…SO USE IT!
The Labour Party has lost it’s way – with a huge mandate at the last election (albeit by default), they had a chance to make a real difference to the country and the world – by taxing the rich so they can save the NHS, schools and communities that are in a state of collapse after 14 years of Tory asset-stripping and privatisation, and supporting the poorest in our communities; by taking on the divisive racist narrative of Reform and telling the true story of how important migrants are to Britain; by tackling the climate and environmental crisis which is destroying our planet and our countryside.
But instead, it chose to accept the Reform story and try to woo voters who had drifted to the Right, and to get further in bed with Big Business and the 1%.
As a consequence, they are haemorrhaging supporters and will lose a massive number of seats at the next election – it will take a decade or more to restore any trust from those who feel betrayed.
With both the Tories and now Labour having made themselves irrelevant – the Tories by being corrupt and incompetent and Labour by abandoning the working class – a huge gap has opened up in the political system for the first time in living memory. The First-Past-The-Post electoral system has kept the two dinosaurs in place for a hundred years – they just kept coming back like zombies, regardless of whether people really support their policies.
Reform has benefited from being relatively new and new to power, so it is seen, rightly or wrongly, as a ‘breath of fresh air’ by many voters (even though they just espouse a return to the bigotry, racism and inequality of the 50s or Nazi Germany).
Now, for the first time, we see the rise of a viable alternative to the populist Right – the Greens, who have moved partly to occupy the vacuum on the Left vacated on the death of Old, Socialist Labour, but with a fresh, modern outlook. For Greens, it is clear that to save the planet from destruction, we have to stop supporting the global corporations that made it that way, that continue to blindly and endlessly exploit human and planetary resources, for the sole purpose of generating more profit for their owners and shareholders. The only end for that is eventual destruction. So the Capitalist system as we know it has got to go, or at least to change drastically, if there is to be a future for our children. We no longer have a choice.
As a bonus, we will get a party that actually opposes the disgusting genocide in Gaza and is not too scared to say so; a party that opposes oppression and bigotry against people of all colours and religions and believes that desperate refugees should not be allowed to drown in the channel or be sent back to persecution; and that supports increasing taxtion on the wealthy (which are the lowest they’ve been since the 1st Wordl War!) to pay for our public services so all can benefit…
The fact is that, for the first time, we at last have a viable alternative to the ‘more of the same’, business-as-usual, free-market, poor-punishing, globalised, planet-destroying feeding frenzy… We need a country run by people who care – not those who just want to make money.
We will now have a chance to vote for a real and positive change.