POSTSCRIPT (2)

POSTSCRIPT (2)

Post-Election Politics

          I have long believed that what we had come to think of as the three main political parties – Conservative, Labour and Liberal/Democrat, all had the same basic policy;  to win the next election by any means possible and, having done so, to hang on to power for as long as they could.  The Lib.Dems knew that they wouldn’t win outright but hoped they’d have sufficient parliamentary seats to hold the balance between the Labour and Conservative  MPs at Westminster.  They wanted to form a coalition with one or other of the two parties (they really didn’t care which one) and they expected to get a few cabinet posts and the title (and appropriate salary and perks) of Deputy Prime Minister for their leader.

          But in the General Election it didn’t happen like that.   The Conservatives (who secured only 35 percent of the votes cast) obtained a small first-past-the-post overall majority and, as I had forecast, the Lib.Dems. were all but destroyed.  The third party in today’s House of Commons is not the Lib.Dems. but the Scottish National Party!  That's something that I hadn't foreseen!

            After the General Election the leaders of the Lib.Dems, the Labour Party and of UKIP all resigned.   Nick Clegg, Lib.Dem. leader brought his downfall upon himself by acquiescing to and defending measures he had, only a week or so earlier, promised to oppose.  The opening words of Robert Browning’s ‘Lost Leader’ come to my mind ‘Just for a handful of silver he left us, Just for a riband to stick on his coat’.  Ed Miliband, Labour Leader, lost the election not because of anything he had done or failed to do but because of the daily dose of quite unjustified vilification and denigration  launched about him by the right-wing press.  If something appears before your eyes day after day you begin to feel there must be something in it – even when there clearly isn’t.  What about Nigel Farage of UKIP?  He did resign, but was back and leading his odd army of Europhobes and crypto-fascists before you could say ‘Brussels Bureaucrat!’

            The Lib-Dems have chosen their new leader who has, as might have been expected, been denigrated by the right-wing press.  Apparently he is a fundamentalist evangelical Christian and believes in a literal Heaven and Hell.  Well, that’s no more fanciful than believing that ‘market forces’ and private enterprise will solve all the world’s problems.   He is, I think, likely to prove to be a man of his word. 

The election of a new Labour leader is proving much more exciting than had been expected.  There appear to be three ‘New Labour’ candidates with proposed policies that are much the same as the Conservatives but perhaps – depending on what the latest opinion poll says – a little less harsh on the poor, the unemployed and the disabled.   But now there’s another candidate; Jeremy Corbyn, fighting for the ‘old Labour’ policies of a fairer distribution of the country’s wealth, an end to privatisation and unilateral nuclear disarmament.  At least one of those who sponsored him said that she didn’t think for a moment that he would get anywhere but that she felt the voice of ‘old Labour’ should be heard.  No doubt lack of support for Corbyn was expected to demonstrate beyond doubt how thoroughly ‘New Labour’ had destroyed the tattered remnants of the ‘old Labour’ of George Lansbury, Nye Bevan and Michael Foot.

            But, once again, it hasn’t happened like that.  Jeremy Corbyn, who seems to be a very likeable, straight-forward chap, and his radical policies are proving unexpectedly popular, especially with younger Labour voters.  Opinion polls suggest that he could win the leadership election.  Hundreds of people who have previously not bothered to vote, may decide that Jeremy Corbyn offers something different; something that it’s worth turning out to vote for.  I don’t know why everybody should be so surprised. The democratic socialist policies for which Corbyn stands are much the same as those held by the Scottish National Party who, you will recall, made an almost clean sweep of Scotland’s New Labour MPs in the recent General Election.  Are the Scots really so different from the rest of we British?

            Needless to say, prominent has-beens from Labour’s past have been paraded to offer dire warnings of endless years of opposition for Labour if Corbyn were to be elected leader.  Finally former Prime Minister Tony Blair gave us his great thoughts on the matter - and probably increased rather than diminished Jeremy Corbyn’s chances of success..   Anyone, he said, whose heart was inclined towards old Labour ‘needed a heart transplant’.   That, I think, was bound to infuriate hundreds of sincere Labour supporters who cherish the memory of the up-hill struggles of the 19^th and 20^th Century pioneers of the Labour, Trade Union and Co-operative movements. 'Though cowards flinch and traitors sneer, We'll keep the Red Flag flying here!'

            No-one could deny that Tony Blair was a great winner of elections.  He did so by creating 'New Labour and dragging it far enough to the right to attract the support o the Murdoch Press.  Thousands of Labour Party members who voted to revoke Clause 4 imagined that they were voting against everything being nationalised.  They were, in fact, opening the door to the privatisation of every public service.

            In the ten years that New Labour formed our government, the gap between the wealthy and the poor actually widened, Tory legislation like the Right to Buy Act which lies at the root of today’s housing problems, remained intact.  An unholy friendship between Tony Blair and the most reactionary American President in living memory, led to an illegal bloody war in Iraq that has resulted in the ruin of that country, the growth of terrorism throughout North Africa and in Europe and the USA too, and the martyrdom of hundreds of Christians in the Middle East, North Africa and the Indian sub-continent.  Tony Blair was made United Nations Peace envoy to the Middle East.  As I have previously said in this blog, that was like making one of the Kray brothers a Chief Constable.  

            It simply isn’t true to claim that a political party can achieve nothing in opposition.  Had Nick Clegg not entered into coalition with the Conservatives the Lib.Dems. could have retained their independence – voting for, or at least abstaining from voting against – any legislation to which they didn’t object and joining with Labour and the small opposition parties to oppose legislation they found objectionable. Where the party in government has only a small overall majority this can be very effective.  In this parliament David Cameron was all set to pass legislation legitimising fox hunting with hounds.  The SNP MPs said they would join with Labour in opposing this (largely to remind the Conservatives of their fragile majority) and, to avoid the possibility of humiliating defeat, that legislation has been put on the back burner.

            Had they adopted that policy the Lib.Dems. could have prevented particularly objectionable legislation from being passed, and retained their own integrity.  They wouldn’t have been given any seats in the government and their leader wouldn’t have become ‘Deputy Prime Minister’ – but they might well have been spared humiliating defeat in the General Election.  ‘This above all, to thine own self be true!’

            I am neither a member nor a supporter of today’s Labour Party.  I am a member of and support the Green Party because I believe that today, care of the environment and countering the effects of climate change are more important than any other political issue.  I think though that if Jeremy Corbyn were to be elected leader of the Labour Party a great many, perhaps most, Greens would be delighted that one of the main parties  would be working towards the resolution of at least some of our concerns.

           

Post Script 1

POSTSCRIPT

Little Royal Nazis?   What rubbish!

            When, a few weeks ago, I wrote my farewell bog, it was my firm intention never to blog again.  I was old, my ideas were stale and I wasn’t expressing them half as effectively as once I did.  In short I was a now senile and decrepit early twentieth century man who had somehow made it to the twenty-first century but who didn’t fit in with the spirit of today’s ‘brave new world’

Oscar Wilde once remarked that he could resist anything except temptation and one or two recent events have tempted me to write at least one postscript to my blog series.  Although many of my views have been described as ‘way out left’ and I am now a member of the Green Party I am not, and never have been, a republican. I think that there is a lot to be said for having a Head of State who is outside party politics, is trained from childhood to be a constitutional monarch and who, even before the coronation, is likely to be more knowledgeable about our government and constitution  than any of the here-today-and-gone-tomorrow Prime Ministers who will form a government during his or her reign.

Scandinavian Royal style.  The Queen of Denmark  arrives in London for the Olympic Games.  Photo by my elder son Pete.

I can’t think of any way of achieving this surely desirable end other than by a hereditary constitutional monarchy.  I would prefer our monarchy to be more in the Scandinavian style but perhaps something on those lines will evolve.

I was both angry and contemptuous when I learned that the Sun had used on its front page photographs taken in 1933 of the children of the Royal Family, and their mother, giving the outstretched arm Nazi salute.   I was around in 1933 (an enquiring lad of twelve), which I am quite sure can not be said of either the editor or the owner of the Sun. We had all seen Hitler and the Nazi salute in the newspapers or on the brief cinema newsreels (there was, of course, no tv in those days) and most of us thought that Hitler looked like Charlie Chaplin and that all the heel clicking and saluting was just plain daft.  We practised the Nazi salute and one or two of us even tried goose-stepping!  It was just a laugh. We were taking the mickey. 

 It could be that that is just what those young royals were doing back in 1933.   It was unfortunate that someone had a good camera available at the time.  It was a family photo that the Sun has obtained (by bribery or the proceeds of a theft?  We’ll probably never know) and used to try to undermine trust in the Royal Family.  In 1933 no-one (certainly no-one in our government) foresaw the potential for evil in Adolf Hitler.  Nor, I think did anyone in the press.  Those who did not regard Hitler as a joke, saw in him a politician who was different and would pull Germany together, defeat the communists (they were seen as a much bigger threat than the Fascists and Nazis) and with whom Britain could negotiate with confidence.

I think that it is significant that the owner and ultimate controller of the Sun and other newspapers, radio and tv enterprises, all of which help to mould public opinion, is a former Australian, now USA, citizen who owes and shows no loyalty to the United Kingdom, its constitution and its traditions.  He is the   head of a ‘news’ organisation that is best known for its phone hacking, its obtrusive pursuit and harassment of its victims (who can be any of us), and its bribery of public officials – all of which activities are said to be in exercise of ‘the freedom of the press’; a strange ‘freedom’ that involves control by a foreign multi-millionaire.

I find it strange that Rupert Murdoch is permitted to reside in the UK and even stranger that so many top politicians fraternise with him and seek his favours.  One who, very honourably, declined to do so was Prime Minister John Major – who subsequently suffered at the hands of the Murdoch press.  Among the latest to seek his company and his favour has been Nigel Farage, leader of UKIP.  They have in common a determination to prevent the UK from ever becoming part of a European Federation.  I wonder if both, or either, would be equally determined to keep the UK independent of Federation with the USA – with the ‘A’ tactfully altered to be the initial of ‘Atlantic’ rather than ‘America’?

More of Rupert’s malign influence?

            Among the emails urging me not to give up writing my blog was one from a regular blog reader expressing his concern about the government’s apparent determination to change, or even destroy, the BBC as we know it.   Urging them on in this enterprise are, of course, the BBC’s commercial rivals, prominent among them Mr Rupert Murdoch of Sky tv as well as a number of newspapers.  Below are extracts from my correspondent’s email;

            Literally every day more reports are leaked to undermine the BBC. A Parliamentary Committee has been appointed with a specific brief to investigate and make recommendations about the future role of the BBC. More than half the people nominated to this Committee have previously made public statements about how the BBC needs to be scaled back, or the licence fee should be abolished. And on top of that, they are clearly briefing papers like the Times with more details of their “thinking”, suggesting that the BBC is “too popular” and that they shouldn’t be doing successful programmes with high audiences, and they should not be running such an extensive web site, and they shouldn’t be attempting to cover all of the News in it, and some of the money for the Licence fee (if it continues at all) should be given to other providers, not just the BBC. They have called the Licence Fee “a regressive Tax” – (so unlike their other taxes).  Oh, and ministers saying the BBC Commission is “not fit for purpose” (always a prelude to scrapping something) because of “the Saville scandal and the pay-offs to senior staff who were made redundant”. Clearly it  would be better for them to discredit and then abolish the Commission first, because last time they threatened to axe part of the licence fee, the entire Commission threatened to resign in protest – probably never been forgiven for that piece of insurgency.

Some people are  baffled by all this – thinking that everyone liked the BBC and would be pleased that Strictly and Masterchef were runaway successes and that all the news and cooking recipes were published for free on the web site.  I have been trying to explain to them the Right Wing thinking on all of this. First of all, the BBC is making programmes which conflict with the financial interests of Tory Party donors. Secondly they are giving the News and cooking recipes away for free, when others are trying to make money out of them. Thirdly, the Licence Fee is a sort of compulsory subscription, and poor families who have to find £140 a year for the Licence fee may not then be able or willing to buy a subscription to Sky on top of that. And lastly, from the viewpoint of the average Tory back bencher, an “unbiased BBC” which investigates climate change, tries to find the root causes of the migration, tries to explain what cuts in Welfare actually mean, suggests that not many people would actually benefit from reduced Inheritance tax comes over as rampant socialism to them.

 The Friends of Widows and Orphans?

Among the promises that helped the Conservatives to win the May General Election were measures aimed at helping widows and orphans – well, if not actually always widows and orphans those who were left after a house-owner’s death.  There were two measures promised; No inheritance tax (death duties) would be payable on the death of the owner of a property valued at less than a million pounds.   There are more of those than you might imagine – and anyone affected who wasn’t already a Conservative supportet could reasonably be expected to vote to secure a Conservative victory and the honouring of that promise.

The other promise affected a great many more people, including myself.  Folk nearing the end of their lives and needing local authority care, had to pay for that care unless they had very little savings and did not own a property that could be sold to raise the necessary cash.  This meant that many modest family homes had to be sold to pay for the care needed by the owner during his or her final years. Home owners were unable to pass on their most valuable asset to their sons and grandchildren.  The government was to put a cap (I think it was £75,000) on the amount that someone in care could be required to pay.  The family home might still have to be sold but the home-owner’s heirs might, at least, receive a worth-while legacy.

Well, the Conservatives did win the election though (I’m glad to say) without my vote.  Guess what?   They’re implementing at once that freedom from inheritance tax on homes valued at less than a million pounds.   And the cap on those in receipt of care?   Oh yes, they’re going to apply it – but not for another couple of years.

Well, I’m 94 and have stayed out of care so far.   It looks as though, if my heirs are to inherit my modest bungalow, I must try to stay out of the clutches of the official carers for at least another couple of years – or ‘pop my clogs’ without too much further delay!.