This is likely the last day of a Labour government -- for a parliament, for a generation, perhaps forever. And amid all the canvassers and the swingometers and the hum about a hung parliament, I can't stop thinking about where this all began, on a day that was very like today, and yet not like today at all. May 1st 1997, when Labour was elected, seems to have dissolved into a few scattered cliches now: the election tune Things Can Only Get Better; the sun rising over the Royal Festival Hall as Tony Blair's victory was announced; the sun setting on despised, iconic Conservative Michael Portillo. But beneath these discarded Kodak-moments was a hope-song. I was 18 years old the day my friends and I skived off college to go and cheer outside Downing Street at the vanquishing of the Conservatism we had -- in our tiny way, with our little wooden pencils -- helped to bring down.
If this were a film, it'd be tempting to slam-cut to the gurning ghost of Tony Blair that strutted across this election campaign -- orange and wild-eyed and bloated by his millions, pursued by people who have a powerful case that he should be in prison for war crimes. It would be a film about betrayal. We thought we were voting for a more equal Britain when in fact the "filthy rich" -- to use the term Peter Mandelson purred -- became filthier and richer and crashed the global economy. We thought we were voting for "an ethical foreign policy" when we got a war that killed a million civilians, and complicity with torture.
That's one story about this Labour government, and it's a true one. But it's not the full story -- and if we carried only that tale to the polls today, we would be guilty of a betrayal of our own.
When you remember the country that Britain voted to leave behind on May 1st 1997, what do you see? I remember the science block in the sixth form college I was studying at, where they couldn't afford to fix the roof, so every time it rained, water seeped through, and lessons had to stop. I remember my friends who earned £1 an hour, because there was no legal limit on how little you could offer a human being for their labour. I remember one of my closest relatives having to decide whether to buy nappies or heat her flat, because there were no tax credits, and single mothers were the subject of a Tory hate campaign. I remember how it felt to grow up gay and discover I could never have a legally recognised relationship. I remember my elderly neighbour waiting two years for a hip operation on the NHS, crying every night with the pain.
None of those things happens in Britain today, and it's not by fluke. Spending on public services has risen by 54 per cent since 1997, paid for by higher taxes. The result? Nobody is on a waiting list for more than 18 weeks -- and the average wait is just a month. Nobody goes to school in buildings that are falling apart. Nobody can be legally paid less than £5.93 an hour. The poorest 10 per cent receive £1,700 in tax credits a year each -- meaning their children get birthday parties and trips to the seaside, and parents who aren't constantly panicked about how to buy food at the end of every week.
Is this any comfort to an Iraqi child orphaned by British bombs? Is it any comfort to a kid imprisoned in Yarl's Wood, whose only "crime" is to have a parent seeking asylum? No. That's why you have to join the groups arguing for justice all year round, whatever party is in power: democracy isn't a twice-a-decade trip to the polling booth, but a constant ongoing process of monitoring and pressuring your government.
But I can't deny it is a real difference -- and it wouldn't have happened without that vote, that day. How do we know? Because the Conservative Party opposed every one of these changes. Under them, all the horrors of the Labour years would have happened, plus some, without any of the progress. Even in an age of retrenchment caused by the global recession, the differences between the parties will matter -- perhaps even more. Cameron has made his priorities plain: he will introduce a lottery-style £200,000 tax cut for the richest 3,000 estates in Britain, the people he knows best, while slashing his way through services for the rest. It's a policy more extreme than anything Thatcher advertised in advance.
And it will worsen. Cameron says he wants to model his economic policies on Ireland's, where the government has opposed any economic stimulus and introduced drastic and immediate cuts. As the economist Rob Brown explains, after they introduced this strategy, there began "an astonishing 15 per cent shrinkage in the Irish economy overall -- the sharpest contraction experienced by any advanced industrial nation in peacetime". Unemployment is close to the highest in Europe: Irish eyes are weeping at this full-colour reshoot of the 1930s headed Britain's way.
The British people don't want to slump back into Conservatism. That's why, even in the very best-case scenario for Cameron, more than 60 per cent of us today will vote against him, for parties to his left. So how do we stop him seizing power against the will of the majority?
First, we have to remember that, as Noam Chomsky says: "Choosing the lesser of two evils isn't a bad thing. The cliché makes it sound bad, but it's a good thing. You get less evil." On polling day, you have to vote to limit the damage, and the rest of the year, you join the campaign groups that fight for the good. Under our 19th-century voting system, Brits can only choose the most unambiguously good option -- the Green Party -- in one constituency, Brighton Pavilion, where they might well win a Member of Parliament. Everywhere else, if you are serious about producing the least damage, you need to find the main anti-Tory force in your area.
If you are a British voter, put your postcode into torymergency.webfreehosting.net/ to find out who it is. If we, the anti-Tory majority, cast our ballots smartly, we will strip Cameron of a majority -- and make it more likely we'll finally get a democratic voting system, so we don't have to make these squalid compromises any more. But if you choose to split the anti-Tory vote in your area, you should know: you will be more likely to wake up tomorrow and find David Cameron in Downing Street to the tune of "Things Can Only Get Worse".
The gap between Labour and the Conservatives is far too small, but a lot of people live and die in that gap. If you say this difference doesn't matter, you are saying all these people whose lives have been changed since the sun rose over the Royal Festival Hall that morning in May don't matter to you. You are saying to the call-centre worker paid five times more because of the minimum wage, the gay couple getting a civil partnership, or the old woman who doesn't have to wait two years to be able to walk again - that difference in your life isn't worth a cross in a box to me. Wouldn't that be a betrayal as ugly as New Labour's? Don't these people -- the beneficiaries of what we all did on May 1st 1997 -- deserve more than a defeated and dejected sigh to protect them from the Tories?
m>Johann Hari is a writer for the Independent. To read more of his articles, click here or here.
You can follow Johann's updates on the election at www.twitter.com/johannhari101
Follow Johann Hari on Twitter: www.twitter.com/johannhari101
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Good piece.
De-regulation, free market without borders, wars of convenience (and lies). Unbridled conservative Christian ( Crusade) indoctrinated government ( Tony Blair even went on to become a Catholic!!! after leaving office ).
That was the reason at the first sign of stress in the unregulated, there was a run on a major bank in England for the first time in 50 years - Northern Rock.
Labour, as moulded by Tony Blair is nothing but the English form of the Party of No ( No regulation and No conscience) of US - the Republican party.
Even if the result is the cumulation of peoples frustration with sleaze, economy, a-lot-of-talk-and-no-action politics, plus the Iraq war .... a lot people have not forgotten the Iraq war lies and the lives lost. If labour had not lost then there is no justice left in the world!
I feel a bit like people outside the US must have felt looking on at the Obama-McCain battle. Clear as day to me, caucus to primary, primary to election. Who wanted what was best for America, who wanted what was best for himself. But aspects of our process must have struck them as most unusual.
The only hope is that Nick Clegg will be the brakes on this fiasco !
until the whole society collapses in financial anarchy and destitution, which is generally not a pleasant experience for the little people that the progressives claim to want to protect.
But they meant well, and are probably very concerned about global warming and protecting whales, so I guess the destruction they cause is not really their fault. We should thank them for trying to help, even though their prescription is death for every society that their ideology infects.
It's complicated. Essentially, in order to form a government, you need to have a majority in the Commons. That is, more than the opposition parties put together. If you can't do that, you must first try and form a governing coalition with another party (usually, one with similar aims) or, if that doesn't work, govern as a minority government (very unstable because if they lose a No Confidence vote at any time, the government falls).
More questions? Because I've seen this referred to. I've heard about "disolving parliament" or "the government resigns". (They threatened to do it I know if Edward married Mrs. Simpson.) Does that literally mean that all of them just stand up and go home?
And the elections don't seem to have a regular date. Or do they? Talk of them having another election as early as this fall. Or they might hold another in 2011. Is the government then always in flux meaning even if you get elected or get a majority they can just decide to hold another election because people aren't happy? Whose call?
I must sound dense. Sorry.
I will never understand why progressives feel it is an appropriate use of government to intrude on a private, voluntary contract between two people and fix that contract to suit the whims of some uninvolved third party.
Progressivism is the philosophy of butting into other people's business, because you know better than they do how to run their life. The smug hubris is just breathtaking.
Sean, Sean, Sean!
The road to hell (serfdom) is paved with good intentions.
You can't have it both ways and Britain is very close to having exactly what's happening in Greece! All the wonderful handouts have done one thing. Bankrupt my beloved England. And the USA isn't learning any great lessons from the downfall of the big governments in Britain and Europe. If Obama doesn't change his ways, the US will be next in line for complete economic catastrophe.
We have created a whole generation of whiny entitlement folks-who seem embarrassed by anyone who works hard for their own success. AND this is the result.....Greece.....I PRAY labor does NOT win the election or Britain will follow in the Grecian footsteps......
Europe's level of socialism is leading to its fall....and Obama wants to follow Europe's example. Just insance.
I voted for my labour candidate as he opposed the Iraq war, and is a good egg. Otherwise I would have probably gone lib dem.
LibDem in England, SNP in Scotland, Plaid Cymru in Wales!
Such arrogance is indicative of Nu Labour who wish for the world of Orwell's 1984.
No sane person wanted to vote Conservative in 1997 as it had run out of steam and ideas.
In that year Labour were given the keys to the kingdom with a huge mandate.
After the first year of good endevours they squandered all this trust in them, and have brought the country to its knees, as they did in the 1970's.
No sane person should vote for Labour now as it has run out of ideas, is corrupt, and incompetent.
I'm Scottish so the answer is, nothing. However, if the Tories get in, we may gain independence because the Scottish people remember well the lessons of Thatcher..
Itchy.
Itchy.
Indeed a lot of people live and die in that gap.. and I'm happy to pay taxes to support people who are vulnerable and need help.
Gordon actually believes in a fairer society..
Cameron, as Obama is reported to have said, is just a 'lightweight'... and a dangerous one too.