On the Labour Party

 Okay first actual blog time, not really sure how to do this, most of my old blog was just me ranting about how much I hate Ben Bradshaw which I can't even remember why I do, but thats not the point. Anyway, 1 2 3, here we go, Bedlam Bedlam, HO HO HO.

What with my recent new-found appreciation for democracy, there comes a new problem and I'm not referring to the lack of cool uniforms, although that is rather annoying. No I am in fact referring to the problem that I must now enter the world of political parties. After some deliberation I came to the conclusion that I should probably join Labour, as they are likely to be more receptive to my Keynesian economics, they are the party that in my view has the most potential to rebuild this country. It should be known that I bear no ill will towards the other parties, simply that they aren't what I'm looking for, I am not going to engage in the kind of "ZOMG TORIES EAT BABIES!" nor "LIB DEMS PUT G-23 PAXILON HYDROCHLORATE IN OUR AIR!" vulgarity that is making politics in this country unbareable. But while I am a future Labour member, I'm gonna join just as soon as I get to my new address in Manchester to avoid paperwork, I am not a Labour supporter.

There are various reasons why a description of myself as a Labour supporter would be inaccurate, firstly their last government, which while not awful, was pretty irresponsible. The fact they were running a deficit during boom times is ridiculous, it doesn't take a genius to work out that if  expenditure exceeds revenue at the point where revenue is at its highest and expenditure on unemployment benefit is at its lowest then obviously this is unsustainable. While this spending probably did a lot of good, I'm not disputing that, I'm simply saying that those  who thought that was viable in the long run without tax increases were living in a fantasy world, probably one filled with double rainbows and robot unicorns.

Some would respond to this by saying "That was the old leadership, theres a new leadership in the Labour party", fair point, but this leads to my second reason for not being a Labour supporter, the current Leadership. No I'm not talking about the fact Ed Miliband is about as inspiring as a deflated balloon, but rather the fact that at the moment the Labour party doesn't really seem to exist for any reason other than to be the Labour party. For example, if you take a walk over to the party website (http://www.labour.org.uk/) then you will notice a number of headings; Home, News, Ed Miliband, Our People, Support Us, Conference 2011 and membersnet. There is not however a heading called "Policies", all the website seems to do is whine about the government. Seriously is this what politics has come to? Am I the only one who sees how ridiculous this is? I feel like I'm taking crazy pills. It seems that the Labour party is taking the idea of being "the opposition" a little too seriously and have become nothing but whiney little girls. For comparison lets look at the BNPs site (http://www.bnp.org.uk/). The third heading is policies. Also the UKIP site (http://www.ukip.org/). There is also a heading called policies. In fact lets look at a few other parties and see which have a list of policies on their site.

The Green party: http://www.greenparty.org.uk/
The SNP: http://www2.snp.org/
Plaid Cymru: http://www.english.plaidcymru.org/?force=1
The Liberal Democrats: http://www.libdems.org.uk/home.aspx#
Conservatives: http://www.conservatives.com/


Seeing a pattern here?

Now this may seem harsh, to be fair it is, I have pretty much just attacked the party I intend to join, but the Labour party shouldn't see this as me whining about them, as unlike them I am going to actually say what they should be doing instead. So here are the areas I feel Labour has "room for improvement", to use that frightfully politically correct term they used in high school.

1. The aforementioned lack of policies. This is really annoying, rather than simply moaning about "BLOODY TORY BLOODY CUTS" the party should say "Here is what we would do, here is why we would do it and here is what we hope it would achieve". Its not really that hard to do, I mean its the kind of thing you learn in high school.
2. Attitude. There is a problem with the fact the Labour party seems too in love with sound bites and spin, as well as this rather annoying habit of using shortened versions of their names to sound cool. Listen "Tony", "Ed" and "Ed", you're not cool, you never will be nor will I. Politics isn't about being cool. Politics has nothing to do with being cool, hence there was no Arthur Fonzarelli MP.
3. Be the "Labour party" not the "Not the Conservative party". While this is kind of a retread of the first point, I feel its important. Stop defining yourself by your opposition to the government, define yourself by what your intend to achieve and how you intend to achieve it. Stop trying to make politics into some kind of war.

Basically the party, like Bishop Brennan, needs a kick up the @&$£, but that is not to say its all bad, the party has a lot of potential, and I believe that if it starts acting like a grown up political party it could do wonders for the country. So m'yeah if you could just go ahead and sort out those things I talked about by the time I join that'd be great.


The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power. - O'Brien. (1984, George Orwell)