The Bramble Bush

How To Snatch Defeat From The Jaws Of Victory (Or How David Cameron Got It So Very Very Wrong)

The Bramble Bush recently posted a piece critical of the Labour Party for it's betrayal of it's core values, core mission and core support in pursuit of power at all costs. This has led in some areas of our country, directly or indirectly to an ebbing away of support from Labour to mainly, though not exclusively the BNP. Spin meisters feverishly toiled, long into the night to find ever more weak and inept reasons for their disastrous showing. Reasons of course which largely excluded anything approaching the truth. But then we are talking NuLav what else do you expect.

Unless NuLav is capable or willing to examine questions of why the traditional working classes are deserting them in their droves, then it will remain a discredited and disreputable organisation, more interested in remaining in power than being powerful. After all you cannot fix a punctured tyre by fiddling with the spark plugs.

One would have thought that these lessons would have been learned by the other main political parties in our once great country, or rather, one would have hoped that the right lessons would have been learned. Sadly this doesnt seem to be the case. In announcing his rather meaningless new policy on Europe, David Cameron (or should that now be Cast-Iron Dave?) stood shoulder to shoulder with each and every deceiver and betrayer of our country's sovereignty who has gone before him. The lesson he learned is that it is better to pursue power no matter the cost (integrity, honesty, credibility) than to make good on promises, pledges and yes "cast iron guarantees".  He has now painted a glowing, neon lit sign on his back saying "KICK ME" and boy oh boy has the despicable Broon and his pack of lickspittles enjoyed the last few days. Well, Kick Me Dave has brought this upon himself, has only himself to blame and deserves everything coming to him. Sympathy meter at 0.

We at the Bramble Bush accept that, in the light of the Czechs signing off on the European Constitution (for that is exactly what it is, regardless of what the swivvle eyed Europhiles and semanticists would have you believe) any referendum on it would be rather meaningless and a huge waste of time, effort and money. However, what we do not accept is this argument that somehow the case for any referendum is now dead. Of course we would have preferred a simple yes/no, in/out question in the first place. However, having given a "cast iron guarantee" on a referendum he could have, no, SHOULD HAVE gone ahead with "plan A" but merely altered the question to take into account the change of reality on the ground. Imagine the headlines the following day "SHOCK HORROR PROBE: Politician Is A Man Of His Word" and so on, it would have been a vote winner, in fact it would have probably given DC an absolute landslide victory at the next GE and probaly have caused Michael White over at the Grauniad to choke on his muesli. Instead of which, this inept and wishy washy wish list of a policy has probably handed the keys to No10 to a rag tag coalition of NuLav and the Clegganistas NOT because the issue of Europe dominates the day (although it probably should) but because the issue of integrity and trust in our politicians does.

Nor do we accept the facile argument that it's the economy stupid. On the one hand Kick Me Dave stood there and said he would have found the money to ask the people a question on Lisbon BUT he wouldnt be able to find the money to ask the people a different question...?? But then we are idiots, stupidistas, vote cows, we arent supposed to notice such flummery, such clumsy sleights of hand. Oops.

Nor do we accept that just because Broon & Co have sent this country's economy to hell in a hand basket (we couldnt afford the hand cart) that this supercedes any and all other issues. Rubbish! Without our sovereignty we are nothing, it is from our sovereignty that all else flows NOT the other way round and if Kick Me Dave cannot understand that his prime responsibility as PM would be its protection and preservation then he truly is lost.

Cameron is living in cloud cuckoo land if he thinks he can deliver on any of his new raft of cast iron guarantees. I'll put it simply, there will be no new treaties passing power and sovereignty to the EUSSR, there will be no new treaties passing power and sovereignty to the EUSSR because there is no need for any new treaty to pass power and sovereignty to the EUSSR, there is no need for any new treaty to pass power and sovereignty to the EUSSR because Lisbon is self amending. IT DOES NOT NEED any new powers, it has all the power it needs to grab all the power it wants. Seemples. And if he thinks for a single second that any of our compatriots in the EUSSR will allow any repatriation of any power to the UK well... the poor lad is frankly delusional. As you will be able to see from the following paste from todays Guardian.

Europe ministers from Poland, the Netherlands and the Irish Republic – historically among the friendliest to Britain in the EU – as well as Spain, said Cameron would not achieve his demand to repatriate social and employment laws to Britain. His plans would need the agreement of all 27 leaders of the EU because they would involve rewriting the union's treaties.

Frans Timmermans, the Dutch centre- left Europe minister, told the Guardian the Tory plans would have a "paralysing effect on Europe … There is more chance of a snowball surviving hell than the EU restarting debates on treaty change."

Timmermans said no EU leader would want to reopen treaties to accommodate the Tories. "You can still hear the sigh of relief across Europe that we have finally finished with treaty change. Everyone is so relieved that we can finally stop talking about the internal rules of the EU and start doing something about the crisis, something about the climate change issues and about international affairs. There is no member state that wants another round of debate about the rules of the game." 

BUT let us never forget who has got us here, Broon and Bliar before him are directly responsible for this. THEY are the ones who truly deserve our most vicious bile for their betrayals and lies but Cameron, faced with (so far) his only statesman like moment completely blew it and became an enabler post facto.

Thanks only to the Daily Telegraph, to whom we all owe a huge debt of gratitude, we have had to endure months of sleaze, and lurid tales of trough snufflers gorging themselves at tax payers expense while millions lost their jobs, bankers, richer than Cresus, fleecing the tax payer for every panny their ludicrously overpaid and laughably incompetent hands could grasp because the regulations put in place by those very same trough snufflers were so weak and ineffctual that they were ripe for abuse, and Boy Oh Boy were they abused. Green Book anyone?

Against this backdrop politician after politician has promised to clean up politics and reduce the democratic defecit that this country has in spades. But how can you do either of those things, how can you even attempt to restore faith in politics if politicians continue to treat those they hope will lend them their democratic madate like total fools? An accusation Cameron himself has used time and time again against Golden Gordon, how hollow it now sounds, and I suspect we will not be hearing it again any time soon. In this respect Cameron has now conjoined himself as the siamese sibling to Bliar, Broon, Clegg et al, he has firmly cemented another brick in the "They're all the same" wall.

Fortunately they are not all the same. Fortunately we do have a choice away from the three main parties who have all betrayed us to an ever encroaching Euro Federalist future for let us not be under any illusion, this is the future that others have marked out for us never once giving us the opportunity to decide our own future for ourselves. Luckily, those nice people at UKIP have decided that the British electorate are not children, or fools to be brow beaten and frightened into meek acquiesence. Almost alone now, UKIP stands not only for the (forced if necessary) repatriation of power and sovereignty ceded to an unelected and fundamentally corrupt monolith but for a return to honesty and integrity not only in politics but also in politicians themselves. It is easy for detractors and fear mongers to spout lines like "a vote for UKIP is a wasted vote" or make accusations of UKIP being a one trick pony. Neither are true, and the fact that so many try to make this kind of mud stick is testament to the fear that honesty causes in politics and politicians. Contrary however, it is becoming increasingly obvious that a vote for any member of the LibLabCon Alliance will be a wasted vote. None of the main three parties are offering anything near the radical and fundamental changes our society so desperately needs and deserves. Vote for any of them and you will get a continuation of the status quo, some window dressing maybe, some tinkering at the edges of course but meaningful? Not on your life!

The senseless misadventures in foreign lands will still continue, the sight of our young men and women sent to die ill-equipped in the deserts and oil fields of foreign lands to prop up despicable and corrupt regimes will continue. The weekly heartbreak at Wooton Basset will continue, the breaking of the military covenant will continue, the ceding of what is left of our sovereignty to those who care naught for it will continue, the depravation prevalent in large swathes of our country will continue, the drunken mob rule in most of our towns will continue, the mindless thuggery perpertrated against the weak and innocent will continue, the inability of our police, our teachers, our parents to do anything meaningful against the rising tide of yobbery perpertrated by a generation well versed in their rights but ignorant of their obligations will continue. The rape of our seas, the destruction of our sea-beds and the marginalisation of our farmers will continue. The bonuses will continue, the propping up and bailing out of an inept banking system will continue while the bankruptcies and hardships suffered by solid, honest, going concerns will continue. The spin, the lies, the deceit and betrayals WILL continue.

All of the above and much much more will continue if you dear voter persist in the blind tribalism that brought us here in the first place and press the "business as usual" button at the next General Election.

What Exactly Is The Labour Party For?

When one looks back at the early origins of the British Labour Party, it’s easy to see why there was a need for an organisation to represent those issues relevant to the Trades Unions and the increasing number of “working classes” in a growing industrial nation. The late 1800’s early 1900’s saw the emergence of a variety of socialist parties, the most successful of which (an association rather than a party proper), the Labour Representation Committee, won 29 seats in the election of 1906; shortly thereafter they adopted the shorter title of “The Labour Party”. 

From 1906 The Labour Party made steady gains through 1910 and by 1922 with 142 seats became the official opposition for the first time, thanks in part to the turmoil in the Liberal Party but also because of its support for, and sponsorship by the Trades Unions and its unflinching representation of the working classes, establishing itself, from then on, as a major force in British politics. 

Traditionally Labour positioned itself as a “socialist” party and still claims socialist affiliations as part of Socialist International, and the Party of European Socialists and traditionally its policies reflected this philosophy. Their (historical) socialist credentials can be seen in no better illustration than the post war Government of Clem Attlee who presided over one of the most radical administrations in the history of modern British politics. It was under the stewardship of Attlee that many major industries and utilities were nationalised, the welfare state was created, the NHS was created and the process of dismantling the British Empire proceeded in earnest. 

Following a period of lost favour amongst the electorate and a prolonged stint in opposition, the government of Harold Wilson continued somewhat in the footsteps of Attlee with considerable social reforms including the legalisation of abortion and homosexuality, a large expansion in the provision of comprehensive education and the creation of the Open University. 

During the “Thatcher Years” Labour was ravaged by in-fighting and experienced a prolonged period of savaging both by the Conservative Party and the Press and ran a real risk of becoming an irrelevant, laughing stock within the British Political landscape. 

When Tony Blair literally broke the mould and re-wrote clause IV from:  "To secure for the workers by hand or by brain the full fruits of their industry and the most equitable distribution thereof that may be possible upon the basis of the common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange, and the best obtainable system of popular administration and control of each industry or service." 

to 

"The Labour Party is a democratic socialist party. It believes that by the strength of our common endeavour we achieve more than we achieve alone, so as to create for each of us the means to realise our true potential and for all of us a community in which power, wealth and opportunity are in the hands of the many, not the few, where the rights we enjoy reflect the duties we owe, and where we live together, freely, in a spirit of solidarity, tolerance and respect." He and his party were set on a path against traditional Labour values and philosophies and those who held them and indeed the values of socialism itself.

This fact was compounded by the adoption of a “Third Way” political position, adopted in part to help the now “New Labour” to appeal to those mythical swing voters in a place known only to politicians and pollsters as “Middle England”. 

However, the adoption of such a “Third Way” only served to push the Nu-Lab elite further away from their party’s working class, trade unionist and socialist roots. Indeed “Old Labour” became a phrase that dripped off the tongues of the Islington coffee house set, to mean; out of touch, throwback, reactionary, not one of us and of course we all know, if you aren’t with us... 

“Old Labour” as perjorative then, like the term “Liberal” in American political parlance, as if the core values of socialism (regardless of what one may think of socialism as a political philosophy); equality, fairness, egalitarianism, the lifting up of the working classes, out of poverty, out of the grasp of the unscrupulous, were now somehow quaint notions at best and redundant fantasies at worst. As if now, with Cap’n Blair at the helm of the good ship Nu-Lab with his trusty crew of Blairite cronies (Blears, Milburn, Mandelson et al) that somehow the working classes would be so capricious as to turn their backs on their roots as well, and if they didn’t? Tough! Where else would they go… to the Tories?? 

The adoption of pure Thatcherite policies, especially in regard to Union Legislation, a laissez-faire attitude to, in particular “The City” and all it stood for (traditionally everything Labour didn’t) and an embrace of the private over the public all caused Labour to serially haemmorage MPs, Councillors and MEPs, through a disatrous set of General, local and European elections losing supporters and members in their droves along the way. 

So just what does a Labour Party, under the leadership of Gordon Brown, actually stand for? Well to be honest, nothing much different from a Labour Party under Tony Blair, one of the great myths of modern British politics is that the rifts between Brown and Blair were somehow of great substance, set in some ideological and philosophical debate…Rubbish…Blair and Brown are cut from the same cloth, and the only rift was about who said what at Granita. 

But it’s pretty difficult to tell precisely what they stand for, after having spent some considerable time on their website I found loads of ways to donate or to fundraise, but not one obvious, direct link to any document which lays out an encapsulated philosophy for the Party, and as they are the Party in Government, the Country. There wasn’t even a link to the Constitution. Oh… loads of policy documents and associated wonkery of course but nowhere that says “Hi voter, we are the Labour party and this is why you should love us”. Unless of course it’s hidden behind the “Hi visitor, give us £15” button. 

It is clear that in pursuit of “Middle England” the modern Labour Party has, by and large, turned its back on its core, traditional voters just as it has turned its back on its core traditional values and philosophies. No longer a socialist party, it is, at best a social-democratic party and at worst a centre-right affiliation of disaffected, disillusioned old has-beens, and the silenced left, clinging on to the very last vestiges of power by their broken and bloodied finger-tips. 

Labour has lost power in Scotland and is only in power in the Welsh Assembly by virtue of a begrudging pact with Plaid Cymru. “Middle England” seems to have woken up and realised that Tony Blair really was the Emporers New Clothes in human form and that the usurper Brown has nothing to say that anyone any longer wants to hear. Their message the same, the only difference the delivery. Blair was like listening to oil being poured through oil, it was strange, it was mesmeric, you knew you were being conned, you knew you were being sold a pup but somehow, you just couldn’t turn away. Brown’s approach is more like being battered over the head by a 5 year old Dundee Cake with him grinning at you in all the most inappropriate moments while he does it. And no Gordon, it isnt appropriate to grin like a demented bull frog when you are talking about swine flu, really it isnt, despite what your Human Behavioural consultant (Grin Doctor?) may have told you. 

His recent performances; over the economy, “No, wasn’t me Guv, nowhere near it, it just fell and broke, OOOH LOOK OVER THERE its Fred the Shred!!” The environment (airport expansion is now GREEN?? HELLO… Carbon capture and storage doesn’t actually exist yet!), child poverty (targets to be missed, spectacularly), immigration, the Gurkhas, MP’s expenses, youtube, 42 days, booze Britain, the disappearing pub, surveillance Britain, ID cards, civil liberties, a budget that could have been written by Hans Christian Andersen and so on…all lamentable Hazel, yes. 

On MPs expenses, and the communications allowance it was telling that during PMQs it was David Cameron who chimed more with the public mood, it was David Cameron who had the ideas, who set the agenda, it was David Cameron who got it and who wanted to sort it, now… and had the answers as to how. 

Gordon Brown wanted to set up a committee… 

Sadly for wee Gordy it’s the Conservatives who are leading the way, not only in the polls but in people’s minds too on a range of issues from the environment to defence. It’s the Lib Dems who are in tune with the people over the economy, over tax havens, over social reform, over economic reform. It’s UKIP who are leading the agenda on Europe and Immigration, and it’s the BNP who are appealing more and more to the working classes. What are you leading on Gordon? 

So what exactly is Labour for? Well it’s a good question and as soon as I find out I’ll tell you but typical of most previous Labour Governments this administration has taxed and spent and taxed and borrowed and spent this country into near bankruptcy and it will be up to others now to come in, following the next General Election, and take the hard decisions, make the difficult choices to get us out of this wholly Labour made mess. After all, it wasn’t the Americans who allowed Northern Rock to implode, it wasn’t the Americans who allowed Bradford and Bingley to implode, it wasn’t the Americans who set up a financial regulator for the City of London and then told it to have a “light touch” so it didn’t actually do much regulating, it wasn’t the Americans who spent billions on an illegal and immoral war and subsequent occupation of a sovereign nation, Oh hang on…actually, that WAS the Americans…erm… it wasn’t the Americans who presided over some of the most benign economic conditions in memory only to wake up one morning with an empty wallet, a leaky roof and a bill for a trillion quid. Wow! Some party that must have been. 

Someone should have a word really, and remind the upper eschelons of Nu-Lab that politics isn’t actually about politics, politics is actually about people and those people are important 365 days a year, not just on voting day. Labour seems to have forgotten this in the process of selling of their principles for power at all costs. I just hope they got more than $275 an ounce.