…SO USE IT!
The Labour Party has lost its 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 collapsing after 14 years of Tory asset-stripping and privatisation…
- …and supporting the poorest in our communities
- taking on the vile, divisive, racist narrative of Reform, and telling the true story of how important migrants are to Britain
- 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 all of us who feel betrayed.
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.
Now, with both the Tories and Labour having made themselves irrelevant – the Tories by being corrupt and incompetent, and Labour by abandoning the working class and people of colour – a huge gap has opened up in the political system for the first time in living memory.
Reform has benefited from being relatively new and new to power, so it is seen 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).
But, for the first time, we see the rise of a viable progressive alternative to the populist Right – the Greens – who have moved left to occupy the vacuum 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;
- 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 taxation on the wealthy (which are at the lowest they’ve been since the 1st World War!) to pay for our public services so all can benefit…