary, why not just vote for their authors? At least the Tories know why they think they need such policies, Labour are simply embracing them as they have not a clue what else to do. What this tells us about the Labour Party is that they now exist simply to gain power. They represent nothing but their own power hungry ambitions. They no longer stand for anything, are completely without principle, and will do whatever is necessary to get elected.  If we vote Labour, what is going to change? Labour has now become an irrelevance in our political system, they have no ideas, no vision, no programme. In Scotland we have the spectacle of the Labour leader denouncing the something for nothing society, which is of course, borrowed straight from the Tories hymnbook. This is Ms Lamont telling the poor, the sick, and the disabled that if they contribute nothing to the economy then they can expect nothing out of it. The only contribution that now matters to the Labour Party is economic, it is the measure of your worth to society, and if you cannot contribute because of physical or mental disadvantage then you are worthless, and can expect nothing in return. Balls and Miliband have also endorsed the government’s plan to force all foreign benefit claimants to take English lessons or lose their benefits, and support the proposal to delay jobseekers allowance for someone made unemployed. Welcome to the caring, sharing, all-inclusive Labour Party.

However, we are all better together the Westminster parties tell us. Oh really? So, be under no illusions, should you vote no in the coming Scottish Independence referendum, this is what you are going to get, three Tory parties all competing with each other to see who can kick the disadvantaged the hardest, and the most unprincipled of them all, by their own admission, are the Labour Party.

Your Servant
Doktor Kommirat