Tuesday 3 March 2009

Is this what you wanted?

This is a post directed at anyone who voted Labour in the last three elections. What I want to know is, is the current state of the UK really what you wanted 11 years ago?

The big issue in 1997 was "sleaze"; some backbench Tories were clearly either sailing close to the wind, or up to their necks in it, depending on your interpretation. That needed attention, but was the wholescale import of that culture into government really what you were hoping for? Did you want to see cash for peerages? Did you want to see Bernie Ecclestone pay for the law to be changed? (and then get his money back!)

The NHS was said to be in crisis. Where was it in Labour's manifesto that we wold all pay twice as much for the NHS but only get the same level of service? Where did they announce tht after eleven years of lavish spending, children with apparent appendicitis would wait three hours in A&E to see a doctor? In an A&E unit where the phone rings constantly but is never answered? Where the paint peels off the walls? Where there is a half hour standing wait in a queue merely to be recorded as having arrived?*

In 1997, we had just finished the 90s recession. You wanted economic prudence, it seemed. You got Gordon instead. Did you really want the City to be so wholly mismanaged that we would be plunged into what may be the worst bust in living memory? Is that really your definition of prudence?

You voted for an ethical foreign policy. Remember that? If so, please explain to me what was ethical about lying to Parliament, lying to the country, and lying to the UN in order to invade a poor third world country, kill somewhere north of a hundred thousand of its citizens, just because you don't like their leader. What was he - some kind of serial liar?

Blair said in 1997, "I want to renew our country's faith in the ability of its government and politics to deliver this new Britain.", and promised "A Britain ... where merit comes before privilege, run for the many not the few" Does anyone seriously suggest that he achieved the former by breaking his explicit 2005 promise to serve a full term, leaving No:10 under the terms of an secret deal, to install a Prime Minister chosen by the few, who then balked at the chance to obtain a personal mandate from the many because he feared we wouldn't give him one?

Is this the New Britain he was promising? A tin pot state in which a failure of a Prime Minister is foisted on us without our consent?

Do you, all of you who voted for Labour, feel proud of what they have achieved?

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*don't tell me this is exaggeration; I observed it personally last night.

2 comments:

  1. Toff!

    The thing which really gets me is how they squandered a once in a lifetime opportunity to really sort things out. They were in a position to do serious welfare reform, serious health reform, etc.. They had real goodwill behind them and look what they did. They took apart the constitution, destroyed the economy and spent all the money on non-jobs.

    And you know what the really depressing thing is? That lots of people still think they are better than the Tories were.

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  2. Too true Blue. Some of those shocking admissions by Straw and others over the NuLab first term.
    "We had no idea how to achieve our aims so we threw money at them. We believed that as, for example,the teachers were on our side, and we were paying them more; giving them better facilities and buildings and equipment that they would do what we asked. We were all headed in the same direction after all. But it didn't quite turn out that way."

    No, of course not you lemon!
    Any business leader could have told you you must make people work to earn the rewards. You don't dish them out for free, no matter how deserved.
    In fact in even the lowliest sink estate, in a burned out bus shelter, you could have found teenage girls who could have explained to you that if you put out at the first embrace then you rarely get the promised curry and fags.. or even the bus fare home.

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