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Will the UK wake up in 2015 to how disastrous right-wing ideology has been?

Thatcher Blair and CameronThe end of 2014 has certainly brought home some hard economic truths. Osborne told us he had a long-term economic plan and it was working because the UK had the fastest-growing economy in the G7. Well, it isn’t: the UK economy is now growing at only half the rate of the US economy, and even Australia is now growing faster than the UK.

Worse, the UK economy is slowing, David Kern, chief economist at the British Chambers of Commerce, comments that “the stark revision (downward) in annual growth confirms that the pace of recovery is slowing.” The budget deficit, which according to Osborne’s long-term economic plan, was supposed now to be £40bn is actually £100bn. Worse, the deficit is now beginning to rise, not fall at all. The re-balancing of the economy, another key part of the government’s long-term economic plan, hasn’t materialised and in fact has got much worse. Kern again: “the current balance of payments deficit has risen to an unsustainably high level….owing to the fall in net investment”. Business investors clearly don’t believe Osborne either.

Then there are the political truths coming home to roost. Cameron has announced with great flourish – part of that catalogue of wholesale mis-statements, dishonesty and denial of reality which is forever Cameron – austerity and the cuts are largely over and very little remains to b e done. Osborne immediately contradicted this in the Autumn Statement by declaring roundly that he intended to take another £30bn in cuts in this next parliament, and that was just for starters. Anyway the stark figures – a deficit of £100bn and rising – tell their own irrefutable message, that the political ideology of unrelenting austerity is now a busted flush.

It has laid waste communities in the north, made large parts of Britain into a third world country dependent on food banks, and generated a sense of utter insecurity and abandonment by all three main political parties until Labour has the guts to propound the real solution which is sustainable economic growth. But the biggest illustration of the collapse of right-wing ideology had its roots in the Scottish referendum, now consolidated by the SNP surge and wholesale repudiation of the the right-wing-driven Westminster Establishment.

Right-wing military ideology has led to the disasters known as the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. They were dishonestly begun for the wrong reason – to discover non-existent WMD in Iraq – but actually to enable the war criminal Blair to proclaim that Britain (he) was standing shoulder to shoulder with Bush – at the expense of course of several hundred British soldiers’ lives. Too much of what was done was driven, not by military need of political justification, but simply to impress the US. And it didn’t succeed even in that. General Jack Keane, former vice chief of staff of the US army, put it succinctly in 2013 speaking at Sandhurst about the twin debacles of Basra and Helmand: “Gentlemen, you let us down; you let us down badly”.

5 Comments

  1. swatantra says:

    Lets make this the Year of Progressive Pragmatism, and bin all ‘ideologies’.

  2. Ric Euteneuer says:

    No, they won’t, because, as of yet, they’ve seen no negative effect by voting for the “BNP in Blazers”. And with 2 MPs and 1 Parish Council, we’re not about to find out before the election.

    Witness the rise and fall of the Pirate Party in Germany, with no discernible political philosophy, but (for 4 years or so) a slew of elected representatives. Once people realised what they stood for (nothing), out they went. And in came the AfD (Alternativ fuer Deutschland) who began with an Alan Sked style moderate leader who were against the Euro as a currency but in favour of the EU, but who have been taken over by the far right and are heavily involved presently in the Pegida protests in the East of the country – sound familiar?

    1. John reid says:

      Bnp in Blazers, do they want to build lots of council homes leave NATO, buy back all the nationalised industries,?

  3. Robert says:

    Again the same issues labour now speaks for people who are hard working, if your not hard working your done for, as we all known Nurses doctor council workers are not hard working only MP’s are hard working as such are entitled to a larger pay rise.

    Today I cannot for the life of me say labour speaks for me they do not, so if a party no longer speaks for you and lets be honest pensioners can make or break a party, and since the labour party sees anyone who is not hard working worthy of being mention why the hell should we vote for them.

    the next election it will be hung and it would not surprise me in the least if the two big boys come together to, they will say it makes sense to get this country working again.

    Cameron leader Miliband the deputy.

    The first gates will be manufactured with Work sets you free on them, these will be transported to very job center , which will be moved into large wooded area’s of the country.

    I just cannot vote labour.

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