Tuesday, May 10, 2005

Status Bloody Quo

Well, here we are and here we are and here we go, as the chaps did sing. The votes are cast, the ballots boxed and the officers returned. GE2005 is all over, bar the leadership struggles. The Tory buzzard is flapping a broken-winged spiral to lord-knows-what fate. Some envisage a phoenix-like metamorphosis into, perhaps, New Conservatives (or 'Neo Cons' for short). Others see it splitting between the centre-right and the UKIP tendency. Fingers crossed.

Labour has suffered the appropriate kick in the nuts that it was gagging for, but largely for the wrong reasons. An anti-war vote is all very well but where did the anti-PFI vote go? Hopefully, Labour's centre of gravity will be drawn Leftwards by the success of Respect and independents.

Disappointingly, the Liberal Democrats are to reconsider their mildly redistributive tax policy. Should this be the case, then their one distinguishing divergence from the status quo would be extinguished. It is almost as though, having failed to capture the hearts and minds of disaffected Labourites in sufficient quantity, they are to try groping in the political darkness for dissaffected soft Tories.

Know, however, that Lib Dem policy is not dictated to the party from the top down as with other leading brands. Lib Dem policies must be voted through by the members themselves at their party conferences. Many old-school Liberal Democrats may feel that it is the task of parties to persuade the electorate that their policies are correct, rather than the reverse.
None of this would need to happen under a system of proportional representation.

The real tragedy, of course, is that nothing at all has changed. The agenda remains closed - how to make the world a safer place for capital to run free. In his more nihilistic moments, Quixotematic fears that the agenda will remain unchanged, sans force majeur.

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