By guest author, Peter Tatchell
Gordon Brown and Labour are doomed unless they start enacting policies based on the traditional Labour values they dumped in 1997.
Under Labour the gap between the rich and poor has widened. While giving perks and breaks to the super-rich, Gordon Brown's abolition of the 10p starting rate of tax has penalised low income earners. The government's u-turn and compensation package will not benefit everyone who has lost out. Some people will still be worse off. Either the 10p rate should be reinstated or personal allowances should be raised to compensate for its abolition.
The mishandling of the 10p tax issue is symptomatic of the arrogance and insensitivity that now characterises the government.
Gordon Brown has also lost all sense of priorities. Labour plans to waste £100 billion on unpopular policies like Trident nuclear missiles, ID cards, new road building, more nuclear power stations, privatising public services, two new super-aircraft carriers and the on-going wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The Green Party opposes these wasteful, damaging Labour policies. We would invest the £100 billion that Labour plans to squander – and the £2 billion a year raised by the air passenger duty – to fund affordable housing, save local post offices, increase pensions, generate renewable energy, improve flood defences and on cheaper, more efficient public transport.
We also want to see an end to Britain's democratic deficit, which means the replacement of the House of Lords with an elected second chamber, a fair voting system for Westminster elections to ensure representative government, and the scrapping of plans to detain terror suspects for up to 42 days without charge.
If Gordon Brown starts to adopt these policies, then perhaps he might be able to turn around Labour's dire poll ratings. If he doesn't, he will, in effect, be handing the next general election to David Cameron.
Peter Tatchell is a human rights campaigner and Green Party parliamentary candidate for Oxford East
Unlikely Mr Tatchaell, Brown is far more likely,as would Cameron get this country involved in another Middle East quagmire by following Bush into an attack on Iran.
Brown can't undo the damage he and his banking and financial friends have done to this country, it's economy, it's social fabric and it's unity. Sadly nor can the Greens or any other party. All we can do now is hold on tight and hope that all of us, England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland can come through what we are about to face, at least together, if not united.
Posted by: flipped | Monday, 28 April 2008 at 02:49 PM
I would consider voting for the Green Party, but there are stumbling blocks for me that I can't overcome:
# their Luddite attitude to trade & industry, which would take Britain back into the Dark Ages, and leave Britain's economy shattered
# and not coincidentally, their economic isolationist policy, which is designed to make Brits ignore the disastrous effects of their economic policy by something rather similar to the closed economy of the former USSR, or the present economy of North Korea
# their violently anti-European agenda, which is simply lifted from the manifesto of the UKIP
Would Mr Tatchell do something to help the British tourist industry, by overturning the pigheaded isolationism of Labour, which has refused to join the Schengen Visa system AGAIN, even though offered the chance??? Even LATVIA is in the Schengen system now - but Mr Tatchell's former buddies in the Labour Party are still left looking like the arseholes of Europe, saying they are "too good" for Schengen, and laughing like Colonel Bufton-Tufton while the foreign tourists GO ELSEWHERE.
And what's Tatchell's policy now he's joined the Greens in a sulk?? Well, what a surprise - it's exactly the same!!!!
Posted by: Neil McGowan | Monday, 28 April 2008 at 03:18 PM