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Sunday, July 26, 2015

What does Labour Party want anyway?

Cat in a Bag by James Whitesmith from flickr (CC-ND)

Please help me understand this.

Other British parties have fairly clear programs:
  • Tories want to balance the budget real fast without taxing the rich too much
  • UKIP wants be racist and hate foreigners
  • SNP wants to get as much power devolved and as much English money as possible, while still being allowed to vote on English matters
  • LibDem wants to get in a coalition somehow, no matter with whom and on what terms
However, I have serious trouble understanding program of Labour. All Labour supporters seem to agree that Tories are very evil, but what would they do instead?

My best understanding of what Harriet Harman has been saying and of Labour program from recent elections they lost, is that they want to do basically what Tories want - eliminate deficit on same schedule - but unlike Tories they're going to feel real sad about it.

I honestly can't tell the difference except in the feels, yet somehow when Tories want to do the cuts to eliminate deficit they're really evil, and when Blairite Labour wants to do that, it's all awesome. Somehow. I'm sure there will be some minor differences between Parties like fox hunting tax by Labour or Tube strikes restrictions by Tories, but is that all? I haven't seen any official statement from this side of Labour party listing major differences from Tory program.

And then there's far left wing of the Labour Party. If I understand correctly, they believe that any reduction of welfare benefits whatsoever, regardless of circumstances, is absolutely evil and proof that Tories and Blairites are basically little Thatchers. Everything else - tuition fees, taxes, minimum wage, NHS, European relations, environment, or what have you - seem to be afterthoughts compared with absolute sanctity of benefits. And yet, that's the funniest part - they still won't say no to eliminating deficit on Tory schedule. Somehow. They're not even committed to large tax increases that would require - just some vague talk about getting rid of tax evasion or somesuch. Wow, why haven't anybody thought of eliminating tax evasion, huh? That's just brilliant.

Anyway, am I missing something? I get the "austerity bad, Tories evil" part, but what does Labour Party actually want to do instead? Are they going to accept higher deficit, increase taxes, cut different things, sell Big Ben to Donald Trump, or what's their economic program? Please help me with this.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

It's simpler than you thought. All they need is coke... and hookers. And 10 quid breakfast.

Source: http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/6560352/Baron-John-Sewel-drug-binges-with-prostitutes.html

Dan Lucraft said...

Labour wants to believe they are the good guys and they are fighting against the evil bad guys. They're the rebellion fighting the empire.

"We're the folk song army,
And every one of us cares.
We all hate poverty, war and injustice,
Unlike the rest of you squares"

Medivh said...

Labour are currently a split house, and are best understood as such. Since Thatcher, the UK has been on a slow march to the right, and the FPTP voting system in the UK pushes the parties together, toward the mean view of the voter.

This has lead to Labour being Tory-lite. Many Labour MPs are OK with this, but others joined to help the working class. Thus the split. Corbyn is of the latter mindset, and is attempting to steer the party back toward the left. Something he's not going to succeed in unless he can change the voting system to something more reasonable first.

tl;dr: each Labourite wants different things, but the party is pretending to be a united front.