Revolutionary Rants

Since the days of Mrs Thatcher there has been a huge emphasis on opposition as a core issue in British elections. A strange switch occurred when Labour changed from ‘Labour’ to ‘New Labour’ under first Neil Kinnock and John Smith, and then more completely under Tony Blair; British politics moved from having one left-wing party and one right-wing one to having two Tory parties. Thus, new opposition was created; parties such as the British National Party, UKIP or Respect provided a ‘voice’ for some of those marginalised by the Third Way.

Now we enter an election with, unlike previous votes, a deeply disenfranchised electorate. But when do these people turn? New Labour grip, steadfastly on to the fact that they are now an established government, trying to gloss over the Iraq war whilst pointing out - the old Tory chestnut - how good their economic record is! Their slogan for the forth-coming general election is ‘Britain Forward Not Back’.

The Conservatives today launched their “manifesto” which read more like a ‘Things-we-don’t-like-about-Tony-Blair-festo’ Now they are trying to make a big issue of immigration - whilst they are lead by a Romanian immigrant’s son. They claim we need some immigration, but only real true asylum seekers such as Mr Howard’s parents. But, surely, all Howard’s family proves is that this country needs immigration (for example, my own home county of Devon, has only recently had to recruit a huge number of Polish dentists because no British dentists want to work for the NHS anymore because the money is so much better in private surgery - and we all know how much the Tories love to privatise…). I loved the graffiti on one of the Conservatives advertisements this week: the slogan read ‘How hard is it to clean hospitals?’, and underneath some one had penned ‘You should know, it was you that privatised the NHS’s cleaning service’! Just about sums it up, no?

As New Labour are moderate right, the only place for the Tories to go is more right, but not too far lest they lose the more ‘MOR’ floating (or “golden” as they now are) voters. Thus, they are always going to lose out, as most people want a moderate party and those who don’t will go for something much further right than the Tories can afford to be!

Whilst we live in a country where the main political parties concentrate only of proving the other main party wrong the British people are in - rather like the Tories - are in a no win situation…