More politics of fear
Is there anyone out there who truly believes that the Tories can win the forthcoming election? The swing needed to create even a hung parliament is so massive as to be almost impossible.
Which is what makes this article in the Independent today such mendacious, transparent horseshit.
The journalists have quite clearly been hand-fed this stuff by Milburn and his oily crew and expected to regurgitate it verbatim for the bovine Sunday paper public.
And it’s comtemptuously patronising. An unnamed “adviser” (there’s a reason to trust the piece) says, “The country could be sleepwalking to a Tory government”. Did you hear that? What we all really want is a New Labour government but we’ll all be too busy scratching out collective nuts on polling day and might let the Tories in.
I could take this article to pieces line by line but it would take all day and I don’t want to ruin my whole Sunday by dwelling on the obvious point about how morally vacuous and contemptuous of the electorate New Labour is and what willing idiots Andy McSmith and Francis Elliott are.
The New Labour rallying cry really does boil down to “Vote for us, we’re not the Tories”. But as Mark Steel said in the Independent on Thursday (and is echoed by the Backing Blair campaign):
It makes you realise the Tories don’t want to win the election. They don’t need to, as they run the country anyway, and don’t have to bother with the paperwork. It’s as if they’ve got a servant to do everything for them. In New Labour headquarters a bell goes, and a voice says: “Chuck out another batch of immigrants would you, old boy.” Then Labour runs around doing it while the Tories are off to lunch.
Posted on February 13th, 2005 at 7:30 am
| See also • A Proportional Response • The tears of a Brown • Re-branding the herd |
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It’s a very demoralising situation, isn’t it? On the one hand, all you want is for Tony Blair to have that smug smile wiped from his face by an election defeat. On the other hand, the only people realistically capable of ousting him are actually worse. Albeit marginally.
It was very soon after I came to this country to attend Uni that the whole “Criminal Justice Bill” thing happened. It was that which first really politicised me, and got me involved in the direct action scene. So however bad NuLabor get, I still believe that the Tories are more dangerous.
Imagine if the Tories gain significant ground in this election (I agree with you, the idea of NuLabor actually losing is absurd). The message that sends to Blair is that he’s still not got right-wing enough! That would be a disaster. Almost worse than a Tory victory.
The only thing that makes sense (in my opinion) is a massive vote for left-wing fringe parties who haven’t a chance in hell of even gaining a seat (or even the LibDems… though I’m loathe to support them). At least that would point the direction.
There’s almost no daylight between the Tories and NuLabor these days. But the “almost” is still there. Could you see Michael Howard ever offering an apology to the Guildford 4?
I’m not (of course!) saying “Ah well, that apology makes it all right then. It even excuses the Iraq war”. Just that with the Tories we’d have the Iraq War PLUS an attempt to get Gerry Conlon banged up again for wasting police time or something.
I’m going to be voting Lib Dem. I can’t stand the thought of the Tories or Nu Labour getting into power, frankly. I know that one of them is, barring a miracle, going to do so, but at least I can say I did my best to prevent it.
Of course, it’s just possible that the Tories will be relegated to third place, and we’ll see some serious opposition to keep Tony on his toes…
Is it reasonable to speculate that had the Tories had, say, a 20 seat majority in 2003, William Hague could have taken the country to war?
There is no way a leader of a Labour opposition could have persuaded their party to back George Bush, lacking as they would the awesome power of office.
In fact you might find the Tories running to the Left all the time to maintain electorial advantage. This would be an interesting paradox of the system.
Well for the first time since I was 18 (and that’s rather too long) I’m not voting, unless someone can persuade me otherwise. By the way, your link to backingblair.com doesn’t seem to be working. Like the concept of it scaring all the Labour backbenchers who were too lily-livered to vote against the war though - but I can’t bring myself to vote for Nicholas Boles however much I try.