3 Responses

1. David T says:

   02/04/2023 at 10:18 am

   The country’s voters seemingly have a poor choice at the elections.
   There is a Tory party mired in chaotic policy u-turns and financial mismanagement, interspersed with regular ministerial misdemeanours.
   Desperation might send voters in the direction of Labour, a party with no less baggage, for example whiffs of anti-Semitism, Corbynism and trade union cronyism. Labour also an inbuilt outmoded philosophy of socialism, and the deluded economic policies born of this.
   In my lifetime, post-war, every single Labour government has ended up bankrupting the country’s finances. Immediately post-war; Attlee’s administration. Then another Labour govt in the strike riven 1970s featuring Wilson and co. Finally, the last time out for the Labour nag, ridden by Blair/Brown, that belly flopped, leaving the finances in ruins and the Treasury with the now infamous note “There’s no money left!”.
   A Labour government elected now would be no different; in hock to the unions, unrealistic economic policies together with the budgetary restraints of a lottery winner.
   The voters’ dispirited eyes may drift down the list to the Lib Dems, hapless nationally, maybe not so at local level, where the memorial clocks will be fixed and the councillors will be seen out and about. On any measure, given the appalling records of the above Tory and Labour deserts occupied only by political and economic ineptitude, the LibDems should be elected with a landslide majority that Jo Grimond could never have dreamt of!
   However, the LibDems are mired in vague policies, prevaricating, nothing definitive. Drifting along leaderless and rudderless.
   There is a desperate need in the country for action and decisiveness. A desperate need to restructure, at the very least, the ‘broken’ NHS – it was ‘broken’ many years ago!
   There is an energy generation crisis and the Lib Dems have been, historically, vociferously anti-nuclear power. Hesitation and cancellation of construction contracts to build nuclear power stations has proven to be calamitous.
   Hard and fast decisions need to be made on the horrifically expensive, but fruitless, HS2 rail project.
   A future government will face no less hard decisions on taxation, runaway government spending in all departments, and the continuing ramifications of the appalling Brexit vote.
   Hard decisions, decisiveness, no fudging, can we depend opon a party that likes to be all things to everyone?
   UKIP? Elitist nationalism harking back to 1930s Europe. The Brexit disaster was born there.
   The Greens? Utopian dreamland, including a nuclear free world of plentiful cheap non polluting energy, and everyone cycling everywhere. These ‘flower power’ people belong to the doped up San Francisco of 1968.
   To hell in a hand cart? The only choice voters seemingly have is in which hand cart to take that ride!

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   • John H says:

     02/04/2023 at 2:40 pm

     Stick to local issues for the may election. Rant about national issues when a general election is called

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2. John Hartley says:

   02/04/2023 at 11:50 am

   Good analysis, David. IMO, of course. But what to do? How to deal with all the negativity accurately described in your post?

   At local election level, I’ve no doubt I’ll be voting for the Lib Dems. But come a general election, I think it’ll be different. Stopping Brexit was an important reason for me to have voted Lib Dem in the last three elections – although without any enthusiasm for them otherwise. Their move to the right in the Clegg years was a bitter pill to swallow and remains so. But the Brexit reason has gone now.

   So, instead of a vote AGAINST the Tories of the last three elections, I can now look to vote FOR something. Given the opportunity, I’ll be voting for the “utopian dreamland” of the Greens.

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