Cuts are New Labour's death warrent...
...so why don't the British Trade Unions help to start a new political party?
When Brown announced that his government intended to introduce cuts today he was aligning himself with the Tories and effectively signing New Labour's death warrent. Using the gloss of identity politics and invoking Labour's old traditions will not fool the electorate for much longer. New Labour and the Conservatives work for the same people.
Polly Toynbee is wrong. There is no any time left to make a clear distinction between the Tories and Labour. They are both clearly following the same agenda. After Gordon Brown's speech to the unions, to highlight the differences between the parties mere pedantry.
There is no way anyone who is even vaguely socialist can vote for Labour now unless Labour has a leadership election and gets rid of Brown and sidelines all the New Labourites.
If Labour is willing to go down the road of cuts to public services this basically means that they will continue to privatise. They will carry on farming out as much of the NHS as possible to private contractors. They want to put more of the state education system into private hands. The academies are a case in point.
In fact New Labour and the Tories want to farm out the whole state sector to private contractors - one way or another. They are using the problem of the deficit to justify their proposed actions. Making cuts to public services is not really a fully coherent or thought out response to the "Credit Crunch" or the problem of the reduction of the deficit; the strategy to cut and "make the public sector more efficient" hides this agenda: the complete takeover of the state by the private sector.
The state sector represents a quarter of GDP and private companies want to get their hands on as much of all that natural monopoly dough that flows through it as possible. The New Labour and Conservative plan is to slim the state down and transform it into one big regulatory body that sets the rules for all the tens of thousands of parasitical contractors. The government will make its cuts by handing over taxpayers' money to private contractors so that these can cream off as much as possible, fail to reinvest adequately and use public services as monopoly cash cows.
As a result the state will probably be able to lower taxation because we will end up paying so much more upfront for public services.
What we are talking about is a strategy to create a country where taxation is low and public services are expensive. In other words, create a country that is a paradise for the rich, the richer and the extremely rich. The well off have less need of public services and they benefit from lower income tax. With the least possible amount of wealth redistribution and the private sector making money hand over foot from natural monopolies, we will have a country in the worst possible taste.
And that's what is at the heart of Gordon Browns cuts. The strategy is what it always was: to make us as an attractive a capitalist entrepot as possible which means pushing down wages to their minimum, cutting down on the public sector, lowering taxation and refusing to legislate or control the markets.
Which of you believe that New Labour will introduce stringent new regulation to control the money markets? Of course they won't.
Seamus Milne says that in his speech today to the trade unions: "Brown pressed every button to sweeten the pill" Of course he did - he invoked every cosmetic difference possible to make a distinction between the Tories and New Labour. The cosmetics of identity politics and Labour Party tradition. But it won't wash:
In fact what the Trade Unions really should do is give up on New Labour, get together with left wingers inside the party and other progressive forces in society to form a new political party, because, let's face it, the Trade Unions are going to have to to spend the next 5 years fighting either Tory or New Labour cuts tooth and nail.
I really have to think who I am going to vote for in the general election. Never Tory, never New Labour and not the Liberal democrats. If the Trade Unions and the left started up a new political party it would enfranchise me and enfranchise many other people in Britain in the same quandry.
That would give me an electoral choice for a start - and a lot of other people too.
...so why don't the British Trade Unions help to start a new political party?
When Brown announced that his government intended to introduce cuts today he was aligning himself with the Tories and effectively signing New Labour's death warrent. Using the gloss of identity politics and invoking Labour's old traditions will not fool the electorate for much longer. New Labour and the Conservatives work for the same people.
Polly Toynbee is wrong. There is no any time left to make a clear distinction between the Tories and Labour. They are both clearly following the same agenda. After Gordon Brown's speech to the unions, to highlight the differences between the parties mere pedantry.
There is no way anyone who is even vaguely socialist can vote for Labour now unless Labour has a leadership election and gets rid of Brown and sidelines all the New Labourites.
If Labour is willing to go down the road of cuts to public services this basically means that they will continue to privatise. They will carry on farming out as much of the NHS as possible to private contractors. They want to put more of the state education system into private hands. The academies are a case in point.
In fact New Labour and the Tories want to farm out the whole state sector to private contractors - one way or another. They are using the problem of the deficit to justify their proposed actions. Making cuts to public services is not really a fully coherent or thought out response to the "Credit Crunch" or the problem of the reduction of the deficit; the strategy to cut and "make the public sector more efficient" hides this agenda: the complete takeover of the state by the private sector.
The state sector represents a quarter of GDP and private companies want to get their hands on as much of all that natural monopoly dough that flows through it as possible. The New Labour and Conservative plan is to slim the state down and transform it into one big regulatory body that sets the rules for all the tens of thousands of parasitical contractors. The government will make its cuts by handing over taxpayers' money to private contractors so that these can cream off as much as possible, fail to reinvest adequately and use public services as monopoly cash cows.
As a result the state will probably be able to lower taxation because we will end up paying so much more upfront for public services.
What we are talking about is a strategy to create a country where taxation is low and public services are expensive. In other words, create a country that is a paradise for the rich, the richer and the extremely rich. The well off have less need of public services and they benefit from lower income tax. With the least possible amount of wealth redistribution and the private sector making money hand over foot from natural monopolies, we will have a country in the worst possible taste.
And that's what is at the heart of Gordon Browns cuts. The strategy is what it always was: to make us as an attractive a capitalist entrepot as possible which means pushing down wages to their minimum, cutting down on the public sector, lowering taxation and refusing to legislate or control the markets.
Which of you believe that New Labour will introduce stringent new regulation to control the money markets? Of course they won't.
Seamus Milne says that in his speech today to the trade unions: "Brown pressed every button to sweeten the pill" Of course he did - he invoked every cosmetic difference possible to make a distinction between the Tories and New Labour. The cosmetics of identity politics and Labour Party tradition. But it won't wash:
In fact what the Trade Unions really should do is give up on New Labour, get together with left wingers inside the party and other progressive forces in society to form a new political party, because, let's face it, the Trade Unions are going to have to to spend the next 5 years fighting either Tory or New Labour cuts tooth and nail.
I really have to think who I am going to vote for in the general election. Never Tory, never New Labour and not the Liberal democrats. If the Trade Unions and the left started up a new political party it would enfranchise me and enfranchise many other people in Britain in the same quandry.
That would give me an electoral choice for a start - and a lot of other people too.
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