Robert Shiels:
> Over the next 4 years, Labour
> will fail to deliver their promises yet again, and the
> country will swing back to the party of low taxes, who will
> be re-elected in 2006.
Part of the reason why they haven't delivered the promises that I think are
important (decent public services) is because they've hamstrung themselves
with this clueless tory low-tax approach. I genuinely believe that the
public are sick of watching the NHS, education system etc wasting away on a
starvation diet and would be willing to pay a bit of extra tax to make sure
that their kids can get schooled and that their sick can be healed.
As mentioned earlier in the thread by someone far more articulate than me, I
think the Labour Party lurched to the right just when the country was moving
back left again.
Let's face it, it's possible to say "Labour isn't working", but after the
systematic dismantling of manufacturing industry, the fragmentation and
decay of our rail infrastructure at the hands of private companies who sack
thousands of track maintenance staff to increase profit margins, boom and
bust economics leading to the worst recession in decades, deregulation of
the cattle-feed industry leading directly to the BSE crisis that made
British meat an international laughing-stock/pariah ... I could go on ...
I'd say that conservative ideas worked a lot worse.
You can't expect public services that have seen two decades of alternating
neglect and red-tape frenzy, with a workforce that is completely demoralised
after being scapegoated for twenty years ("What do you mean we've screwed
the education system - it's the fault of those loony-left teachers and their
'progressive' ideas!") to be turned round in four years, especially if the
government doesn't have the guts to make a hard decision and actually raise
the cash to do it.
You want to reduce waiting lists and class sizes? It all costs, people. This
election should be fought on exactly those lines: low taxes and
ever-shittier public services versus increased tax and a national
infrastructure that actually works. And do you know what? I think that
people would choose the latter. I think that's what they chose in 1997 (not
so much "I'm sick of the tories" as "I'm sick of the state in which the
tories have left the bnationspublic services") but Blair and chums thought
it was down to their economic bandwaggoning.
I have deeply unfashionable political views, though. I think tax and spend
is a *good idea*.
--
matt | I mean to make you move with my planet infallible
