Post Election Blues

Post Election Blues

An analysis of the outcome of the British General Election by John Owen, a political activist and campaigner and long-term contributor to Nerve.

Political activists across the country will be chewing over the General Election defeat for the Labour movement for a while, wondering who, what, why, where and when it happened. A striking salutary lesson for the trade unions to digest.

There are 2.6 million workers paid 50p over the minimum wage, with 40% of all new jobs created being self employed since 2010, which usually means they work for a single employer, with basic employment denied and employers avoiding national insurance payment.

The amount of people receiving food from food banks is up from 300,000 to 913,138, close on I million. The Tories plan a further £3 billion cuts to in work bene?ts. With Health and Safety inspections at work cut, legal aid reduced, and the cost of tribunals up a further £250 just to register a case.

Tony Blair has stated that Ed Milliband lost because he should have dropped the socialist rhetoric i.e. moved further to the right and with more talk of competitive ambitious agendas, but with some care for the poor thrown in just like his Victorian forefathers philanthropy rubbish.

That was why the trade unions financed a Labour party in the first place; it was built to wipe this patronizing crap out.

If the mood of the young protesters outside Downing Street is anything to go by the determination to reverse this pro cuts electoral victory of the Tory government has started. Although mostly spontaneous, the largely young people, keenly feel this class war government strongest. The 17 or so arrests at the protest show resolute fighting spirit.

This is something in sharp contrast to the lacklustre event at the elections, where a bland campaign fought by Milliband failed to capture the youth vote. He did latterly ally himself with Russell Brand, a TV personality, that made a living denouncing elections and voting, calling all politicians crooks. He sided with Labour one day before the final vote.

However these are incidental to the main event, the real reason was the people were fed up of the same medicine from both parties. As we know the Tory cuts and prudent shopkeeper style budget, a la Thatcher. which got her government in to power in 1979? This all went down rather well in the shires and country, but the big urban conurbations stayed mostly red or Labour.

Something neither party gambled on or didn't expect though was a nationalist like Nigel Farrage's UKIP party eating up some marginal voting support.

The trade unions had backed Labour to the tune of £16 million, with a few exceptions, which were the RMT (Transport) and a wavering GMB (council) unions, as well as the BAFU (bakers union) pulled political funding, to instead supporting independent socialist slate anti-cuts candidates like TUSC (Trade Union and Socialists Coalition) who stood nationally and got media exposure.

But overall the big three fought it out on a minimal political level, choosing to keep to the rules of cricket and deliver no underhand blows to the midriff. They united only in condemning Scotland‘s attempt at independence. Labour here plays the role of lapdog for Westminster.

This craven servility however saw off one of the traditional voting areas of Labour and they were rewarded at the polls by a catastrophic shift to the SNP taking place. Suddenly Labour's traditional heartlands were destroyed overnight, over 100 years of social protest, the very birth of the Labour movement, even the early communist movements. For the sake of national unity! And they handed it over to the Scots nationalists on a plate.

Here on Merseyside the government sponsored pro- cuts disabilities minister, Wirral MP Esther McVey, lost to a Labour candidate. A general swing to the Labour party took place in the North West as ?gures show, despite the mild opposition, people voted organically against the class enemy.

Merseyside Labour swept the board. All five Westminster MPs retained their seats with the collapse of the Lib/Dem vote. Other parties, especially UKIP grew, as did the Green movement.

What does Cameron’s brand of politics, his lean no nonsense approach, this slim trend, what does it mean? Or what is it symptomatic of? Is it a rerun of Thatcher's shopkeeper Little Englander or, in reverse, Big Englander, that says to its followers let's remove ourselves from Europe and dealing with those awful foreigners on the continent.

They obviously all played on the fear of immigrants, but then let Farrage's UKIP take the fallout and prestige for this tough on migrant's approach, while sending in warships to aid the situation in Italy.

It is a form of condensed conservatism branded to sell to suspicious middle England. The Churchill factor republished myth of an island nation, alongside a girlish infatuation and adoration of American big business with its heavy-handed tactics to all the world‘s problems.

They represent sell-centred smug, elite and comfortable layers in England, that can't be bothered to think about complex world issues, don‘t disturb me politics, just get on with it and muddle through.

A pragmatic spirit of economic laissez-faire philosophic empiricism of the early days of the British Empire or rise of capitalism, thinking that helped build that Empire, but is the formula working still. No! Of course not, after the right media hype, anti-Labour attacks subsides, you have a million low paid jobs, zero hour contracts, a fragile economy based on luck and trading property and arms exports to repress the Arab world's revolts.

They have the scurvy residue of Rule Britannia on their lips; Thatcher had the hype machine of Saatchi and Saatchi's advertising gurus running their campaign. This time around Cameron played on the feelgood factor for those with some gains he assured them they‘re safe with him, no mansion taxes and other threats to equally distribute wealth.

These socialistic type demands would he opposed vigorously. Only the hard working strivers not skivers would be rewarded in his meritocracy system of rule.

In conclusion:-
The Sunday Mail (a right wing pro-Tory newspaper) had an article by Leo McKinstry saying “HOW UKIP HELPED SAVE THE TORIES”. In it he revealed the raison d'eitre of the Farrage campaign quote: “UKIP managed to take votes from the Labour party in a string of marginal seats across England, leading to a string of disastrous losses for Ed Milliband."

Farrage lost his seat in Thanet, he contested, has resigned from politics having done the job of keeping Labour out. He blamed the first past the post system as the reason. Never mentioned during the campaign though. The autopsy on the defeat goes on as the full impact on England and Europe is analysed. Business as usual for capitalism but trouble is brewing in the ranks of all parties. Milliband has gone, Nick Clegg has gone, Vince Cable has gone - the soft side of the Tories coalition.

Now only the rabid bulldog faces the working class as it attempts to defend capitalism from a general revolt.

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