ConDem'd in hatred

You would have thought after the Lib Dems showed their true colours by creating a reactionary coalition government with the Tories, abandoning all their key pledges and voting for catastrophic cuts to public services, that the entire Labour Party would have woken up to them being our enemies - and the enemies of ordinary working people - not our potential allies. Luke Akehurst gives the game away in LabourList.

He continues - I support AV but because I see it as a way of killing the Lib Dems, not resuscitating them - because it will mean they can no longer persuade Labour people to vote tactically for them in areas like the South West (there is no need for tactical votes under AV), so the true weakness of the Lib Dem core vote will be exposed.

And the real deal? The opportunity exists for a fundamental realignment of British politics where all progressive opinion unites behind Labour and the LDs are left as a tiny right-wing rump in permanent alliance with the Tories.



The nasty party rolls on, and on, and on, and on...

Tribalism, hatred & Labour

'George Osborne has just gambled your future on an extreme economic theory that has failed whenever and wherever it has been tried' writes Johann Hari in today's Independent. 'The Bullingdon boys want to finish what Thatcher began' is Seumas Milne's verdict while Polly Toynbee rages yet again 'The glee club on the government benches could hardly contain their delight'. Next we'll have the 'don't dare to be old, don't dare to be ill' speech and all the other ideologically driven false rhetoric that the left has pedalled for years, as if schools, hospitals and welfare did not exist before 1997, and all we need is perpetual Labour government.

I think we all understand that Labour committed itself to delivering £83bn of public expenditure cuts over the next four years - the largest program of cuts since the 1920's. Having left office in May bequeathing the largest budget deficit in our history, Labour additionally committed us to a doubling of the national debt - the total of all borrowings owed by this country - to over £1.4 trillion by the end of this parliament in 2015. That's what 'halving the deficit' - not eliminating it - actually means. The other half continues to grow. What a legacy for 13 years of Labour government.

Now you could be forgiven for thinking that such cuts will produce the greatest social catastrophe in our history. The truth however, is just not so. Total government expenditure as a percentage of GDP will fall. But only back to levels last seen in ...2007. Just three years ago.

I have to say that back in the day - the 'colder and crueller country' of 2007 as Johann Hari might call it - I didn't notice the civil war now being forecast on our streets as our welfare state had been 'dismantled' (as Seumas Milne says). I didn't notice the massed rallies of trade union protesters as Blair, Brown and Labour 'slashed and burned' (as Ed's Miliband and Balls put it) the welfare state to a level that was unacceptable for a decent and compassionate society.

The truth is that even with the reductions in public expenditure bequeathed by Labour, valued front line services - hospitals, schools etc - are being protected, whilst the essential reforms to public service delivery that Brown and Labour ducked, are now being undertaken by the most radical government of the last 100 years.

Like any government they will get things wrong. They will make mistakes. The last Labour government certainly did. But they deserve better than this torrent of 'emotion and prejudice' that is tribal hatred. The nasty party is still alive and well. It is called Labour.