I’m sure you feel as I do about last week’s General Election. Whether or not you are pleased with the result, don’t you just wish the media would just talk about something else? After all, it’s not the end of the world as we know it, is it? Well, not quite.
Honestly? I’m still very sad about it. I really hoped that by tomorrow, a Labour government would be abolishing the cruel bedroom tax, saving the NHS from wholesale privatisation and charging, stopping us from leaving the EU and saving the UK from breaking apart. But let’s be honest and realistic: the public, or at least 37% of those who voted didn’t share my views. And in our version of democracy, my version of a grim future for the British people is for someone else a brighter day.
We need to be clear that the NHS is now under great threat. Its privatisation, which we must never forget was started by ‘New’ Labour, probably cannot be stopped now and by 2020, I expect huge swathes of it will be in the hands of huge corporations. With the huge spending cuts the government is about to bring in, charging in the NHS can surely not now be avoided. I have no doubt that soon, maybe even later this year, charging for basic GP appointments will begin and many services will no longer be free. And you know what? Other than complaining and marching, there’s nothing we can do about it because it’s what enough people in the country voted for. People like me, who are Labour by nature, lost the argument, we lost the arguments on everything.
I am extremely gloomy about the future of this country. The starting pistol will soon be fired in a two year campaign that will culminate in the UK leaving the EU (in my opinion), something that will completely dominate the media at the expense of everything else. And when we leave the EU, Scotland, and maybe even Wales, will leave the UK, leaving it as being England and Northern Ireland. I think things really are that grim.
So what can Labour do? The answers are complicated. Ed Miliband was criticised for running a campaign that was too left wing, which is frankly ridiculous. Disjointed, perhaps, and lacking a clear vision, yes, but left wing? No one was talking about nationalising anything, despite the fact that most people would welcome the railways, for example, returning to public ownership, he would have kept Trident, he wasn’t going to ban private schools. It was about managing the economy in the interests of the many, not the few, but for whatever reason the public didn’t agree.
I don’t see this stuff in terms of left and right. My politics are simple: a strong NHS, a meritocratic society which encourages social mobility, dignity in old age, support for the vulnerable. These, surely, don’t define me as being from the “far left” as our local Ukip parliamentary candidate laughably described me.
I don’t see a return to ‘New’ Labour or, worse still, the tomfoolery of the 1980s where the likes of Tony Benn steered the party to the distant unelectable fringes of politics. But whoever leads the party now, I don’t see the return of Labour quite possibly in my lifetime because it simply does not attract sufficient support in England alone.
Certainly, I am pessimistic about the future of our country with the real possibility that we will become a small, isolationist country, separate from Europe but still bound by EU rules if we want to trade with them and one without a basic safety net for the undeserving poor.
The UK is divided already, with Labour all but confined to the big cities of England, Tories owning the shires, still growing nationalist parties both south and north of the border. Miliband, for all his positives (and I feel there were many, including his great intellect and his inherent decency), was not able to persuade a sceptical public that he was up to the job but more importantly he did not offer a vision of what a Labour government would be like and how we would be better off. People actually believed we would be worse off under Labour.
I’ve really had enough politics for now, especially given that my team suffered a humiliating defeat and I don’t see them rebuilding anytime soon, regardless of who becomes the next Labour leader.
