Posted by Hari on Saturday, May 24, 2014 with 3 comments | Labels: Article, Austerity, Big Society, elections
Trust isn’t about knowing someone will do the right thing. It is about knowing what someone will do. UKIP seems trustworthy because what the party says is such a mix of keen insight as well as crass stupidity that they can’t be making it up. If UKIP were crafty and untrustworthy they wouldn’t be quite so crass. Whether we agree with them or not we trust them to mean what they say. Which means we know whether or not to vote for them.
On the other hand we don’t trust the Tories because of the things they do. And we don’t trust Labour because of the things they don’t do.
The Tories are at least consistent. Whether in power or not they argue that giving the rich more will benefit everyone. Growing inequality in the UK shows that this isn’t actually true. Public services are being cut (legal aid, free universities, NHS, schools and so much more) that are needed because most people aren’t paid enough to buy these services privately. OECD figures show that without tax transfers 30% of Britons would be in poverty instead of the current 10%. The Tories want to let those who have money keep it, and are not fussy what they have to say and do to achieve this. Tory calculated dissembling wins the votes of people who watch the 1% get much richer, the 10% get somewhat richer, but leave the 90% to stagnate and fall back. In a democracy you need the votes of more than the top 10% to win power. The Tories win elections by fooling enough of the balance. Eventually people get fed up being made fools of.
Of course, much of what the Tories do currently was started by Labour when it was in government. Since Tony Blair, Labour only behaves like Labour should when in opposition. When in power Labour becomes Tory, abandoning its core supporters. Civil liberties in modern times were never curtailed faster than under the recent Labour government. University fees, Private Finance Initiatives, privatisations, outsourcing, the chronic decline in manufacturing, giving the finance industry carte blanche to rip off and ruin, stagnation of wages of the 90% all happened during the Labour government.
If during their leaderships William Hague and Michael Howard had the wit to instruct their party to vote for Tony Blair’s policies instead of against, they would have exposed that Labour was behaving like the Tories. Labour support may have drained away a decade before it actually did. And Labour would have reverted to being Labour sooner.
Whether that would have been a good thing or not is another question. But the 2014 European election result was Britons wishing pox on both their houses, Tory and Labour. At least UKIP is what it says it is.
Now Labour and Tory will scuttle to win over UKIP supporters by trying to out-UKIP UKIP. But they will do this in the wrong way, by trying to be tough on immigrants. Will they work out that the thing that attracts many voters to UKIP isn’t their xenophobia, but their straightforwardness?
UKIP’s 25% of the 2014 local election vote, where about 40% of the electorate voted, is only 10% of the electorate. On the other hand 60% of the electorate didn’t turn out to vote at all. It is that 60% of non-voters political parties should aim for. Trying to pry votes from UKIP’s 10% with the crowbar of heightened xenophobia isn’t good for anyone. Trying to coax voters from the 60% who didn’t vote at all is good for everyone.
How is this done? In the end it is the economy. Politicians need to stop snouting around for ways to trick a majority into voting for policies that do them no good. Globalisation and technology means the economy will grow best with fewer working Britons. Labour and Conservative have concluded these excess citizens should be laid off or pushed down into lower paid more menial work. However a Democracy belongs to everyone. Labour and Conservative need policies that will actually improve the lot of the majority, rather than running covert operations to enrich the few by excluding the many.  |
| Source organisation: Paris School of Economics http://g-mond.parisschoolofeconomics.eu/topincomes/ |
A democracy elects government for the benefit of the majority. Recent governments have governed in the interests of the small minority. They have evidently won power by promising things they then fail to do.
And that’s the wonder of UKIP. You may or may not think they are ghastly. But you can trust they probably are what they say they are.
Are these claims honest?
ReplyDelete26 million of the European unemployed are gunning for jobs in Britain (when 2 million are already here), or
75% of our laws are made in Brussels, or
thousands of MoT test centres could close under EU proposals.
Worst of all pretending to be a party of the people when they obviously are a far right Tory spin off which has absorbed the BNP. Farage's background is in stockbroking, just like his father and son, and he is more likely to give free reign to the financial sector more than any party.
No UKIP will appeal to Europhobes, racists, xenophobes etc because more than 10% of the population support these views, and calling them such simply endorses their suitability for that sector of the electorate! True they call a spade a spade and that appeals to the same pseudo-racist sector of the population.
I was with you right up until "but you can trust they (UKIP) probably are what they say they are."
ReplyDeleteUKIP say they are one thing, but a troubling undercurrent of bigotry and racism seems to hang around them like flies on a dog turd. And the prospect are very slim of their MEP's rejecting the very gravy-train lifestyle that they claim Brussels wastes money on.
Do I trust UKIP? No, in fact their "honest John" approach makes me all the more suspicious, mainly because of the perfidy the other main parties have doled (literally) out over the years.
As for Russell Brand, well this is what inaction brings you faux intellectual tit. I'm he'll be weeping for Britain while living it up on LA.
We need to get people engaged enough to vote. What about having a paper with 'none of the above' as an option. If these outnumber (or are a pre-determined % of) the other votes then have a re-run or disqualify existing candidates.... make them work harder to get out and meet people. It may, then, seem worthwhile to voters to register their feelings- although negative. It's OK for Brand to pontificate.... what does the state of the country matter to him? He's doing OK thank you very much.
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