On Monday, the charmless Liz Truss told the LBC radio host Iain Dale that those with left-wing beliefs were “smearing her” by blaming her for economic troubles she was “not responsible for”, adding: “I think a lot of the public understand what I was trying to do.” The political dingbat remains vain and clueless, but intuitively knows that bashing the left pays dividends.
Wes Streeting, the shadow Secretary for Health and Social Care, knows that too. Otherwise why would he sneer at “middle-class lefties” who (rightly) oppose his plans to fund more private health care for NHS patients?
Socialists are fair game. It’s like a foxhunt – an unfair pursuit of plucky resisters by right-wing political and media hounds. The hunted don’t stand a chance.
During the 2 May local and mayoral elections, the left will be hounded and blooded more than ever before, because voters are bolting from the Tories. And because in Keir Starmer’s paranoid, Tory-lite party, Labour’s traditional supporters are seen as a menace, while the uber-rich capitalist class are courted.
This week, Cherie Blair called on the Labour leader to scrap the two-child benefit cap and promise effective anti-poverty policies. She, who moves in posh circles and lives in a mansion, gets the importance of equality in an advanced economy.
Our politicians don’t. The Tories pretend to value “the people” and move further to the right. Those challenging the Tories use the same trick. Tell me, do you not worry that Rishi Sunak, Liz Truss, Nigel Farage or Reform Party leader Richard Tice may be playing with your frustrations in order to win? And why do left-wing policies spook you so much, even those that are good for you and for the nation – renationalising water and gas, for example?
On Friday, at an event, some supporters of Starmer told me that the left was finished and the country was “free” from the politics of Ken Livingstone and Jeremy Corbyn. Trying to annihilate the left, I said, was undemocratic, then gave them a brief lesson: the welfare state was created by Labour left-wingers; arts funding doubled between 1997 and 2007; over that time, children in need were a key priority.
New Labour also wooed the right, but delivered for many of the least well off. It all became a bit shouty then. I was “out of touch”, didn’t understand “aspiration”, my ideas were “foolish”. No facts or arguments could move them. They are trapped in a political cult and must believe.
The number of homeless people has risen dramatically; 80,000 households may further swell the numbers because of no-fault evictions by landlords, according to analysis by Homeless Link and the Renters’ Reform Coalition. This Government’s much-heralded Renters (Reform) Bill isn’t going far, partly because Tory MPs who let out properties oppose regulation. Unaffordable flats are going up everywhere, while the availability of social housing rents decline. Health bosses warn that patients are at risk in crumbling hospitals. State schools are also crumbling; corruption in politics has been normalised. The NHS may not survive because no party wants to fund it properly. And faeces now swims in our waterways, thanks to Tory privatisation zealots.
But back to the anti-left diversion. I used to work for the Inner London Education Authority (ILEA) in the Eighties. It was radical and bold. So, too, the Greater London Council (GLC). They became an effective counterforce to Thatcherism. The GLC reduced tube and bus fares, posted billboards of London’s rising unemployment figures, enabled working class, black and Asian dreamers, who had been looking in through thick glass windows of the theatre, literary and music organisations to walk in and release their creativity. Margaret Thatcher shut them down.
She did not believe there was such a thing as society. We lefties know there is. Back then, the right-wing press daily demonised the “loony left”, much in the way they disparage “wokeism” today.
Who broke Britain? Tories got into power, wrecked our social bonds, gave to the rich and took from the poorest, determinedly refusing to use taxes for the public good. This was planned havoc or “disruption” – a concept favoured by the Machiavellian Dominic Cummings before his fall from grace.
In the latest World Happiness Report, six out of the seven countries at the top are high-tax Nordic nations, where public services work well. GB is at no 20; Czechia and Lithuania are above us. There’s little hope or glory in this land of ours. Yet still, while the UK carries on breaking under the right, millions of voters impugn or are fearful of the left. Make sense of that if you can. I can’t.
Lefties like me have become fair game, so let me explain three things
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17.04.2024
On Monday, the charmless Liz Truss told the LBC radio host Iain Dale that those with left-wing beliefs were “smearing her” by blaming her for economic troubles she was “not responsible for”, adding: “I think a lot of the public understand what I was trying to do.” The political dingbat remains vain and clueless, but intuitively knows that bashing the left pays dividends.
Wes Streeting, the shadow Secretary for Health and Social Care, knows that too. Otherwise why would he sneer at “middle-class lefties” who (rightly) oppose his plans to fund more private health care for NHS patients?
Socialists are fair game. It’s like a foxhunt – an unfair pursuit of plucky resisters by right-wing political and media hounds. The hunted don’t stand a chance.
During the 2 May local and mayoral elections, the left will be hounded and blooded more than ever before, because voters are bolting from the Tories. And because in Keir Starmer’s paranoid, Tory-lite party, Labour’s traditional supporters are seen as a menace, while the uber-rich capitalist class are courted.
This week, Cherie Blair called on the Labour leader to scrap the........
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