A Good Kicking

Posted By: Wera Hobhouse
Date Posted: 04/03/2011

A Good Kicking for whom?

I woke up again this morning to the headline that the Liberal Democrats got a good kicking, this time in yesterday’s Barnsley by- election. Since Lib Dem bashing has become a national sport, journalists didn’t have to think long to come up with that headline.

Had they been a little less lazy then a much more interesting headline would have been: People overwhelmingly return a party back to power whose previous member has gone to jail for expenses fraud.

Only 6 weeks ago something similar happened in Oldham East. An MP had to resign from his seat because of wrong-doing and his party gets back in.

What these two results seem to show is that cleaning up politics is not important for people in Barnsley and Oldham. It seems to indicate that people easily forgive corruption and wrong-doing by politicians as long as their party promises them some castles in the sky or scares them.

Winning elections by playing on peoples’ irrationalities is a cheap victory for which no thinking Labour party supporter should be proud.

When I grew up in the seventies being left wing was about having a critical mind and being sceptical of big party manipulation; the left stood up for emancipation and freedom of the individual against the apparatus of the state and the big parties, whose self interest perpetuates the status quo.

None of the ideals are alive in the Labour party today. The Labour party as it presents itself today is full of people and messages, used to power but void of new ideas, blocking progress or change, unresponsive to a proper rational debate and unable to admit past mistakes. This is the attitude of a tired party stuck in negativity and denial.

This Labour only appeals to voters who are as depressed, resigned and negative about the future as them; so resigned in fact, that they allow a party to continue in power in their area, whose members are corrupt, manipulative and deeply cynical.