Crossroads: Labour or Conservative?

We stand at a crossroads.

We have a Conservative government who, under David Cameron, initiated an austerity program. This program was apparently initiated to deal with the financial crash of 2008, which was a result of neoliberalism. 

Neoliberalism is a system that may sound complicated but, in simple terms, means deregulated or unfettered capitalism and the privatisation of public services. 

Neoliberalism was applied by Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, is inherently individualistic and allows corporations and moneyed classes to accumulate more wealth without any restrictions (through tax cuts for the mega rich, for example). 

It has been shown that neoliberalism has heightened inequality.

In the UK the austerity program has meant taking money from our public services and thus from those who need it most. This has meant cuts in the armed forces, cuts in the police, cuts in the NHS, cuts in social care, cuts to education and benefit cuts. Austerity continues to this day and May's Conservative government shows no sign of changing it.

We have a Conservative government and PM who have consistently voted in favour of foreign military intervention, Iraq and Libya being the main examples, which in every case has shown to be highly ineffective and harmful and has undoubtedly fuelled recent European terror attacks.

We have a Conservative government and PM who deals arms with Saudi Arabia. At least until recently Saudi Arabia were funding IS (the group responsible for the continuing deaths of Europeans) and are bombing Yemen with the weapons we sold to them.

We have a PM who holds a first strike nuclear policy, meaning she is willing to commit genocide.

We have a mainstream media that reverses reality and who has indisputably and systematically attacked Jeremy Corbyn since he became leader of the Labour party and who have consistently supported the Conservatives.

We have a vicious and highly manipulative Conservative election campaign that rests on disparaging one mild-mannered individual, inciting great fear in the public, distracting from issues that matter and lying to and misleading the British public (also see this link).

We have NHS workers, carers, disabled people and policemen calling out in desperation (see links below) at the savage Conservative austerity cuts and a Conservative party that doesn't adequately address these concerns.

We have a Labour party that holds a transformational fully-costed anti-austerity manifesto. A party who wants to tax corporations and the richest 5% just a little bit more in order to pump desperately-needed money back into our public services to help those less fortunate who have been ravaged by Conservative austerity cuts.

We have a humane, principled, sensitive, resilient and caring leader of the opposition, Jeremy Corbyn, who has been steadfastly committed to anti-war and anti-inequality causes throughout his life. Corbyn, unlike May, voted against the Iraq war and against bombing Libya and co-founded the Stop the War Coalition.

If you want a principled trustworthy government and PM who are utterly committed to finding peaceful diplomatic solutions to international conflicts, who want to pump much-needed money back into our public services, who aren't vicious and manipulative, who don't make personal dishonest attacks, who don't fund terrorism (whether directly or indirectly), who aren't willing to commit genocide, then vote Labour in this election.

Disability cuts

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/may/29/disabled-people-election-future-government

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/may/15/angry-voter-berates-theresa-may-disability-benefit-cuts

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/may/30/disabled-readers-austerity-disability-cuts

Foreign policy

http://www.stopwar.org.uk/index.php/news-comment/2574-uk-general-election-what-are-the-foreign-policy-implications

Police cuts

https://www.facebook.com/PeoplesMomentum/videos/460491760962883/?pnref=story

https://www.facebook.com/EalingLabour4Corbyn/videos/538044779919764/?pnref=story

NHS

https://www.facebook.com/185180654855189/videos/1577119278994646/?pnref=story

A Few Points on May and Corbyn

Jeremy Corbyn was an early supporter of gay rights. He voted against section 28, which banned local authorities from promoting homosexuality. Theresa May voted the opposite.

Margaret Thatcher and the Conservatives were in favour of apartheid in South Africa. One of Thatcher's cabinet members called Nelson Mandela a "terrorist". It is widely known that Corbyn was arrested in an anti-apartheid demonstration in 1984.

In 2003 Corbyn, unlike May and 412 other MPs, voted against the Iraq war. The Iraq war is now widely known to be a great mistake, as the Chilcot report emphatically confirms.

in 2011 Corbyn, unlike May and 557 MPs, voted against bombing Libya. Our military presence in Libya is now widely known to be a great mistake, as the Libya intervention report emphatically confirms. Do people not learn from previous errors?

As Home Secretary May allowed  threatening "go home vans" to be driven around the country and she wanted to scrap our Human Rights Act. May supported such things to attain more governmental control over ordinary people and take significant freedoms away from them. Only today she has used the London terror attack to say that the internet must be more regulated, because, to iterate, she wants more government control in certain areas.

Admittedly people can change, but Corbyn's consistency, integrity and trustworthiness has been demonstrated throughout his career until the present. The same can't be said for May. One gets the impression with May that, intuitively or instinctively, she does not care about minority groups and their freedoms, but will change her views and principles depending on how popular they are at the time.

If you want a consistent, principled and trustworthy PM who has always cared about minority groups, regardless of whether caring about them was popular at the time, then vote Labour.

Question Time with May and Corbyn

I find it hard to understand how some people aren't able to realise the consequences of using nuclear weaponry. Hopefully this isn't the case with most. You can only be sociopathic or deeply, fundamentally ignorant if you are willing to use a nuclear weapon, like Theresa May or a number of members of last night's BBC Question Time. Using nuclear weaponry in every case means the obliteration of life, probably including hundreds and thousands of civilians, and should thus not be seen as an option.

May had an easy ride on QT, that's for sure. If she had attended the leaders debate a few nights ago it would have been a very, very different picture, which would have been sweet to watch. The party leaders in the debate would have known what questions to ask. But instead May pushed Amber Rudd in the firing line.

Strong and stable.

A third of May's QT was spent waffling about Brexit. The audience members asked about 5 questions on this issue. I'm not saying its unimportant but the Conservatives have clearly made Brexit an unevenly massive element of their campaign. Their campaign oscillates between immaturely and viciously disparaging Corbyn and waffling about Brexit negotiations and having a "strong hand in them". They have made it such a large element of their campaign because they don't actually have much else to say. They haven't even costed their manifesto and they haven't really addressed austerity or our foreign policy and how they are going to combat the various issues stemming from these, such as our crisis in social care, education, war and the NHS. They'll say things like "we've put record levels of funding into our NHS", but why is it in such shambles then? Why are nurses going to food banks? I come away from May feeling uninformed, uninspired, lied to and distracted from issues that matter.

A few important points were broached with May last night, such as NHS cuts and it's effects on nurses, but none pursued nearly far enough. Why was May not deeply interrogated about the fact that she is willing to decimate hundreds of thousands of civilians? Couldn't she have been asked what the Naylor report is and why she supports it? Or why Britain is the second biggest arms dealer in the world and why we are selling arms to Saudi Arabia who is bombing Yemen and how this fits into their manipulative dishonest portrayal of Corbyn as a terrorist sympathiser as demonstrated in their vicious campaign video? In light of the fact that May is willing to use Trident as first strike and her government is selling arms to Saudi Arabia who in turn are funding terrorism, why, if anyone, is she not accused of being a terrorist sympathiser?

Curious.

Or maybe not so curious. One thing that has been emphasised, yet again, in last night's QT is that the popular press pretty much run the show. They largely determine the questions, even the irrelevant ones, because they create a landscape that decides what issues are lodged in peoples minds. Why is Corbyn a terrorist sympathiser? Why is Corbyn unwilling to obliterate hundreds of thousands of civilians? We can't trust Corbyn as he's a terrorist sympathiser but, uhhh, we also can't trust him because he won't slaughter hundreds of thousands of innocent people in a matter of seconds. Its the press that discourage the audience from asking May difficult and pertinent questions, because they aren't properly reported on and, unlike many issues with Corbyn, aren't pummelled into the minds of the public.

If you want a government that actually addresses the negative effects of austerity and that wouldn't be willing to decimate hundreds of thousands of civilians and large areas of life then vote Labour.

Tipping Points

Some people might say that Brexit or Donald Trump were tipping points for them. Thousands of civilians and children dying in Iraq and Afghanistan, largely as a consequence of our foreign policy, was my tipping point. Or maybe the way disabled people have been mistreated in our country recently (we must live within our means!). Or depending on how far back you want to go, Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Vietnam. The leader of the opposition represents a meaningful alternative to such events and the attitudes and decisions that led to them, which is why this election matters as much as it does.

That's Boris for You

In his comments regarding the BBC debate I think Boris Johnson is confusing left-wing with fair, sensitive and relatively intelligent. This whole election to me, indeed the whole of politics and society, isn't about being left-wing or right-wing; these terms can be useful but they are all too often abstract. But that's Boris for you; never mind that BBC bias against Jeremy Corbyn and in favour of the Conservatives has been demonstrated on a number of occasions (see links below for just some of many).

If there's one thing this election has starkly outlined its that the Conservatives provide us with fertile ground for justified criticism; it seems they're asking for it. Maybe this is their one positive contribution, they encourage like-minded people to come together and collectively criticise their incompetence. I won't go through the long list of Conservative blunders and misadventures now, it's been done a lot already (see Another Angry Voice, The Canary and Evolve Politics). But an important and glaringly obvious one is that Theresa May has called a snap election, expecting a landslide, and won't even debate her opposition; this is remarkable! After all her disingenuous posturing and actually succeeding (with a lot of help from the establishment press) to convince much of the public she was a "strong leader" (what does that even mean?), she can't even discuss her policies and views with her opponents. This is not the sign of a secure politician, it's the sign of a scared one who realises she can't intelligently defend her position in a partly unstructured Q&A session. Also, regarding what the Conservative PR wizards have deemed the all-important sacred issue - the Brexit negotiations - it is May who postponed these negotiations by calling a snap election, which she emphatically said she wasn't going to do; this is dithering and inconsistency if I ever saw it. If you prefer your political parties to be consistent, trustworthy and principled, don't vote for the Conservatives.

http://www.stopwar.org.uk/i…/voice-from-america/677-remember.

https://www.thecanary.co/topics/bbc-bias/

The Viciousness of the Conservatives

On the veneer the Conservatives may not seem completely bad. They may not seem that vicious and one might think that they actually care about the world, "the national interest" and working families. But scratch the surface and you'll think differently. Based on their election campaign alone you get a feel for the viciousness of them. 

Jeremy Corbyn's character has been systematically attacked by the establishment since he became leader of the labour party, but during the election the Conservatives have reached new lows. The amount of times they mention Corbyn's name and criticise him for being weak shows how weak their campaign is because it rests on attacking one individual instead of having a mature and humane discussion about policies. Not only this but they have now decided to desperately take advantage of what the popular press have deemed an all-important issue, that Corbyn was present at negotiations with Sinn Féin about 30 years ago. They have used this to paint Corbyn as a "terrorist sympathiser". One of their campaign videos revolves around this accusation, whereby various clips of Corbyn have been taken out of context, put together with emotive music and with the image darkened. This hateful dishonest video alone is enough to signify that the Conservatives are not a fair and humane political party. Hopefully this desperate scare-mongering attack will be transparent to most people, but one can't predict how large swathes of the population think.

So the Conservatives are desperately trying to assassinate Corbyn's character, constantly repeating that "he is weak", using the same words and sentiment over and over and over and over until they have a hypnotic effect on the population, and more recently by trying to paint him as a terrorist sympathiser. These are regressive and immature tactics demonstrating that the Conservatives are an unappealing mix of attributes - manipulative, dishonest, vicious. If you think that a party overwhelmingly defined by these attributes shouldn't be running our country, don't vote Conservative, especially when we have a meaningful opposition.

Funnily it is Theresa May who a few months ago visited the Prince of Saudi Arabia, who are bombing Yemen and funding terrorism, and who said that she would use a nuclear weapon. Do some people really not realise what happened to civilians and children in Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Have they not spent time truly thinking about these atrocities? In this sense May can only be ignorant, sociopathic or a mix of both, and is thus a massive threat to our country. If you care about innocent civilians, you should not vote for the Conservatives and their current leader.

The Conservatives and the Holy Brexit Negotiations

The Conservative campaign places uneven importance on the upcoming Brexit negotiations. Theresa May and other Conservatives have repeatedly said “Brexit is the key issue”. I’m not saying Brexit is unimportant. But in the run up to the referendum a lot of scaremongering went on; the press was firing people up, people were reacting exactly as they were being encouraged to react. It was not a black and white decision; there were various reasons for voting leave and various for remain.

I think the Conservatives line of reasoning is that through Brexit negotiations, if we make the right decisions and are tough enough, we can build a “stronger economy” which will benefit everyone. The Conservatives seem blind to the fact that their "stronger economy" has only ever benefited the few.

To say Brexit is the key issue in this election is kind of abstract. If anything shouldn't the key issue be something like the fate of our NHS or social care system, seeing as though people have actually died and been driven to food banks due to austerity? Or maybe our foreign policy which is responsible for the deaths of foreign civilians? These are concrete desperate issues that are happening right now and are, to me, far more important than Brexit.

The Conservatives have tied the Brexit issue in with May’s “strong and stable leadership” myth (based on the evidence May is actually a seriously weak, dithering and inconsistent leader) which they’ve opposed with Jeremy Corbyn’s apparent “weak leadership”. Thus through the Brexit issue, which is apparently all-important, we come back to the fact that the Tory campaign is largely based on disparaging one individual.