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The end of austerity should be Labour’s flagship policy, according to Michael Meacher MP. Don’t get too excited – Labour has to get into office first, and we’ve no idea how bad the Conservative-led Coalition will wreck the systems of government before May 2015.
This is turning into a very bad weekend to be a Conservative.
The Nasty Party has lost control of 10 councils, with hundreds of councillors unseated. Its claims about people on benefits are falling flat when faced with the facts. It has fallen foul of UK and EU law with its fake psychometric test, which turned out to have been stolen from the USA. Its claim that Labour has no policies has proved to be utterly unfounded.
… What was that last one again?
Yes, you must have heard at least one Tory on telly, rabidly barking that Labour can’t criticise the Coalition if it doesn’t have any policies of its own. Those people were not telling the truth – even though they probably thought they were (poor deluded fools).
I am indebted to Michael Meacher MP, for posting information on the following in his own blog. He lists Labour promises, as revealed to date – and it’s quite a long list. Much – or indeed all – of it may have also appeared in an article on the Green Benches site, I believe. So let’s see…
Labour has already promised to:
- Repeal the Health and Social Care Act (otherwise known as the NHS privatisation Act)
- Build 125,000+ homes
- Regulate private rents
- Promote a Living Wage for public sector workers and shame the private sector into following that lead
- Offer a minimum 33-40 per cent cut in tuition fees
- Limit rail fare increases to one per cent
- Reimpose the 50p rate of income tax for the super-rich
- Impose a mansion tax on the rich
- Repeat the bankers’ bonus tax
- Reverse the bedroom tax
- Scrap Workfare and replace it with a ‘compulsory’ Jobs Guarantee (I’m not too keen on this one but it’s been promised)
- Offer a VAT cut or a ‘temporary’ VAT holiday
- Implement the High Pay Commission report in its entirety
- Scrap Ofgem and bring in proper energy price regulation
- Break up the banks and set up a National Investment Bank, and
- Support mining communities and clean coal technology.
In his article, Mr Meacher suggests that Labour needs to go further, with a really strong hook on which to hang all these policies. He suggests the following:
We will end austerity.
Yes, I thought that might stun you. Let’s have it again:
We will end austerity.
Now that you’ve had time to get used to the idea, I hope you’re applauding as much as I was when I read the article. Why not end austerity? The squeeze on public spending and services that David Cameron and his Boy Chancellor imposed in 2010 has not worked at all. There is now no basis for it – I wrote to Mr Osborne, requesting information on the other foundations of the policy after it was revealed that his main justification contained a huge error, and he has not replied, so clearly he has nothing to say. Its loss will be unlamented and can’t come soon enough.
There’s more in the article so I invite you to visit Mr Meacher’s site and read it yourself.
As for Mr Cameron… he’s a survivor but he’s starting to look tired and the number of his own party members who are stabbing him in the back is growing – Lord Tebbit has stuck his own knife in (again) during a BBC interview.
I wouldn’t bet any money that Cameron will still be PM by the end of the year.
Mike Sivier's blog 