So, this is fucking fun.
Alarmed and confused at the success of the ridiculous zero-sum game played by, well, everyone this time around. Not in an "old politics"/"Labservative" way, but really? I can pretty much deal with the logic that the Tories are the worst possible option, and they're genuinely too incompetent to hide their horse-fucking, gay-hating, Europhobe tendencies. But come on. Seriously? New Labour? We are talking about a centrally-run, whip-happy, and psychotically xenophobic cabal of now-faux-leftist crawlers. These people put immigrants in places like Campsfield (where you can't stack the chairs because the suicide risk's too high), have redefined a toilet as a reasonable place for a prisoner to sleep, presided over an pair of economically-motivated, destabilising wars whose civilian death toll is going up, still, as we speak, while Britain tears its fucking hair out over the next five or six of "our boys" to get it. Plus ID cards, plus trying to give Mandelson the power to censor anything he likes, plus ASBOS, and of course hilarious japes such as stalling all benefits applications for the last two months so the unemployment figures'd go down for the election.
These people are not socialists. They are not leftists. They have an electoral need to keep slightly more of the poor alive than the Tories do, but that's about it. (On the subject of New Labour: The Next Generation, note that Purnell** was highly involved with Ed M's manifesto plans, and that, from the community-organising shadows, one of the most right-wing DWP secretaries we've had for a long time gets a fresh coat of progressive paint*). What I'm trying to say, through a flakstorm of metal-plate-in-head "Brown done sold our gold"-type criticism, much of which is bought and paid for, some of which is genuine thickosity or libertarianism, is that these people are the really quite dreadful. They're a centrally-organised group of election fiddling war criminals who justify and perpetrate outrages against humanity at pretty much every level. And then blame staggering recessional unemployment on the laziness of the young. They want to barcode your perineum and then subcontract it to one of their lobbying firms (especially Alan Johnson). They've lied, persistently and insultingly, about pretty much everything from day one. They've fucked us over, laughed about it behind closed doors, and then blamed it on foreigners, or the young, or "the intrinsic violence of Black culture"***
Just because I would rather spend a night in an industrial washing machine filled with shit and nails than see any Tory government, minority, coalition, or full-fledged doesn't mean I'll vote for a party who are, lets face it, doing remarkably well in catching up, moral vileness-wise. They are a continuation of the Thatcherite project, and for all this "Tax Credits will save the underclass!"**** bullshit, have increased child poverty, increased the wealth gap, and continued to dick over low-end housing. The idea that just because a Tory's actually managed to stand on his hind legs for nearly five minutes without saying n****r or kicking someone working-class to the kerb we've all got to go back to good old red Labour, who'll keep us safe from...what? They both want to hand over yet more of the schools (and by extension, a generation of children) to religious fundies and the private sector, and just because big business/finance has jumped ship doesn't mean we'll be getting Clause 4 back. Or any kind of commitment to economic redistribution. Or anything other than a different set of repulsive platitudes to hear echoing around Grim Meathook Britain.
So Nick Clegg will save us all, right?
FUCKS TO THAT. While the LDs are currently in a fascinating tactical position, and their economic logic is based on wearing only one huge horse blinker while looking at the problem, we're talking about a party willing to dive into the moral murk for bigotvotes in a way that's unacceptable.
*progressive paint, yeah. Feel the rhetoric.
**A man who attempted to introduce a system by which the long-term unemployed would have to work full-time for their benefits. Forever, or until they find something better. For companies with which he is Oxford chums with the managing director, sort of thing. Fell through, because while essentially enslaving whole sections of the poor, the plan wasn't going to make money for them.
***Blair, 2007
****Not if they're under 25, it won't.