Spontaneous Monotony

The English Skills secretary John Denham has claimed that voters are deserting Neo Labour in their droves (current poll rating is 23% - the worst EVER and 26% behind the Tories) because people are “confused about what [Labour] stand for”. In fact the problem voters have is that Labour doesn’t stand for ANYTHING any more - the Third Way has become an unprincipled stumble into whatever the spin doctors think will get Neo Labour good headlines in the Daily Mail. Most of the ‘big promises’ that people bought into in 1997 have vanished:

• “tackle the division and inequality in our society”. I think the 10p tax mess shows that Neo Labour doesn’t give a damn about poverty any more. If the Tories had suggested a slight tax cut for the moderately well off, financed by DOUBLING the tax rate paid by the poorest in society, there would have been uproar.
• “Real rights for citizens”. Yes, Labour passed the Human Rights Act which is a hugely important piece of legislation. Since 2001, however, it has set about trying to violate the human rights of people in this country in a systematic manner. 4 million CCTV cameras (which even the Labour-loving Metropolitan Police says don’t cut crime), police allowed to run amok shooting unarmed civilians, internment of people against whom there isn’t even enough evidence for a charge let alone a conviction. I could go on but I’m straining the limits of what you can legitimately put in one bullet point.
• “Ethical foreign policy”. Yeah - Iraq, Afghanistan, extraordinary rendition. They haven’t so much ripped up this promise as put it through an industrial-grade crosscut shredder.
• “We will not introduce ‘top-up’ fees and have legislated to prevent them”. We all know how that one ended. I’m just glad we now have a Scottish Parliament (one of the few Labour achievements they haven’t managed to undermine yet, though Gordon’s doing his best now that us North Britishers have voted for the Wrong Party) and that Neo Labour are no longer in charge of education in this country. Ask someone in 1945, or even in the days of John Smith, whether the Labour Party would ever stop believing in free education and they’d have thought you’d lost it.

Essentially Neo Labour has become a second Tory Party. Given the choice, people would opt for a party which is honest about its right-wing policies over one which lies and spins at every turn, trying to deceive the public. That’s why fewer than a quarter of people in the UK now identify themselves with the Labour Party, and why a mediocre Tory leader is looking more like winning the next UK election.

Still, I suppose there’s a bright side to this from a nationalist point of view: the SNP’s proposed independence referendum in 2010 would almost certainly be after the next UK election. Every time a Tory government is in power in London, support for independence in Scotland goes up, for fairly obvious reasons.

Yesterday saw the Chinese propaganda parade through London, escorted by police who behaved rather more violently than was necessary. There was the predictable parade of apologist politicians going on about “the Olympic spirit” - what they seem to forget is that the Olympic flame is not a politically neutral sporting symbol. In fact it was conceived by another dictatorial regime as a propaganda exercise in the runup to the 1936 Olympics.

If there are still those - perhaps among those who took part - who want to argue that participating in a Chinese propaganda exercise does not constitute endorsement of the Chinese regime, then that’s up to them. They wouldn’t have the right to form their own opinion in their beloved China.

For the rest of us, the simple solution is to ignore the 2008 Olympics from now on. Don’t watch any of the TV coverage, or buy any of the merchandise.