Saturday 14 September 2013

Only working class can be socialists .....

The biggest myth in the UK and especially in class ridden England is that to have socialist or social democratic views you must be 'working class'.

To have social or social democratic views you simply have to think the community is more important than the plutocrat or oligarch. You are persuaded that sharing risk of unemployment, ill health, disablement and destitution across the community to protect the most vulnerable is the correct way to conduct a civilised country rather than the beggar my neighbour polices so beloved by the current bunch of plutocrats and oligarchs at Westminster.

Sadly this is what old fashioned social democrat Liberals such as Beveridge believed was the essence of a civilised country, one where part of the profits from the economy were used to help those at the bottom - unlike Clegg who is only interested in power without responsibility and will do what ever it takes to cling onto power, no matter how decivilising it is.

A socialist believes much the same but like the current Government thinks it can only happen by Government intervention to make people work by taking complete control of the countries economic levers. The reality is there is little difference between the Tory and a real Socialist view of the role of Government - for both it has to be authoritarian, intimidatory and antagonistic governance where some section of the country are the 'problem', either the poor or the rich respectively.

The real problem in England is there is no social democratic option, let alone a socialist one, as all three English Parties who haggle over power at Westminster are all Tories. The result is the since 1979 the poor have always been the problem, this has been refined to a sharp point since 2010 as we see the actions of the only social democratic government to hold power in the last one hundred years is having its good works, works to ensure my father's generation came home to a country fit for heroes, are thrown in the bin, in a chase to the bottom. Yet in 2015 the English electorate will still only have three different styles of Tory to vote for and the reducing numbers who will exercise their right to vote will only have an option of which is the least worse option in their view. 


The Scots have long recognised that social democrat politics are about the sort of community you wish to live in, create, has nothing to do with class and is about a vision of creating as fair a community and as many opportunities to succeed as possible. The real change which is happening is that more and more Scots understand we can only have the sort of community, this type of common weal, we wish to continue to live in without the dead hand of a Tory Westminster dragging us back into the dark ages.

The myth is being put about by Nu Blu Labour is there are no votes in social democratic policies in England - it is time someone gave the English the choice, because I believe from living for 27 years in England, they are wrong and Nu Blu Labour are simply acting out of self interest. I do not think a new English social democrat party will do as well as the SNP have in Scotland (48% Scottish vote share currently) but I am sure they would do far better than UKIP and threaten both the English Libdems and Nu Blu Labour's sense of self importance, arrogance and infallibility.

Many in England increasingly see the ending of the Union as their opportunity to reform a Westminster which neither serves the electorate nor is democratic or representative, except in the loosest sense.


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