COMMENT: A member of the Labour party on why it’s right to vote Labour

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Today at approximately 10pm ballot boxes throughout the United Kingdom will be shut, sealed and then driven by police escort to counting locations. Here, paid officials, monitored by local candidates will work well into the night, counting the votes and ultimately playing a part in declaring which party will be forming the next government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

BY DANIEL GILLEN

I’ve always been fascinated by the electoral process, and four years ago, almost to this day, I was lucky enough to be able to attend the local count in my home town of Burnley and help play a part in supervising the counting. Interestingly, I did witness a few mistakes (a vote for labour going in the conservative pile for instance) and it was clear just how decisive a recount could be, if the vote was close enough. In the end however, the labour candidate won by quite a sizeable margin.

But now four years later I don’t feel even she is safe, in a constituency that has always voted labour since the second world war.

The post-war victory of the labour party led to it’s great and and long standing achievement, the establishment of the NHS and the welfare state. This forever changed the nature of British society, the notion of a literally starving working class in Britain was condemned to the history books and media reports of other post-war countries without the welfare system served to remind even the poorest of Britians, “They never had it so good”.

Since then the labour party has fluctuated between mild reformist ambitions, to the unelectable Marxism under it’s recently deceased leader Micheal Foot in the early 1980′s. However, throughout all these fluctuations in policy, one thing remained firm in the party conciousness: a clear and practical desire to advance the condition and welfare of the great British masses.

Even with the reform of the party under Tony Blair, the continuation of Thatcher’s de-regulation of the banking system was paralleled by a taxation on banks’ profits to fund a program of investment in the countries’ schools and hospitals.

So why now, 13 years under Labours governance, has the party so decisively fallen out of favour with the general public? The expenses scandal certainly rocked the political institutions, but it was Conservative candidates who committed some of the worst excesses, so surely they should be suffering the electoral backlash too.

If we look to the banking crisis, it’s origins lie in the deregulation of the markets under the Presidency of Regan and his willing accomplice Margret Thatcher. There is therefore little doubt that the credit crunch and recession would have occurred under a conservative government as well, perhaps it would have even been worse had they not the courage to do the risky, but ultimately successful move in bailing out the banks.

Whatever happened and whoever is to blame, I feel there is a clear breeze of desire for change in the air, perhaps partially due to fallout from the election of Barack Obama in last year’s presidential elections. Whatever it’s cause, this desire has created for the first time since 1945, a chance to make a truly progressive decision that does not result in a labour majority.

We are currently faced with the astounding and fascinating possibility that 24 hours from now, a hung parliament will emerge. Although a member of the Labour party myself, this is the outcome I am hoping for. If this happens, I hope both the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats can work up the courage to form an alliance that will be fraught with difficulty, but ultimately beneficial to the entire country and political system.

I hope that the Liberal Democrats will back the Labour government into another term, with the guarantee of a clear and definitive introduction of Proportional Representation. This would smash the existing political system and probably destroy the chance of any future conservative government for generations. It would also allow the Liberal Democrats to become a much more influential party, and through a Liberal-Labour alliance the fantastic attributes of both parties will become manifest. We’ll see labour’s progressive economic policies flourish, whilst it’s authoritarian tendencies held back by liberal desires for greater individual freedoms and increased democracy.

I sincerely believe this is a real possibility and would be the best outcome for either party. So as a member of the Labour Party I urge readers to vote in the best way they can to make this coalition possible.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 6th, 2010 at 3:54 am and is filed under Opinion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.