I’ve written an opinion piece on the Social Liberal Forum website about why the Labour Party is making a major strategic blunder by embracing the “Con-Dem” narrative. This is a theme I expect to return to a lot over the next few weeks and months, at least until saner voices within Labour start to prevail.
I just happened to be at a community event in Lewisham yesterday, and there sitting in front of me as a guest of honour was the new Labour MP for Lewisham East, Heidi Alexander. I guess she might have remembered me from when we were both on Lewisham council, though I never remember speaking to her, I never remember her uttering a word in fact.
Still, had she turned round and had to say something to me and that something was along the lines “Why don’t you defect to us?” I pondered what I would have answered to that.
I think, first of all, I would require Labour to be much more left-wing. Let us consider this current situation where Capital Gains Tax – a tax paid only by a small number of very rich people essentially for money gained by sitting in their arses and exploiting others – is being put forward as some sort of evil attack on hard work (crap – it is the opposite – we want it raised so we can cut jobs tax), and we are asked to weep tears for those affected by having to suffer slightly smaller dollops of cash gained by doing bugger all except being rich to start with. At a time when many poorer people are losing FAR more that that. Any decent left-wing party would be able to run a huge campaign on this issue, using it to show how the rich have the media sewn up here and how pathetic and greedy they are, that they can’t see what hypocrites they are for moaning about having to pay a little when the poor will pay a lot more in cuts. But then I remembered that it was not just that the Labour Party is incapable of running any sort of decent campaign to appeal to poor and REAL middle-class people (as opposed to what the Mail and Telegraph call “middle” which is top 10% at most, sometimes as with CGT top 1%), it was actually the Labour Party The LABOUR Party which cut CGT to levels below what working people pay on their earnt income.
I thought then of all the arrogance of the Labour Party – the weekly newspaper delivered at tax-payers expense in the borough of Greenwich where I live full of smiley pictures of Labour councillors and stores saying what a great job they are doing. Left-wingers who pooh-poohed any chance of a coalition with them after the election, any of them who have every argued against proportiomal representation on the grounds “we like the current system because it means politics is just us and the Tories”. The whole eleted mayor and cabinet sytem and the semi-facsist arguments used for them by Labour in Lewisham when I stood alone against the idea.
No, Labour will have to move a LONG way before I contemplate giving up by Lib Dem membership and joing them.
Heidi never turned round, and I suspect she would have looked right through me if she had anyway.