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I hate to drone on about this, but I did the new Lab thing and now I'm fully inoculated against it. Way back in 97 I went door to door for Bob Blizzard, despite being firmly left I bit my tongue and went out because "anything was better than the Tories".
And I did this even though Blair made a point of scabbing on the unions, had zero plans to spend any differently to the Tories and anemic ideas to rebalance society. A labour government that willingly tied it's hands prior to entering office.
It seemed to take all of two minutes for Blair to sell the red wall down the river, denying there was a North South divide. And then came the demonisation of people out of work, asylum seekers the disabled.
Everything you could means test got more of it, and of course, once it's tested it's hard to roll back. Unlike say, sure start, which could be burnt down in minutes. New Lab was an exercise in baking in some of the worst social injustice of the past decades.
All under the guise of doing good. This is the danger of thinking you're the good guys, without ever really asking hard questions about why. Clapping like seals for the red team because Tories are awful (and they are) just sets you up to be the kid with a finger in the dam.
And if you don't believe me, I invite you to take a look at the real legacy. PFI that's cost us a fortune, Yarlswood, more inequality, ever diminishing union powers, vicious disability testing, continuing housing shortages etc. Etc.
And don't tell me a Lab government of any persuasion is an unalloyed good. A government that refuses to attend to corrosive long term trends is just a placeholder for the next round of degradation at best.
With the current labour iteration I'd note we don't even have to wait for the degradation. The spy cops bill for example, and very obviously not holding the government to account over Covid because it doesn't test well in focus groups.
What are we being offered to make people's lives better here? More authoritarianism and disturbing unwillingness to make a life saving case because the argument may initially be hard. That's grim electoral arithmetic.
