Gary Younge (Guardian Utd): Playing the loyalty card

From the Unlimited (UK
Dated Monday May 2

Playing the loyalty card
Faced with defection over Iraq and a falling turnout, Labour blames the electorate rather than its own policies
By Gary Younge

For a party that long ago abandoned any pretence of class struggle, class envy seems to come easily to New Labour. Redressing economic inequality through more progressive taxation of the rich is out. Ridiculing the wealthy who refuse to support them regardless of what they do is, apparently, in.

First to the barricades is Peter Hain, who defines the rich not by what they earn or own but what they drink. "There's now a kind of dinner party critic who quaffs shiraz or chardonnay and just sneeringly says, 'You are no different from the Tories'," he said recently. "Most of the people in this category are pretty comfortably off; it's not going to be the end of the world if they get a Tory government. In a working-class constituency like mine, this is a lifeline. It's not a luxury." Other advocates for New Labour have slammed Labour defectors for their "bruschetta orthodoxies" and lambasted anyone who refuses to vote Labour as a result of the war as "decadent" and "self-indulgent".

We will come back to Mr Hain's constituency later. For now let us examine the basis on which New Labour and its supporters are attempting to shame the liberal bourgeoisie back into the fold in time for polling day. The substance of the allegation is pretty straightforward. Poor people need a Labour government for health, education and the minimum wage. Such things are of little consequence to the middle classes, who are preoccupied with such trivial matters as war. So the haves who seek to punish New Labour because of the dead in Falluja are selfish. By taking their votes elsewhere they will be punishing the have-nots by letting in a Tory government. In short, conscience is the preserve of the idle rich; the toiling masses have more basic needs that only Labour can fulfil.

Baseless in fact and flawed in logic, this argument marks the brazen, self-serving scaremongering of a party whose most attractive feature is not what it will do or has done but what it is not - the Conservatives. The omission of the Iraqi poor - not to mention those murdered, tortured and injured in our name - from this "lifeline" renders it morally specious. But every time Michael Howard leers from the screen such threats are newly endowed with an urgent appeal.

So first, some facts. There is as much veracity to the claim that voting for the Liberal Democrats will let the Tories through the back door as there was that Saddam Hussein was 45 minutes from killing us all.

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they refuse to accept responcibility to this very day.

peace

Paraphrased. No copy of Hamlet handy.

Anybody who quotes Shakespeare is welcomed by me.

Welcome!

"A touch, a touch, I do confess."

Laertes during the duel in Act 5.

:toast:

peace

...it is actually quite difficult to find any actual policy proposals for the next parliament! What you tend to get instead is some statistics to show how wonderful the government is and lots of hysterical screaming about how people should not vote their conscience as apparently, that would "let the Tories in".

And even then when you do look at the Labour programme, it's very similar to the Tory programme. This begs the question of why I should vote Labour when I already have a Tory MP who promises to do much the same things!

The problem with New Labour is that they're not much different than our New Democrats. The best reason New Democrats can give American progressives to vote for them is that they're not Republicans.

Normally, a New Democrat is better than a Republican, but it gets frustrating at times. Years ago, in the Congressional district in which I live in California, we had a Democratic congressman who supported the Contra Wars in Nicaragua and supported a controversial budget proposal sent to Congress by President Bush (the real President Bush, the one who actually won an election). The Congressman ran for re-election and lost. Why did he lose? The left-wing splinter party candidate took 14% of the vote; normally, such a candidate would consider it a moral victory to get 3%. Now that's what's you call a protest vote.

But his saving grace is that the Tories are truly abhorrent, which makes his "Vote for us or it's the Tories" scaremongering slightly more persuasive. The Tories have also run a pretty bad campaign in my opinion.

And even then the Lib Dems could have done with being a little bit more forceful but then again they cuddly conensus types for as long as anyone can remember. This has not been a very good election camapign, and I am worried that in the long run, we shall all lose from it.

It sounds like a really bad campaign, especially by the Tories. Blair seems to be winning as much by default as anything. It's hard for the Tories to capitalize on the unpopularity of the war when they're even more gung-ho for it than Blair. Consistant opposition to the war is biggest thing the LibDems have going for them.

Vast, vast differences. If Clinton hadn't wimped out on the healthcare thing, the comparison could begin to be made. Much and all as admire Clinton as an American President, in Briatin or Australia (where I'm orginally from) he'd be a wet Tory.