The Labour Party's success in the small Scottish constituency of Glenrothes yesterday with only a 5% swing to the Scottish Nationalists, after a wipe out had been long predicted, is a very significant signal that Brown and the Labour Government are back in contention. They are now nationally only 8% behind the Conservative Party.
The politics are of course reformist, social-democrat, with a strong and overt allegiance now to Keynesianism. The Conservative Party vote actually fell in Glenrothes and the Conservative Party candidate lost their deposit. The macho upper class taunting that you can see from time to time on your television screens during "Prime Minister's Question time" in the old chamber of the House of Commons, is no longer working for the Conservative Party. Inteviews as lunch time with Scots from this constituency just said they thought the media had been giving Brown a hard time, so there is an element of class-based reaction in their response. Today there was a signal that the Labour government is likely to follow up its monetary stabilisation with a fiscal intervention - highly likely therefore later in the month to be reduction in taxation for poor and middle earners. It is all indisputably about reforms of capitalism. It means that Brown will now go to the G20 summit, and will be liaising with the Obama team from a position of relative authority, about shaping up Keynesian amendments to the global financial system designed to inject liquidity into the system at the global level under the aegis of the IMF, if not in November, then in January. Chris Burford London _______________________________________________ pen-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.csuchico.edu/mailman/listinfo/pen-l
