Hung parliament?
In the next election, the Labour Party will lose its absolute majority if it loses 24 seats and the Conservatives will gain an absolute majority if they win 116 seats more. Any result in between will result in a hung parliament.
This mathematics, and the declining lead in recent polls of the Tory Party and its inept leadership makes a hung parliament a distinct possibility.
If any party is elected with an absolute majority, it will probably be by a very small margin, based on only a minority of those who voted, and a much smaller minority of the entire electorate.
All 3 major parties have huge programmes of vicious cuts stored up. The consequence of their cuts will be a massacre the public sector, attacks on the pay and conditions of public sector workers and reductions in the essential services the rest of us receive.
However whichever party is trying to implement these attacks will have big problems implementing such a programme based on such shaky parliamentary foundations and faced with an increasingly angry and organised resistance from trade unionists and community groups.
Thatcher and Blair had huge majorities that enabled their neo-liberal onslaught against working class people on behalf of big business. We're entering a period where prime ministers will just not have the luxury of this parliamentary bastion from which to launch their attacks.
A hung parliament, or a government with a weak majority would reflect the weakness and indecision of the ruling class and their political representatives in the 3 main parties. They have been badly shaken and disorientated by the disastrous credit crunch, which burst their bubble of ebullient confidence. Now they foresee a much more complex, difficult and dark future for their system.
It's no coincidence that the 3 previous British hung parliaments, in 1924, 1929 and 1974 took place against a background of heightened economic and social crisis.
A weak government relying on the votes of unpredictable backbenchers or treacherous coalition allies is one that can potentially be forced to back off temporarily from the worst of it's cuts in the face of the fiercest working class resistance - this is why the stock exchange drops every time a new opinion poll that points toward a hung parliament is published.
If any of the TUSC candidates are elected, they will be able to mercilessly highlight the hypocrisy of the government and it's 'official' opposition, and expose the divisions within any governing coalition, they will also be a rare voice of the protest movement going on on the streets and in the workplaces outside parliament. One thing they must not do is enter a coalition with a government that inflicts cuts and attacks on working class people, or enacts further anti-trade union laws.
This is not to say life will be easy for the left. Thatcher, Blair and Brown have been busy making any form of effective Trade Union action hidebound by a web of anti-trade union laws. The rights to demonstrate and protest have also been whittled down by governments that have used the 'war on terror' as an excuse to wipe away democratic rights and basic civil liberties. In the face of continuing economic crisis, employers will be trying to drive down wages and rip up agreements, some will be trying to smash the very Trade Unionism of their workforces.
We'll be in a situation where every form of working class resistance will find itself harrassed and obstructed by unjust and undemocratic laws. The media is also more dominated by the big business agenda than ever before, any group of workers that stands up for it's rights will find itself subject to a tirade of lies and abuse, just as the BA cabin crews are facing today.
The issues will be starker, the struggle will be tougher than at any time in living experience. Our organisations will need a fighting leadership with determination and strong political understanding if our class is to defend itself effectively over the next few years. I have no doubt though, that however difficult it is, working class people will resist, just as they are today in Greece and in Portugal. They will move to defend their wages, rights, public services, using any political and industrial means at their disposal. The lack of any kind of political representation of working class people, now that Labour has decisively become a party of the millionaires will be clearer to see than ever before.
Published Date:
13/03/2010
Modified Date:
13/03/2010
Frank McKenna and the Development Extremists
Frank McKenna of 'Downtown Preston In Business' has launched an astonishing attack on local people who care about Preston and it's heritage by branding them 'Heritage Extremists' and 'Cynics' in today's Lancashire Evening Post.It seems anyone who doesn't accept the council's corporate 'vision' for Preston or let the unelected Preston Vision Board and the NWDA have their way in our city without question is some dyed in the wool stick in the mud, resisting progress on principle.
Nothing could be further from the truth. The reality is that it is those towns and cities have cared about and protected their heritage and environment that have become the places that people want to live and work. Places that allow the developer's bulldozer to do it's damage unquestioningly and uncritically become soulless and rootless identikit cities where nobody wants to live unless they have no choice.
The real problem in Preston's development has not been so called 'cynical heritage extremists', it's been the failure of our leaders and the developers to even begin to listen to what local people actually see as priorities in our city. The power and decision making lies with unelected quangos that give a free hand to wealthy developers and their unimaginative projects.
The consequence of this undemocratic, high handed, overblown, corporate strategy has been over a decade of stagnation for Preston, stagnation that will continue until local people begin to get a real say in how our city develops.
Published Date:
09/03/2010
Modified Date:
09/03/2010
The Millionaires Who Buy Our Politics
All the news today has featured Lord Ashcroft, the immensely rich donor to the Tory Party, who lives in luxury in Belize and uses his 'non-dom' status as a way of making sure he pays as little tax as possible to the UK, despite his desire to influence our politics.
John Prescott, never one to avoid an opportunity to throw a punch has been niggling the Tories about their wealthy backer over twitter - up to the point where Eric Pickles, tweedledum to Prescotts Tweedledee, hit back with jibes about Lord Paul, the millionaire Labour donor, 88th richest person in Britain, who also has non-dom status.
This little pre-electoral spat between the two parties is giving the game away to the rest of us.
Labour is standing on dodgy ground throwing accusations at the Tory Party about being too close to it's millionaire backers, everyone remembers Richard Desmond, Bernie Ecclestone and Lord Sainsbury.Of course the Liberal Democrats have been just as willing to accept big donations from millionaires, so any attempts from them to take a 'moral highground' will be rightly ridiculed.
All three parties supported bailing out the bankers with £billions of public money. All three parties follow the big business agenda, cuts in public services, privatisations and union bashing, all three parties are the playthings of their millionaire backers.
The sad reality of British politics in the 21st Century is that If you're wealthy enough, any of the political parties will prostitute themselves for you, If you're not, then you might as well be whistling dixie as they won't be listening to you.
The big secret that the mutual name-calling over millionaire donors reveals, is that ordinary working class people have been totally cut out of the political process by a millionaire political oligarchy, who pay the parties to defend the system that keeps them rich.
We don't have to put up with this, we can reclaim politics. We can do what's neccessary to build a new party to represent the millions, not the millionaires; a socialist party dedicated to defending the interests of working class people, a party that will challenge the millionaires and their minions in the Tory, Liberal and Labour parties.
Published Date:
02/03/2010
Modified Date:
02/03/2010
Save Preston Markets
The meat, vegetables and cheeses on sale at Preston market are far superior to anything you can get at any supermarket. Our market traders have worked hard for years to bring us healthy good value local produce.
It therefore makes me very angry to see the continuing neglect of our markets by the council, exacerbated by the continuing delays in the Tithebarn scheme.
Market traders are now being driven to the edge of going out of business in Preston by these continuing problems - it's almost as if it's a deliberate strategy to drive them out, to be replaced with something that fits in better with our council's faddish corporte 'vision' for Preston's future.
The council has put all it's eggs in the Tithebarn basket, making a huge gamble with Preston's future, and the result has been over a decade of 'planners blight' hanging over the area, and even neighbouring parts of Preston.
The Tithebarn scheme was designed back in the days when credit was almost limitless, when retail was expanding at ridiculous speed, when house prices were rising exponentially and when Gordon Brown could stand up and announce 'The end of boom and bust' without being mercilessly mocked by everyone with half a brain. The result was an enormously overblown project on a massive scale, which would sweep away our iconic bus station and, according to the planner's hype, make Preston the 'third city of the North West'.
Those economic conditions are unlikely to ever return. Today we have 1 in 5 of our local shops standing empty (due in part to the planning blight associated with Tithebarn). Unemployment is rising, and if the cuts in our public services planned by Tories Liberals and Labour are implemented, will be likely to rise even further.
It seems highly unlikely to me that anything on the scale of the original 1990s Tithebarn plans will ever get built. In the meantime our council and it's neighbours are throwing £hundreds of thousands of council taxpayers money down the throats of lawyers in a public inquiry which will do nothing except give the developers a convenient excuse for further delays.
Published Date:
27/02/2010
Modified Date:
27/02/2010
Preston People's Wishlist
Lisa McManus over at Blog Preston has put up her own 'Preston Wishlist' She's asking for other people to add their own ideas.
I'm sure Preston common sense will prevail, and we can all come up with much better and sounder ideas than that £2.5m 'Angel of Death' BAe warplane sculpture, the £46,000 'confidence campaign' confidence trick. the nonsense in our flag market, the stupidity proposed for Winckley Square or the civic vandalism of demolishing our iconic bus station.
My big wish is: sack the Preston City Vision Board and the NWDA, and replace them with elected bodies accountable to ordinary Preston people, perhaps then we'll get real progress in Preston's redevelopment.
Published Date:
20/02/2010
Modified Date:
20/02/2010
Tithebarn - Ferrets in a Sack
6 local councils are spending a considerable amount of money to employ Christopher Katkowski, one of the country's top QC's to oppose Preston Council's Tithebarn scheme. Preston has put aside £650,000 to defend this scheme.
This £650,000 is on top of the huge amount of money, time and resources Preston has dedicated to making Tithebarn happen over the last decade, money which many will see as a huge gamble on a vastly overambitious project, particularly when currently 1 in 5 Preston shops stands empty. We can't fill our existing shops, let alone hundreds more.
Instead of nurturing current traders, Preston has been investing everything in this future scheme, all the council's best minds and resources have been dedicated to Tithebarn, at the expense of other council departments - the miserable state of our parks is testimony to this.
Parochial anger has been directed against these neighbouring councils, but a look over at Southport will show what is motivating their opposition. The Liverpool One scheme has hammered Southport's shopping trade, and now there are plans to slash business rates to try to help Southport shopkeepers cling on. This news has sent a chill down the spines of Lancashire towns outside Preston.
We're in a crazy situation where instead of being encouraged to cooperate for mutual benefit, our Lancashire towns are set against each other like ferrets in a sack, in a vicious and destructive competition for what's left of a declining retail sector. The reality of the 'free market' our government has encouraged between our councils is that huge amounts of public money are being handed over to lawyers that could have been invested in local facilities. This is the mad wasteful reality of capitalist development today.
Published Date:
19/02/2010
Modified Date:
19/02/2010
Confidence Campaign or Confidence Trick?
£46000 of taxpayers money is being spent on a billboard campaign to tell Preston people how clean and safe our city is.
Big posters telling us that we're not dropping litter any more, and that crime no longer happens here will be posted round the city, it's called the Home Office 'Confidence Campaign'.
So while we're stood up to our knees in chip wrappers and discarded kebabs, looking at these posters, we'll be able to contemplate the fact that £46000 could have paid for two more council cleaners, to actually pick the litter up, rather than on telling us it isn't there in the first place.
Deepdale duck goes out cleaning up Moor Park, pity the council can't reciprocate.
This is not the only government advertising that's niggling at my nerves. Listen to Rock FM, and you'll notice that around 50% of the ads are government information commercials of one kind or another. We're being bombarded with government propaganda non-stop. Couldn't be anything to do with an impending general election could it?
Published Date:
18/02/2010
Modified Date:
18/02/2010
A Socialist Challenger for the Election
Published Date:
16/02/2010
Modified Date:
16/02/2010