Fantasy Land

That’s really the only two words I can use to sum up either the Tory or Labour party manifestos.

If you’d rather, ‘In Yer Dreams Mate’ might work as well.

Look at what being offered, count the cost, and note the current account deficit.

There’s no money.

Where will the ability to pay for these pledges come from?

The poor can’t pay, the rich won’t pay (their lobbyists will see to that) and the middle class are about broke.

That leaves another round of demonization followed by sweeping benefit cuts, or cuts to basic services. Either way, it’ll do nothing to halt the swiftly rising tide of need for things like food banks.

This is not my kind of society.

Both parties could pre-identify savings; it’s really not that hard. There is a huge one in Trident for starters. There are two more in a couple of aircraft carriers that this island state, with its four constituent nations, can’t even afford the aircraft for. Sell those ships and put the cash in the coffers, and yes, we’ll take a loss, but then we did vote in the idiots that ordered them in their imperial pretentiousness. However, that loss will be a one-time loss, not an ongoing drain and we as a nation won’t be paying to support America’s military industrial complex rather than our own.

I thought the Greens might offer England’s voters a credible alternative to the big two or UKIP, sadly, policy credibility is conclusively hidden somewhere in ‘Fantasy Land’ for them. What the Greens propose would be economic suicide. It is not that it can’t be done, it just shouldn't be done.

The issue is that England needs a credible alternative home for its popular vote, because right now it really does not have any viable home at all.

Imagine a Green party, or a new English party like the SNP that stood on a simple platform ‘We’re not going to change much, not right away anyway, but we will abolish the House of Lords’. Imagine them communicating that message.

The message would be enhanced by a guarantee of a real constitution, with a constitutional lock that’d guarantee a balanced budget within a decade. Throw in more constitutional locks such as the new upper chamber could only review laws or perhaps block anything the commons passed, however it’d have to be non-aligned and have equal numbers of members from each constituent nation.

Now get back to policies, just keep it simple, and explain that you really can’t give Jo and Josie public any more than what they've already got, because you’ll have to deal with the mess the other idiots left behind, and you’re certainly not going to promise something then renege when you open the treasury doors and find a note saying ‘good luck, enjoy, sorry there’s no money left!’

If you want those fuzzy green policies stuffed in there, clean up inner city air pollution, explain that it’d lower the burden on the NHS due to pollution related health issues, and then propose a phased in assessment based upon how much a vehicle pollutes. If you've got a heavily polluting vehicle you’ll pay yet another tax that’ll support green policies, and that money will go directly to local councils for that reason. Give it a ten year phase in, there’ll not be much objection, most of us will simply plump for low polluting transportation as time passes and escape the penalty.

That’s just one example to demonstrate that things really aren't that difficult to change, given time, the desire to make a positive contribution and the proper approach.

I expect I’d vote for a party proposing that sort of progressive change, especially if it also allowed me to replace my MP mid-term if they weren't serving their constituents, or promised that any MP guilty of violating the law of the land would be subject to triple the normal sentencing guidelines. They should, after all, be held to a higher standard.

It is possible to spend your way out of a recession, but you can’t do it by fulfilling election promises that will increase the current account deficit – it only works if you use the money to put folk to work, generate more taxes, get more competitive and protect the home market in some way. Do that and you can work to a balanced budget and greater wealth for us all. Maybe one day we’ll see a UK wide party and not just a national one propose something along those lines?

Perhaps, but then again there’s a reason this blog’s titled ‘Fantasy Land’.

In the United Kingdom, for as long as it exists, I’d expect it will always be ‘politics as usual’, because a balanced budget won’t make money for the bankers and financial gamblers who sit at the heart of the City of London, and therefore UK government.

Vote for Labour, Get Maggie.

And she isn’t even running in this election, bit difficult, since she’s dead. But her policies and ideals are in the race, and they’re under Labour’s banner too.

As I went through my little exercise yesterday, I was shocked to discover that even UKIP are to the left of Labour?

Yes, surprising, isn’t it?

Personally, I’d always stereotyped the ‘Kippers’ as somewhere akin to the Monster Raving Loonies. How wrong was I? At least in part. That’d be the part that doesn’t deal with any policies of demonisation and racism. 

To try to sort my way through the confusion of the parties in this GE, it seemed fair to tabulate what they were offering, and what they stood or stand for. To that end, I rustled up the ten most important policies to me. I then looked to see where the parties and participants in last week’s debate stood on them. The fact that I was able to find a view from the seven parties on each of my preferred policies seems to support the fact that they might think they’re relevant too.

I use the phrase ‘stood or stand’ above and this is where we find some surprises. For as we know, times changes much.

Any newly adopted policies that might not generally agree with historical positions I marked as neutral - yellow. 

Where a party was in reasonably substantial support of the policy they got a green tick. 

If the opposed or did not support the policies they got a red cross.

Fairly straightforward.

If I couldn't make up my mind where the party specifically fell in regards to a policy, or no particular opinion was expressed, then I’d allocate two symbols. The poor Lib-Dem’s were the only party to get hit that way; you just can’t swear a vow and not keep to it. It’s also why the majority got nailed on this, but the Lib-Dem’s with student fees and a ‘federal UK’ effectively did it twice, so they get two black marks.

On a personal basis I believe politicians who lie like that (really no other word for it, is there?) should be jailed for electoral fraud. They made promises in return for votes, and didn’t keep them. No different to me selling you my ‘reliable car’ then you finding out the following morning it is only good for the breakers yard. The difference here is the big UK parties are asking you to buy another car, in the same condition, while telling you it’s all bright, shiny and new. There’s a fool someplace in that scenario, and judging by the reactions of Joe and Josephine public, it wasn't the big UK parties. On the other hand, with MSM spoon-feeding the public, what other options had they? From this point of view the internet and social media have been a great leveler.

Seems like it’s time for a change? There’s no shame in learning, just - for some - the effort is beyond them.

At least in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, we've got that option, a nice bright shiny new vehicle in the form of the SNP. And so far, it has mostly done what it says on the tin. We’ll need to keep watching it though, just in case those attitudes it’ll be around are infectious. After all, there’s a track record there - just look at Labour?

Anyway, here’s the table, and based solely on policy, with my interpretation of the results, you really can see UKIP is probably a little to the left of Labour, which might account for some of their mass appeal in spite of being so poisonously radical and extreme in some areas of what they propose.



It transpires with these policies, UKIP is further LEFT than Labour.

Interestingly, the best correlation for everything might just be the referencing of 1950 Labour, because it does two things. It shows the popular appeal of Nicola Sturgeon and the SNP to be based upon support of policies which Labour championed back then, and shows how far the current Labour Party has drifted from those values. In my world that’s a clear indicator of why the red rose is hemorrhaging support. It’s not that public values or what the public really wants that has changed. 

A glance over these two charts quickly reveals the true state of affairs. 

With nearly 50% of Scotland’s electorate readying to vote SNP on this platform, we can clearly and simply see that what those folk are in effect voting for was much, if not most of what Labour stood for in its prime. 

Scotland has not abandoned Labour. Labour has abandoned Scotland

By looking at this and examining current voting intentions then it follows, Scots still have much the same values they had after the Second World War. Moreover the form that we Scot’s desire our society to take hasn't really changed an awful lot. Does this in point of fact mean that we have not moved forward in 70 years, or is this indicative of our desire to retain a core value that is a foundation stone in our society which we choose to protect? 

The Labour party on the other hand..? Well, only the folks at the top of that tree and their financial backers in the City of London or perhaps the Unions can really answer that one, can’t they? Then again, it has never really been the Labour Party since before Maggie broke the Unions, has it? If it had been, perhaps she might not have been as successful in her aims as she was. I can say that because the Labour Party of the fifties was quite honourable, by comparison anyway, and what gave Maggie her toehold in 1979 was Labour’s reneging and twisting of the vow on Scottish devolution.

Simply put, in 1979 had there been no lie there would have been no Maggie. Now wouldn't that have been nice?

One thing that’s very clear, it’s not your father’s Labour Party, it sure as hell isn’t your grandfather’s, and for all the difference, you might as well vote Tory these days, or Lib-Dem, if you don’t mind backing a bunch of liars.

Then again, from what I’m seeing here, you really couldn't get a silken thread between them, could you?

Additionally, from what I now see when I look at where the Tories were in 1980, against where Labour is today, then it really should be:

‘Vote Labour – Vote Maggie’

Because right now, Labour’s proposing support for things like the creeping privatisation of the NHS and international treaties without looking to see if they’re compatible with our core values.

That’s stuff that even Maggie didn’t dare to put on the table!