Labour's future, it's in our hands

One of the worst things after a general election is having to listen to everyone's verdict on the outcome, and why it happened.  Everyone is suddenly an expert on politics, all joining in the blame game, the recriminations, and stating their opinion as fact.  (The actual worst thing by far this time will be the suffering, the vilifying, and the dying, of many more people across the UK.  This of course will continue until this government is booted out, but in theory not for another five long years.)

Maybe it helps others to do this, but it certainly doesn't help me!  So let me redress the balance ...

In my opinion there are loads of reasons why we are still having to deal with a Tory led UK government hell bent on ruining the country so they, the very few, can carry on living the high life at the expense of the very many.

- Let's start with the constant betrayal of Corbyn by many of Labour's own MPs.  I cannot condone this but I think a possible reason is that they are no longer solely responsible for electing the leader.  It's likely that non MP Labour members have a different take as to what we need in our leader, but at the end of the day it's the MPs who have to have to work with the leader, respect them, be able to follow them, and be expected to do so even when they don't agree with them.  After all would councillors like myself want the people of Swansea electing our council leader?

- Then there's Anti-Semitism v Islamaphobia.  Very easy to highlight the former as being both bad, and rife with high profile defections of Labour MPs to other parties, and so blame the Labour leadership for not dealing with it.  And equally the Tories are able to get away with the latter when terrorist & similar incidents keep happening most recently the knife atrocity in London, resulting in two dead, in the very last stages of the campaign. 

- And of course we have the right wing media which control the majority of what goes out in the press, over the internet, and on TV.  Even supposed Labour papers have not clearly been supporting Labour, and/or with too little, too late.  And it certainly suited the Tories that the media called it the Brexit Election right from the start.  One comment repeated over and over is that Labour did not have a clear enough message on Brexit, and I reckon people believed it regardless whether true or not simply because the media kept on doing this.  And so they were also able to get away with ridiculing Corbyn as being 'on the fence' yet look what the remain stance did for the Lib Dems, as they haven't even got a leader now! 

- Another aspect I believe has come into play is the fact that there are some who need to be guided by who they think are the people in the know ie the government.  Tories had a snappy mantra 'Get Brexit Done' - almost didn't matter what it said just so long as it was short!  This  I suspect appealed both to those who voted leave, and to those in neglected communities who have been told that being in the EU is to blame, and end up grateful for the few crumbs that the Tories have promised, even though it's them who took away the whole loaf in the first place!

- And so we get to the Manifestos.  We have found election after election that these aren't worth the paper they are written on, so why on earth should anyone believe the truly inspirational honest & costed manifesto of Labour.  Compare this with the much more cynical one of the Tories.  You can just hear them now when they cooked this one up, saying 'we'll con the electorate into voting us back in by fooling them into thinking that austerity has ended.  We'll give just enough back to high profile public concerns like the NHS & Police and they won't notice that it only restores things to 2010, and in many other cases not even that'.  All couched not so much in outright lies as in underhand distortion & manipulation of the truth.

I've probably only just touched the surface - I haven't even started on how come Labour came back from the dead in 2017 yet disappeared into hell this time?  And why didn't all the opposition parties work together more when most clearly had no time for Johnson et al? 

I'm sure there are many more aspects to why we have the result we have.  But my real point here is we have to go forward somehow, ignore the crap, the negativity - and boy is there a lot being spoken right now!  The Labour Party is NOT finished, and we KNOW we have right on our side.  We've just got to find out a way of getting this across.

Les

This Tory UK Government ... The Fatcats-Getting-Richer Con

No not the Tory politicians themselves but their fatcat cronies.

At a recent meeting someone came out with a very pertinent comment in the light of the demise of yet another high profile big company.  If a local community organisation can ensure it keeps it books in order and so ensure it survives then how come Thomas Cook couldn't?

But then those greedy fatcat CEOs, much applauded & feted by this Tory government, get a bonus whether or not the business is doing OK.  So NO incentive whatsoever in doing a good job!

Les

This Tory UK Government ... The Luck Con

Thatcher started it but certainly this rotten-to-the-core cabinet are carrying on her legacy.  And it takes the 'I'm alright Jack' con to a whole new level. 

Over the last 8 years these Tories have been reconditioning everyday Jill & Jo into believing not only it's right to feel smug about your own good fortune, but you can treat those not so lucky as if it's all their own fault, and it's OK to look down on them, treat them as inferior, even worthless.

How can it be their own fault to be born with a disability? 

How can it be their own fault when a company goes bust so they lose their job?

How can it be their own fault when their partner is abusive and they have to leave with nowhere to live?

I could go on, and on, but I think you get the picture.

Les

This Tory UK Government ...

A new year but this government is still hanging on.   

'Strong & stable'?  Weak & feeble more like, plus uncaring, greedy, rotten, incompetent ...  

Les

This Tory UK Government ... The I'm-alright-Jack Con

The greed and the selfishness are bad enough but worse still is the blame culture that the Tory government have been peddling for the last 8 years. And of course they have managed to blame everyone but themselves, and made the blame stick. 

Together with austerity, their strategy has been so very rotten.  Unfortunately it's also been very clever at maintaining the political status quo in that (very) broadly the voting public are :

- the wealthy electorate who will vote Tory to stay that way

- the not so wealthy, but not so that they have to worry about money, and for all sorts of reasons their votes will get shared around all parties

- the JAMS who have either been scared into believing they daren't vote other than Tory lest they lose what little they have, or are so disillusioned in the main parties that they get lured into UKIPs even-more-right-wing-than-Tories 'promised land'

- and the least wealthy who are either in despair of anything changing so why vote at all, or can't even vote because they are now homeless.

The Tories have continually told the same lie about the credit crunch, easily believed as Labour were in government at the time.  "Don't blame austerity on us" the Tories bleat, " it's all Labour's fault."  And of course in Scotland & Wales they can blame the devolved governments.

I'd like to think there's a growing number of anti Tory, and one of these days there really will be a huge backlash against them.  But how many more people - children as well as adults - are going to go hungry, go cold, lose the roof over their head, and ultimately their life, before this happens? 

Les

This Tory UK Government ... The Lying Con

I've always thought if you are going to tell a lie you might as well make it a big one.  Well Theresa May, and one of her lackeys have come out this month with not one but two beauts ...

Tory Treasury minister Liz Truss stated ‘we are not making cuts to local authorities’, and the Prime Minister claiming that ‘austerity is over’.  What appalling contempt of the voting public as in fact they are planning a further £1.3bn cut to council budgets next year.

Am I surprised?  Of course not.  Am I angry?  YES!!!  

There's is so much money swilling round this, the 6th richest country in the world, and all that needs to happen is for everyone to have a share.  Yes there will still be those well off - that's absolutely fine.  But what's not so fine is those well off being so much MORE well off.

I have read somewhere that wealth leads to greed for more.  Sadly this is exactly what appears to be the case in the UK at the moment, and worse still there doesn't seem to be any end to it.

Les

This Tory UK Government ... Good-with-the-Economy Con

This month I'll start by repeating what I finished with in August, that the Tories keep saying they are the party who is 'good with the economy'.  Of course I refute this totally but recognise that if something is said often enough then people will believe it whether it's true or not.  But here's another nail in that particular Tory coffin ...
  
One of the worst Tory failings when it comes to the economy is their short term strategy.  By itself this would be bad enough, but it's made far worse as they flog off all of our public services, and usually don't even get as much as they should for it. 

As many of us know they have this flawed privatise-everything ideology, regardless whether or not this is the UK's best interests.  But why would they care?  They don't need the money!

Les