I think the real point is that there is hardly anything to choose between the two main parties. Whether the Tories (most likely) get in or Labour performs some kind of electoral Lazarus trick, they will both:
- Cut public spending
- Increase taxation
- Fail to reduce the gap between rich and poor
- Kow-tow to a US-driven foreign policy agenda
- Remain hostile to the EU
- Fail to properly regulate the financial sector
- Continue to allow unfettered hostile foreign take-overs of British companies
- Pander to xenophobic, anti-immigrant lobby
- Continue political meddling in the work of health, education, judicial, media and social work professionals
Some of these interest me too. For example, there's nothing wrong in cutting public spending if you can get it through to the likes of civil servants to budget properly and pay for only the needed. Things like bobbies on the beat and nurses, whilst things like dustbin inspectors or brick walls just for vandals to spraypaint on can be ditched. (I'm not even talking 'art installation' either, though the NHS blowing millions on stones and daubs does waste more.) That politicians were the ones to implement such rubbish in the first place is a good reason to put things right.
Taxation doesn't need to be raised as often if it's spent wisely. It's almost the oldest profession to gather public money and spend as much as possible to prevent having your budgets cut.
There's no way to close the gap between rich and poor, unless you punish rich people for having made something of themselves by taking away from them more money than Wilson took from the Beatles. That assumes that making money, by whatever means, is a criminal offence of a kind. We're not living in pre-1990 Eastern Europe you know. And as long as the poor are still better off than they were during the 60s or 70s, especially with more guaranteed benefits, that still reflects nicely even on New Labour.
It's not being very hostile to the EU to sign a parade of treaties and agreements feeding it more power transferred from your own centre of government. I'd hate to see the politicians' idea of love for it if they think they hate it.
I agree to an extent with this foreign companies taking over British companies complaint. The British Empire started the multi-national conglomorate thing in the spirit of free enterprise, so there's nothing really wrong with the idea of owning your own huge company. But there should have been at least some kind of line in the sand. Asset stripping and shedding thousands of jobs five minutes after taking on the workers is being just a bit too transient an interpretation of world market economics.
It depends on who individual 'anti-immigrants' are, but I don't think New Labour has particularly pandered. There's a real public feeling against the immigration scandal, with even many settled long-time immigrants saying they feel a pinch and that the older Britain they admired is disappearing.
http://www.debatepolitics.com/europe/65404-lunatics-new-labour-state-4.html#post1058552128
Which examples of meddling in the judiciary, etc, are you thinking of? Is this a coded opposition to politicians even remotely trying to run things in line with a public consensus? (If so, it would only be bad insofar as politicians should set up a system to run properly in the first place, rather than set things how they want and control individual cases if PC runs too mad sometimes.)
