A Retrospective is Called For, Namely New Labour 1997

I decided this morning to look up the Labour (or noo Lab as some insist it is called) and the election manifesto of 1997. Some really quite amazing things pop out at you, namely the way it tugs at people stupidity but promising the world and then admitting it is all rubbish.

So let’s have a look at it to see where it has all gone a bit wrong.

“I want to renew faith in politics by being honest about the last 18 years. Some things the Conservatives got right.” - David must have read this.

“I want to renew faith in politics…feel let down by a political system that gives the breaks to the few, to an elite at the top increasingly out of touch with the rest of us.” - Interesting one this, because Labour have become completely out of touch with everything and on top of that, the richer have become richer and the out of touch even more so. So abject failure really.

“People are cynical about politics and distrustful of political promises. That is hardly surprising. There have been few more gross breaches of faith than when the Conservatives under Mr Major promised, before the election of 1992, that they would not raise taxes, but would cut them every year; and then went on to raise them by the largest amount in peacetime history starting in the first Budget after the election.” - Well that went up in smoke didn’t it!

“What follows is not the politics of a 100 days that dazzles for a time, then fizzles out” - Come on Gordon, don’t say you weren’t warned by, um, yourself as it goes.

It’s a pretty big document, designed more to overwhelm rather than actually deliver. Some of the promises, policy promises, are a bit, shall we say, crap. That is, they were total cock and bull:

Long-term objective of ten pence starting rate of income tax

We will rebuild the NHS, reducing spending on administration and increasing spending on patient care

We will be tough on crime and tough on the causes of crime

We will safeguard our environment, and develop an integrated transport policy to fight congestion and pollution

We will clean up politics, decentralise political power throughout the United Kingdom and put the funding of political parties on a proper and accountable basis

New Labour will be wise spenders, not big spenders

Save to invest is our approach, not tax and spend

On the tory increase in tax: The tragedy is that those hardest hit are least able to pay. That is why we strongly opposed the imposition of VAT on fuel: it was Labour that stopped the government from increasing VAT on fuel to 17. 5 per cent

New Labour will establish a new trust on tax with the British people

Our long-term objective is a lower starting rate of income tax of ten pence in the pound….is not only fair but desirable to encourage employment

We will cut VAT on fuel to five per cent

Stop the growth of an ‘underclass’ in Britain

End waiting for cancer surgery

End the Tory internal market

Police on the beat not pushing paper

Crackdown on petty crimes and neighbourhood disorder

Dignity and security in retirement

Protect the basic state pension and promote secure second pensions

We will reject the boom and bust policies which caused the collapse of the housing market.

The whole section on pensions is really quite funny. then it continues:

Reform of party funding to end sleaze

The Conservatives are afflicted by sleaze and prosper from secret funds from foreign supporters. There is unquestionably a national crisis of confidence in our political system, to which Labour will respond in a measured and sensible way.

Every country must have firm control over immigration and Britain is no exception

Lead reform of the EU

Our vision of Europe is of an alliance of independent nations choosing to co-operate to achieve the goals they cannot achieve alone. We oppose a European federal superstate

Labour will not permit the sale of arms to regimes that might use them for internal repression or international aggression

So there you go. A list of complete rubbish that shows that this government are, quite simply, liars. All of them. They are backed by benches who do as they are told and a re only now realising taht they are on course to be screwed. Good. They have squandered their chance to make any ral changes to this country by sitting on their hands and doing as Tony told them.

the media swallowed all of this whole and got the food poisoning last year. Gordon Brown is not just the Prime Minister now, but the very creator of the manifesto above. He is just as guilty as all around him, in fact he was one of the original puppet masters.

The Tory party are not a perfect beast. far from it. We must not allow ourselves to be as fooled by them as by Labour 11 years ago. However, this government must be taught a lesson this country hoped they had learnt in 1979. They must be shunted from power and humiliated at the next election and never allowed to forget the failure of New Labour.