Although I am not a political animal, I have voted for the Labour Party, in general, local and european elections, all my life. After the death of John Smith when Tony Blair became leader of the Labour Party, or as it became, the 'New Labour Party', it was obvious that Blair intended making major changes to the Party. This was apart from appearing to be someone who wanted to become prime minister at any cost and willing to jettison any policies that he believed would jeopardise his intentions.
    Shortly before the last general election, when New Labour Party canvassers called at my home, the only reason that they could suggest for voting New Labour was that 'it couldn't be as bad as the Conservatives'. I did not view this to be a particularly sound reason basis for voting New Labour and I found it extremely difficult to ascertain exactly what its policies were; everything said was either sounbites, cliches or 'spin'.

    I was naturally worried about the changes Blair intended to make and the lack of information concerning New Labour policies. The very fact that Labour had suddenly become 'New Labour' meant that changes were planned; however I doubt whether anyone realized that introducing the word 'New' actually meant jettisoning virtually all that the traditional Labour Party has stood for. Nonetheless, while suspicious of Blair, I voted New Labour together with millions of others who witnessed the Party achieving an overwhelming majority. I suspect many of the votes cast were not because of supporting New Labour, but were votes against the Conservative Party.
    It was only a matter of time before it became clear that instead of disposing of a Conservative Government, New Labour was essentially a continuation of this in many ways. And no less worrying, was the fact that some of its policies seemed to be even more right-wing than the Conservatives. Indeed, Tony Blair, Jack Straw, and many other New Labour Party leaders all seem to be singing from the same songsheet as The Sun editorial.

    It is now clear that the usage of the word 'Labour' is misleading as New Labour has nothing in common with traditional Labour Party policies. The majority of New Labour Members of Parliament are middle-class, affluent and professionals; in view of this, they have little or no understanding of the difficulties experienced by those who once voted Labour.

Tony Blair - the man who destroyed the Labour Party for personal gain

    Take for example, Blair; his background is one of considerable, if not rare, affluence and privilege, reading Law at Oxford University and qualifying as a barrister in 1976. His brother, William James Lynton Blair, is a QC and has been a consultant with the World Bank and IMF since 1991. Blair's wife, Cherie Booth, as a QC, is a very wealthy person in her own right. She is an employment law specialist, a field coincidentally not affected by the government's legal aid cuts, and was earning up to 200,000 pounds a year before the birth of their latest offspring.
    Secondly, because of their own status, New Labour M.P's have been intent in indulging those people who during the Thatcherite years become known as 'Middle England'.
    As it is these people whose votes are sought by the Conservatives, Liberal-Democrats and New Labour, millions of people who were once Labour Party supporters now find there is no political party that represents them. Ironically these are very people who most need representation. As far as 'the state of the nation' while New Labour has been in Government, this confirms that for the greater part, New Labour has simply continued Conservative party policies, or introduced policies about which even a right-wing Conservative government would have hesitated over:

    The NHS (National Health Service) has continued to deteriorate (e.g., lengthy waits for operations, patients lying on trolleys for hours, the dead being dumped in hospital chapels, etc.). I know several people who have used their life savings to have an operation rather than wait months, or years, for it to be carried out by the fast-crumbling NHS. There have also been numerous media reports about people dying while they await treatment. And yet NHS Chief Executives received pay rises of up to six per cent in 2000; one was as high as 22 per cent. New Labour continues to make promises, but delivers nothing decisive and the suffering continues.
    At the beginning of March 2001, one-in-six health care students were quitting their courses before graduating, and some courses had a drop-out rate of nearly 40% according to the National Audit Office (NAO). The NAO and the Audit Commission said targets would only be met if the government improved education and training. The Audit Commission's report found that in the majority of NHS Trusts that at least one-third of nurses had not updated their skills in basic support and one-in-five health trusts were using less than three-quarters of their training places for post-graduate education - meaning millions of pounds are wasted each year. A further waste is the amount of money paid in compensation to the 1 in 10 patients (or their relatives) whose NHS 'treatment' results in disability or death (as announced on 2 March 2001).
    New Labour's contempt for the NHS should not come as any great surprise; those who urgently require life-saving treatment will either be those of Middle England who can afford private treatment, or be the poor and sick who will die before NHS treatment is possible, but as these people have no economic or social value whatsoever in New Labour's New Britain, their departure will not be considered to be of any significance.
    According to Reuters (London) on 25 March 2001,

'The quality of care provided by the National Health Service has deteriorated under the Labour government, according to an internet survey of the nation's doctors, the Sunday Times reported. Nearly 75 percent of the 1,005 doctors who completed the survey thought the extra billions of pounds spent on the NHS under the Labour administration were not providing better services for sick people.
    The survey, conducted for the newspaper by internet research company Medix, concluded that the standard of patient care had plunged under the Labour government.

At the end of March 2001, the Association of Community Health Councils found that waiting times in casualty departments of hospitals could sometimes be as much as 54 hours. One 94-year old was made to wait 30 hours before being admitted.

    In The Guardian of 21 March 2001, it was reported:

The government's claims to be boosting investment in Britain's crumbling public infrastructure were undermined yesterday when official figures showed Labour on course to spend less in every year of this parliament than the Conservatives in their last 12 months in power...Data released jointly by the Treasury and the Office for National Statistics showed that in the first 11 months of the 2000 to 2001 financial year Mr Brown amassed a surplus of £21.2bn, but public investment amounted to£2.9bn of the £7.4bn he had earmarked. This follows three years in which Labour's ferocious control of public spending meant investment in schools, hospitals, roads and the rest of the UK's infrastructure never reached the £4.7bn spent in the final year of John Major's administration.
...Some economists blame the "public bad, private good" culture inherited from the previous government for the reluctance by Whitehall officials to sanction spending. Investment has fallen sharply since the introduction of the private finance initiative in the mid-90s. Spending in 1999 to 2000 stood at £3.5bn, lower in inflation-adjusted terms than in all but one of the 18 years in which the Conservatives were in power, and only a quarter of what Labour was spending in the last year of the 1974 to 1979 government..

    And yet New Labour was quite happy to spend 60 million pounds on public advertising in just three months, as was reported in April 2001. Some of this apparently had a negative or opposite effect (e.g. DHSS fraud), and while it did not actually advertise New Labour as such it certainly helped to present a 'positive' image of New Labour in Government.

    New Labour has taken no positive action to reduce pollution; one can only speculate that New Labour does not want to do anything to alienate the Middle-England car-owner. In one Labour conference, John Prescott drove the few yards from his hotel to the conference building rather than walk: the only excuse that he could offer was that his wife did not want the weather to spoil her new 'hair-do'.
    Tremendous damage has been suffered by many people through the repeated flooding, almost certainly caused by global warming, and yet New Labour refuses to take any decisive action to curtail car usage in this country, simply because the car is seen by 'Middle England' as a status-symbol. So the country becomes more polluted and is at increased risk of erratic weather condition caused by car pollution.
    The public transport system is as poor as it had ever been, and if anything, is even worse than when New Labour first took office. Essential repairs on the railway were only carried out after a number of major accidents and ensuing deaths. New Labour could have stopped the privatization of the railways when it was elected, but chose to do nothing, presumably because once again it did not want to alienate the share-owning Middle England.
    On 14 April 2001, The Guardian reported:

Tony Blair is losing the battle to reassure voters about British produce, according to a new poll which reveals that three-quarters of the nation no longer trusts the government on the crucial issue of food safety. Last year's exposure of the mass Whitehall BSE cover-up, together with vast public opposition to GM foods and anxiety about the foot and mouth crisis, has led 72% of the public - and 57% of Labour voters - to disregard ministers' statements.
The findings, which appear in the Ecologist magazine, are likely to make uncomfortable reading for the prime minister, already aware of the cynicism surrounding 'spin' and the levels of distrust surrounding farming methods, in the immediate run-up to the election campaign. The research, conducted three and a half weeks ago as the foot and mouth epidemic escalated dramatically, also reveals the public are sceptical of the prime minister's claims to be 'green' - despite promising five weeks ago to make Britain a leading player in 'the coming green industrial revolution'.
Mr Blair announced 100 million of new money to support wind and solar power and pledged to ratify the Kyoto protocol before the end of next year. Sixty-five per cent of the public believe Labour has done nothing to improve the environment since it came to power, mirroring the cries of opposition parties, which point to the fact Mr Blair made no speech about the environment for his first three and a half years in office.
The figures also reflect the words of his own chief environmental adviser, Jonathan Porritt, who last September accused the prime minister of 'downgrading' green issues, despite promising in Labour's manifesto to put them 'at the heart of government'. Two-thirds think there should be more emphasis on organic research - rather than GM foods, which gain 13 times as much government funding - and almost half (45%) believe there should be a ban on importing and testing GM crops in Britain. In a further embarrassment for the government, three-quarters of those surveyed believe Britain's beleaguered railway should be re-nationalised. Support is cross-party, with two-thirds of Tory voters calling for privatisation to be reversed, despite the Thatcher government having introduced it...
'They've achieved some things but fallen very far of their original claim to put the environment at the heart of their government', said Don Foster, the environment spokesman for the Liberal Democrats...

    Apart from it becoming absolutely clear by the end of April that while New Labour was highly efficient at propaganda and 'spin', it had no idea whatsoever of how to deal with a crisis such as the Foot and Mouth outbreak, further evidence of New Labour's complete disregard for the environment was reported by The Independent on 22 April 2001:

Britain's blazing foot and mouth pyres are spewing out more deadly pollutants than all the country's factories combined, unpublished official figures indicate. The Government has admitted that no systematic checks are being made on the pollution, no single body is responsible for controlling it, and no assessment of the health effects have been carried out.
The massive airborne emissions are of dioxins; carcinogens 1,000 times more deadly than arsenic. The pollution poses yet another risk to agriculture and the countryside, as well to public health. Environmentalists fear that the pollution will make farmland unusable for long after the crisis has ended.

    The elderly have been given derisory increases in their pensions. Help for the disabled has been reduced. On the first occasion when New Labour introduced legislation in Parliament to reduce assistance for the disabled, Blair was holding a function at 10 Downing Street for wealthy contributors to the Party. This was an excellent example of how he believes image, spin and money are far more important than the needs of the people.
    On the first day of Blair's term in office. the British public were greeted with pictures of enthusiastic flag waving individuals lining 10 Downing Street. Only later was it discovered that these people were all hand-picked members of the New Labour Party. Thus, from day one, everything to do with New Labour has been related to image and presentation with no accompanying substance.

    Despite Blair claiming that his three priorities were 'Education, education, education', there has been no noticeable improvement in the standards of education.
    In mid-February 2000 it was announced that out of all the developed nations, with only two exceptions, Britain had the lowest literacy of all of them. This is a relatively new phenomenon beginning in the Thatcherite years which has continued under New Labour. The appearance of 'summer schools' to try and improve the academic grade of schoolpupils is of course clear evidence that Labour has failed in education; the very fact it has been necessary to supply extra school-time to produce the results that were once achieved by normal schooling demonstrates that something is now seriously amiss. In the matter of higher education, this has become increasingly the domain of the wealthy middle class who can afford the tuition fees and do not need the now-abolished grants which made it possible for everyone to consider and pursue higher education.
    At the beginning of March 2001, Chris Woodhead, the former education chief launched a scathing attack on Blair's government, saying 'The real problem, I believe, is that he (Blair) has failed to focus with sufficient rigour on what he repeatedly declared to be his number one priority...He has just not delivered. A generation of children has been betrayed'.

    New Labour has wasted a tremendous waste of money, e.g., the Millennium Dome that cost 758 million pounds. Additionally, in January 2001, it was reported that the Millennium Dome investigator PricewaterhouseCoopers were paid 4.4 million pounds out of 6 million pounds paid by the Dome in accountancy fees. It was also reported that leaked sections of the NAO report had revealed that New Labour culture secretary Chris Smith and eight members of the Millennium Commission ordered a senior civil servant to pay 76 million pounds to keep the Millennium Dome afloat after he had told them it was a waste of public money.
    In fact the Dome merely presented a depressingly trivial and corrupt vision of both our present and our future. Many clever gadgets and silly technology were the main attraction, much of it sponsored by arms manufacturers, burger giants, car manufacturers and other corporate multinational giants. The Journey Zone was sponsored by Ford Motors, which has helped so much towards pollution.
    Wasting money and indulging 'Middle England' was not confined to such events as the Dome as it was found in numerous other things, e.g., the 100/200 pounds winter heating allowance that was paid to all pensioners. As this was paid, irrespective of income/capital because New Labour would not apply means-testing, this meant that pensioners with six-figure pensions or possibly even millionaires, received the same amount as a pensioner in receipt of housing benefit.

    New Labour has made the banning of blood sports into something which is little more than a farce. Again, not wishing to upset 'Middle England', New Labour has distanced itself as much as possible from proposed legislation. When the ban was again debated in January 2000, Blair was conveniently unable to attend the vote. In fact he has missed every vote on hunting since he became Prime Minister except for the Second Reading of the current Bill which did not commit him to a particular position. Only three Government ministers, out of nearly one hundred, voted against an outright ban on hunting.

    Despite its many assurances on animal welfare before the last election, New Labour has done its utmost to support animal abuse: one leaflet was 'New Labour - New Life for Animals' when 'More Painful Deaths for Animals' would have been more accurate. For example, it actively assisted Huntingdon Life Sciences, a laboratory whose cruelty has been nationally exposed on several different occasions. The Independent of 4 February 2000 revealed that 'New Labour' had received 'substantial' amounts of money from businesses that use animals in experimentation: this presumably explains New Labour's remarkable enthusiasm for actively promoting and defending vivisection and abandoning its pre-election promises.
    In February 2001, the country was in the grip of panic due to Foot and Mouth disease; the blame for much of this lies in New Labour's apathy as far as animal welfare is concerned. As The Guardian reported on 25 February 2001 in the article 'How a rural idyll turned into a hotbed of disease':

...In silence, locals watched as lorries carrying kindling and coal trundled through the rusty gates. In a nearby field, JCB diggers gouged huge holes in the earth. They were digging graves. In the farm's holding sheds vets had used specially-adapted guns to shoot the animals in the head before their bodies were taken to the pits for burning. The fires will be lit today...
...The pigs' deaths are no more horrific that their lives, according to reports of conditions at Burnside Farm. Vets declared it was the perfect breeding ground for the disease. Rotting pig carcasses had been left with live pigs. Pieces of raw meat were left lying about the farm. The sows gave birth among other pigs, and grown pigs were eating piglets.
...That squalid conditions existed at Heddon-on-the-Wall was widely known. Locals often complained about it. Last year Hillside Animal Sanctuary in Norwich sent a team to inspect it. Prevented from getting in, they saw enough from the gate to call in the RSPCA. Acting on their advice, trading standards inspectors who visited the farm with MAFF officials on 22 December are thought to have wanted to prosecute. But MAFF officials simply told the Waughs to pull their socks up. A month later a further inspection also failed to spark action. The inspection last week by a vet revealed that the pigs were clearly suffering from foot and mouth, and had been for some time. The farmers said they had not noticed ...

    And in the article 'The making of an epidemic' on 27 February:

The impossibly tangled web which Ministry of Agriculture staff began to unravel last week now extends across three animal species, five countries and many British counties as foot and mouth disease carried by British sheep threatens to spread though Europe and even further afield.... But as mainland Europe continued yesterday to try to identify and quarantine or kill those animals which they suspect may have come into contact with infected British sheeps becoming clear that the continental meat trade is so complex that a sheep born in Aberdeenshire could be trucked 1,600 miles before being slaughtered as far away as Beirut....

    In sum, much or all of this problem could have been avoided, including the millions of pounds involved in dealing with the infection and the likely compensation payments to farmers (who appear to be regularly subsidised by the taxpayer), if New Labour had implemented and enforced animal welfare policies. But being absolute hypocrites, New Labour politicians ignored this need and prefer to compensate farmers (who should be obtaining insurance for such eventualities rather than relying upon Government hand-outs) which admittedly does seem more than prepared to spend millions of pounds to please land-owning Middle England rather than on such things as the NHS, etc. One naturally wonders why New Labour believes it is necessary to assist farmers, although it is not necessary to assist those living in urban areas where the mains sources of employment have closed (e.g., South Wales).
    At the end of March 2001, it was said that the cause of the outbreak was almost certainly the use of pigswill, which has been known for many years to be a cause of Foot and Mouth. However, in view of New Labour being uninterested in animal welfare and anxious to minimize costs for Middle England farmers, they did nothing about this.
    This time also saw the killing and burning/burying of thousands of animals to try and stop the spread of the outbreak with the army becoming involved. The slaughter and disposal of carcases was said to be akin to a 'conveyor belt process'. With so many animals to kill and New Labour pressurizing those dealing with the slaughter to accomplish their task as quickly as possible, there were reports of some animals not be killed and being buried alive. Needless to say, this was denied by the authorities, but the fact that RSPCA inspectors were not allowed to monitor the process can only lend weight to the possibility that some animals who were only dazed, were buried in the pits with the other carcasses. On 13 April, all television news programmes showed a slaughterman taking 'potshots' at sheep in a field that ran away from him terrified; this naturally breached all rules and guidelines for slaughtering. Suddenly, the next day, the news was silent about the matter and one naturally wonders whether the Government had anything to do with this.
    The situation became even more bizarre when on 4 April 2001, The Guardian reported:

The environment minister, Michael Meacher, last night caused embarrassment for Tony Blair when he jumped the gun by announcing that there will be a public inquiry into the foot and mouth outbreak once the crisis is over, including an examination of alternative farming methods. As both Mr Blair and William Hague toured the frontline hot spots yesterday on the 44th day of the crisis - with 1,000 cases and 2m animals marked down for slaughter - it was a series of errors and misjudgments...

    New Labour has also introduced legislation that make Britain into little more than a police state that is beginning to resemble the Germany of the early 1930s. For example, all activity on the internet is now monitored and/or recorded and the failure to provide the police with passwords will result in a lengthy term of imprisonment. A further instance of this is, as reported in The Guardian on 6 April 2001, that Jack Straw intends that the police will keep personal DNA samples of millions of British citizens even though they are acquitted of any offence. It said that this idea had 'been attacked by the government's own human genetics commission', and the commission was not consulted by Straw about his proposals: the commission's chairwoman, Lady Kennedy, a Labour peer and lawyer said that she found the idea of the police keeping samples of suspects found innocent to be 'a frightening move to a national database'.
    Yet another example is the new Terrorism Act 2000; as discussed by The Guardian on 22 February 2001:

On Monday, the progressive era was officially launched, with the implementation of an inclusive piece of legislation called the Terrorism Act 2000. error, in the new progressive age, is no longer the preserve of those who choose violence. Today almost anyone can participate, just as long as she or he wants to change the world... since Monday you can become a terrorist without having to harm a living being, provided you believe in something. In that case, causing 'serious damage to property' or interfering with 'an electronic system' will do.
Or simply promoting or encouraging such acts, or associating with the people who perform them, or failing to tell the police what they are planning. Or, for that matter, wearing a T-shirt or a badge which might "arouse reasonable suspicion" that you sympathise with their activities... Emmeline Pankhurst and her followers, under the act, could have been jailed for life for damaging property to advance a political or ideological cause...
Anyone believed to be plotting an action can be stopped and searched, and the protest materials she or he is carrying confiscated. Or, if they prefer, the police can seize people who may be about to commit an offence and hold them incommunicado for up to seven days...

    See also 'New Labour hypocrisy - Straw' and 'New Labour - prepares for election (super-spin)' below for other examples of New Labour's emerging police state.

    The behaviour of New Labour ministers hardly inspires confidence. In 1999, Blair deliberately tried to influence the voting in the Welsh leadership race and the Mayor of London election. This surely demonstrates Blair's desire to have total and full control of the Party. He often talks about 'consultation', but this is nothing more than Blair stating his opinion and then insisting that everyone else adopts this.
    Indeed, it is difficult to have confidence in anyone who advances one view but does something wholly different. Blair is keen on talking about responsibility and so on, and yet in July 2000, his 16-year old son Euan was arrested being 'drunk and incapable' after being found face down and vomiting in a busy central London square. Blair's son then compounded the crime by giving a false name and an old address to police. He also claimed to be 18, the legal age to buy alcohol. To no great surprise, the boy was not charged.

    Straw is certainly no better, saying one thing, but doing something completely different. When in opposition, New Labour opposed child jails and private prisons, but on becoming Government Home Secretary he has given them his support.
    In August 1999, trying to deepen his Conservative image, Straw accused the majority of travellers of being criminals. This is somewhat ironic as in July 2000, Straw allowed his driver to commit a criminal offence by exceeding the speed limit (which was not pursued) when on Party (not Government) business. Once again Straw's arrogance and hypocrisy manifests itself. He has been unequivocal in his belief in the need for 'zero tolerance' towards speeding motorists and supported a senior police officer's call in 1999 for the prosecution of drivers exceeding the limit by a mere 1mph, and yet Straw's car is alleged to have been travelling at over 100mph.
    Furthermore, his teenage son was arrested in December 1997 after selling 1.92 grams of cannabis resin to a journalist. Despite Straw saying drug trafficking is a serious crime that must be eradicated, his son only received a police caution. Straw incidentally attended University of Leeds; Inns of Court, School of Law, and before entering Parliament, was a barrister. This is hardly the biography that one would expect of a Socialist. The fact that he allowed millionaire Konrad Kalejs, a suspected Nazi war criminal to flee this country in November 2000 despite evidence of his crimes hardly strengthens Straw's claim to be a 'Labour' politician.
    Straw has gone beyond even what the Conservatives did in restricting justice, particularly for the poor, by attempting to introduce a system where a defendant does not have the automatic right to trial by jury. Apart from the fact that Straw once opposed any such limits, his arguments in favour of doing so have been shown as deeply flawed.
    The Times of July 7 1993 carried a feature by Gareth Williams QC, a former chairman of the bar, who referred to the reference by the royal commission on criminal justice that the right to trial jury should be removed as 'madness' calling the right 'a fundamental liberty' and adding that there were 'no circumstances' under which he could agree to such a proposal ('I am adamantly opposed'). Gareth Williams QC, is in fact now Lord Williams of Mostyn, and the New Labour government's attorney general, and now favours what he once termed 'this madness'. At the same time the New Labour shadow home secretary, said it was 'totally unsatisfactory' to prevent defendants from choosing trial by jury adding that 'fundamental rights to justice cannot be driven by administrative convenience'. The shadow home secretary who uttered these words was none other than Tony Blair.
    As recently as February 27 1997 one New Labour M.P said 'let me now refer to Michael Howard's proposal to end the right of many defendants to elect for trial by jury...Surely cutting down the right to jury trial, making the system less fair, is not only wrong but short-sighted and likely to prove ineffective'. The speaker in this case was....Jack Straw.
    Another change to the justice system planned by Straw is that any previous convictions of a defendant will be made known to the jury. This will obviously influence a jury and will undoubtedly result in innocent people being judged not on the evidence of a case, but on a previous conviction (which of course could have been wrong) resulting in innocent people being found guilty. This matters not to Straw; all that does matter is that the number of convictions increase which makes it appear that fewer criminals are 'getting away'. Interestingly, Straw does not appear to be planning anything to deal with those many instances of the police fabricating, withholding or manufacturing evidence to secure a conviction. Nor is anything being done to remove the number of aged and senile members of the judiciary who are clearly incapable of judging a case fairly.
    In the case of removing the right to jury trial and the disclosure of previous convictions, both were rigorously opposed by Straw when he was in opposition. Needless to say he has done nothing to reinstitute the right to silence removed by the Conservatives (silence during police questioning is now said to indicate guilt). As stated, Britain is begining to take on the shape of Germany in the early 1930s.
    As The Guardian of 20 March 2001 reported:

The country has never stood in greater need of liberalism being reaffirmed. The encroachments on it, by a home secretary who grows ever more defiantly hostile to liberal principles, multiply by the week. The criminal justice and police bill gives the police draconian powers against demonstrators of all kinds, not just the animal liberation front. New powers are being proposed to seize assets merely on suspicion of criminality. Juries and not merely judges may soon be allowed to know about past convictions before a trial begins. Worst of all in this systematic erosion of the presumption of innocence, the double jeopardy rule has been recommended for abolition. It's an iniquitous proposal, prompted by one notorious case, which proves only that in a populist environment easy cases make even worse law than hard ones... Riddled with anomalies, the law commission's destruction of a basic rule is none the less accepted by much bien pensant opinion: final proof that liberal principles, unless reasserted, are heading for the rocks.

    The above are just a few of the many examples that could be cited that show the leading members of the New Labour Party are absolute hypocrites and the picture that they presented of themselves before being elected was wholly false.
    Those who voted New Labour after becoming weary of the sleeze and corruption which accompanied the Conservative Party in government have been disappointed.

    In 1998, Peter Mandelson, the architect of New Labour and the person responsible for its landslide election victory, was forced to resign after it emerged that he had borrowed 373,000 pounds from Paymaster General, Geoffrey Robinson, to buy a house in exclusive Notting Hill Gate (why does a Socialist need to buy a house in an exclusive area?) and he had failed to disclose this fact (which is required) to the Building Society from whom he also obtained a loan for the property.
    Robinson quit his post within hours of Mandelson (after apologising to the Commons for not properly declaring numerous business interests), making this the first time that two ministers had resigned on the same day since 1982. Naturally most people will find it strange that Trade and Industry Secretary Mandelson took this loan when the DTI was currently investigating alleged irregularities in Robinson's business dealings. On being asked whether he had given false information to the Building Society, he could only say that he 'could not guarantee' he had not done this.
    Within ten months, Mandelson was back in the cabinet as Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. But this was short-lived. Mandelson once again had to resign in January 2001 due to a further act of alleged deception when it was claimed that he had misled people in respect of his involvement with the obtaining of a British passport for an Indian businessman who had donated one million pounds towards the Millennium Dome (at the time of the donation, Mandelson, as the cabinet office minister, was in charge of the Dome project). Rarely mentioned is the fact that with this second resignation, Mandelson was entitled to a second ministerial pay-off of over twelve thousand pounds.
    Mandelson then attempted to 'unresign' by saying that he had been forced to leave. At this point, 10 Downing Street declared that Mandelson was 'unfocused' and 'detached', suggesting that he had a problem with his state of mind.
    On 9 March 2001, an enquiry reported that Mandelson had not done anything wrong. This then leads to a number of questions: Why then was Blair so keen to be rid of him, and why did he comply with this demand? Whatever the circumstances, why did he become involved in the passport application - does Mandelson do this for everyone having passport problems? Thirdly, surely after a previous resignation, one would have thought he would have been ultra-careful in becoming involved in anything that could be misinterpreted.
    NB. Anyone interested in the career of Mandelson and the means by which he has reached those offices that he has occupied are encouraged to read:- Mandy by Paul Routledge (London: Simon and Schuster, 1999).

    New Labour's Europe minister Keith Vaz was also involved and claimed that as he was a central figure in the Anglo-Indian community, it was not surprising that he had become involved in helping them. Indeed, but one naturally wonders whether the fact that the businessmen were millionaires and donating to the New Labour Party's Millennium Dome had anything to do with this. Did Mr Vaz become involved in passport applications of poor Indians who were non-political and would not be making large donations? I doubt it. Shortly after this, further information came to light, e.g., Vaz used government offices to settle an insurance dispute between a businessman and his insurance company. The Observer of 4 February 2001, also described how:

'Keith Vaz accepted a job with a company owned by an Iraqi-born tycoon who is wanted for questioning over a massive European corruption scandal. Vaz, who is facing calls for his resignation over his business relationships, accepted a directorship of the company owned by Nadhmi Auchi, a British multi-millionaire facing inquiries over his role in an oil deal allegedly involving £40m of kickbacks'...

    As other New Labour politicians, Vaz appears to have a collection of expensive properties, i.e., while owning one in Stanmore, worth about 600,000 pounds, he was seeking a buy a London property worth 900,000 pounds in February 2001, and he also owns two further properties in Leicester.
    On 13 March 2001, The Guardian, reported:

The Foreign Office minister, Keith Vaz, was yesterday criticised by the Commons standards committee for failing to cooperate fully with an inquiry which largely cleared him of not disclosing his business dealings to parliament. The Leicester East MP was found to have broken the MPs' code of conduct by not declaring a small financial interest with a City lawyer when he recommended him for a political honour. No action will be taken against him for this.
    Mr Vaz also broke Commons rules by failing to disclose a Leicester property in the MPs' register. But the committee decided to allow Mr Vaz to register it without incurring any penalty or criticism. Elizabeth Filkin, the parliamentary commissioner for standards and the Commons standards and privileges committee, rejected nine complaints that Mr Vaz failed to disclose cash donations of thousands of pounds to his office and charities which he supported. Eight other complaints could not be properly investigated by Ms Filkin after witnesses and Mr Vaz refused to cooperate or answer any other questions by the commissioner about them.

    These are only a few of the incidents which have arisen in the short time that New Labour has been in Government and others could be cited, e.g., in July 1998, there was the 'cash for access' fiasco in which Labour lobbyist Derek Draper claimed he could get access to 'the 17 people' who run the country. The following month there were claims that Labour Party donors were being rewarded with peerages. Then the Alan Meale affair, in which the environment minister was accused of helping a friend in a planning deal and the claim that Blair unfairly appointed his close friend Lord Falconer to a number of influential government committees. And in February 1999 Blair attempted to influence the Welsh leadership contest after Ron Davies quit following a rather 'mysterious' incident on London's Clapham Common. On 12 March 2001 Reuters reported that Blair was by then facing accusations that his government was riddled with the 'sleaze' - something he had promised to banish from politics. It gives the example of leaked documents which alleged the Prime Minister's office asked civil servants to fast-track a planning decision for a billionaire Syrian arms broker, indicative of 'Labour's apparent infatuation with rich businessmen'.
     The report comments on how this situation has existed from the very beginning, citing the example of how in 1997, Blair had scrapped plans to ban all tobacco advertising after Ecclestone, whose Formula One racing business relies heavily on tobacco sponsorship, gave Labour one million pounds.
    In the 1980s Michael Meacher rightly criticized people who had more than one home and yet the (Oxford-educated) New Labour M.P, who earns a salary of over 80,000 pounds a year, owns at least eight homes (he refuses to say exactly how many - it is believed that he owns as many as twelve). Three are worth over half a million pounds and the rest are rented out and provide a rental income of 100,00 pounds a year (three are owned by property companies of which his wife is a director). Not only is this a classic example of how New Labour is composed of middle-class, very wealthy M.P's, but yet again a glowing example of their hypocrisy.
    This news was updated on 20 February 2001 when The Guardian reported: 'Michael Meacher was last night embroiled in a new dispute over his ownership of up to 12 homes after he invoked a secrecy clause in the 'open government' code to avoid answering a parliamentary question on the issue.
    This of course was shortly after Lord Irvine decided to use (or confuse) his office to stage a fund-raising event for 'New Labour'; indeed money does now appear to be the sole interest of the New Labour Party.
    It should not pass unnoticed that as stated in The Times of 10 February 2001:

'Cabinet ministers are in line for a post-election pay rise of up to £18,000...Downing Street said Cabinet ministers' pay would be rising from £96,887 to £99,793...
A Senior Salaries Review Body report next month is expected to be used by the Government to propose ending restraint at the start of the next Parliament'.

    The New Labour Party has been the recipient of very large amounts of money from businesses and wealthy individuals on numerous occasions; apart from the serious questions which arise from such instances, this no doubt explains why New Labour is so anxious to please the wealthy even if it is at the cost and well-being of the poor. As The Guardian of 7 February 2001, rightly commented:

'But there is a more serious issue in Labour's increasing flirtation with the rich. It goes beyond even party fundraising and the odd donation to the dome. The fact that millionaires have the best snacks adds to the glamour of being a New Labour politician, but it conceals something much more important, namely that Britain is being handed over to big business...
What matters is that, in New Labour's scale of values, an achiever is a person successfully driven to attain wealth and power above all else; and such people are clearly suited to running everything. It's two steps from friendship to partnership to privatisation'.

    Even some Conservatives are finding New Labour to be more Conservative than the Conservative Party. For example, The Independent, of 28 February 2001, in 'Kenneth Clarke expresses 'disbelief' at Jack Straw's right-wing policies':

Kenneth Clarke has accused the Labour Government of becoming more right wing than him and his Tory left allies on issues such as law and order and economic policy. Mr Clarke said Labour cabinet ministers had abandoned their convictions to win power in 1997 and said he had often wondered why Tony Blair had ever joined the Labour Party...
    Interviewed in Varsity, the Cambridge University newspaper, Mr Clarke described Jack Straw as a more right-wing home secretary than he was when he held the post in 1992-93. 'I find myself sitting there in complete disbelief when I hear Jack', he said...
Although he admitted there were some conviction politicians in the Blair Government, he said: 'The convictions they have at the moment seem to be dramatically different to the convictions I remember them having when I met them...'. Mr Clarke criticised his successor at the Treasury, Gordon Brown...He said Mr Brown had imposed a spending freeze on unsuspecting cabinet colleagues who had not thought through their new portfolios. 'The result was that, for no good reason, he squeezed public spending so that it fell to its lowest level since the 1960s...'.

    Indeed, with regard to Clarke's comment that 'he often wondered why Tony Blair had ever joined the Labour Party', this is the very question that many people are now asking.
    The March 2001 budget, obviously intended to buy votes, is unlikely to resolve any or many of the problems detailed above; e.g., to gratify themselves with Middle England, nothing was done to curb car usage and reduce pollution and the money promised to the NHS is insufficient to remedy the probelms which New Labour has allowed to develop. Ironically, a day after the Budget, Reuters (London) advised that a report entitled 'Breadline Europe', which looked at poverty across the continent, identified an increasing number of Britons living in 'absolute poverty', defined as a severe deprivation of basic human needs; it stated that more than five million Britons are living at a level of poverty previously thought to exist only in the developing world.
    'It astonished us...we were expecting to find a small group of people but nothing like the amount we found', David Gordon, co-editor of the report and a senior research fellow from the University of Bristol, told Reuters. 'We didn't realise the depth of poverty that people who had slipped through the safety net of the welfare state had sunk to', he said.
    The report, which took more than two years to complete, said welfare benefit rates were now significantly lower than was required to avoid poverty. Co-editor Peter Townsend, a professor of social policy at the London School of Economics, said: 'The UK has become the special case of Europe'.
    On 14 March, it was reported that New Labour would be 'announcing tough new measures for Britain's jobless claimants', which signalled 'a decisive shift towards a US-style workfare system'. Highly significant is the comment that this was seen as New Labour seeking 'to underpin its support in middle England'. The plan relates to the 'New Deal' scheme introduced by Labour which is little more than a revolving door when the unemployed are sent on training courses (or lose their benefits) at the end of which there is still no suitable work available and they then return to the unemployment register. After a time they are sent on yet another scheme and so it goes on. The only success that this achieves is that it masks the true unemployment figures and pleases 'Middle England'.

    On 26 April, it was reported that every baby born in the UK could be given up to £800 in a Child Trust Fund under proposals announced by Tony Blair. Babies will receive at least £250 when they are born; poorer children up to £500. The money will be invested until they become adults.
    Once again, as with winter fuel payments mentioned above, this is another instance of affluent 'Middle England' also benefitting financially when there is no actual need. This of course will not reduce child poverty. If there was a genuine desire to deal with this, rather than giving hand-outs to the children of the already-wealthy (i.e., buying votes), it would be far more effective if all of the money was paid to those persons on income support and housing benefit who have pre school or school-age children. Furthermore, in respect of 'trust income', some major financial assistance is long overdue for children in care who are ejected into society with inadequate support when they reach the age of 18. Such a payment would also count for far more if used to encourage more people to foster children who are, at present, 'in care'.

    Reaching the beginning of May 2001, with the likely April election date having been cancelled due to the Foot and Mouth outbreak, Blair began to go into 'ultra-spin' making a range of promises. Conveniently ignoring the fact of numerous promises made at the previous election being abandoned, Blair made it very clear that New Labour was now the party, solely for the Middle Class/Middle England. As reported in The Observer, of 6 May 2001; 'A tough package of crime measures aimed at tackling serial offenders by giving them longer sentences is to be made the launch pad for Tony Blair's electoral appeal to Britain's middle ground...He has taken charge of a new introduction to the manifesto in which he will say Labour is the party for those who have ambitions to better the position of themselves and their family...'. Such statements are of course indistinguishable from those repeatedly made by the Thatcher-Conservative Party.
    Following on from comments made above, on 27 April 2001, The Guardian reported that Jack Straw had 'staged a symbolic visit to Huntingdon Life Sciences': the purpose was 'to tell voters that the lab's staff deserved applause, not abuse'. Inside HLS, Straw told the staff there that the Government was 'keen to protect them'. Anyone interested in 'what goes on' inside HLS can read the Daily Express, of 21 September 2000: 'Terrible despair of animals cut up in name of research', and 22 September 2000, 'Animal tests probe after we expose suffering'.
    Again, one can only wonder whether the 'substantial' payments given to New Labour before the last election by certain pharmaceutical businesses, as reported in The Independent of 4 February 2001, has any relevance to New Labour's burning desire to support vivisection.
    On 7 May, the Guardian reported that Jack Straw was intending to introduce what one politician referred to as 'draconian' laws. This of course confirms the observation made above that Straw appears intent on making Britain into something resembling 1930s Germany:

Investigative journalism and peaceful protest are threatened by a clause in Jack Straw's criminal justice and police bill, members of the House of Lords will argue this week. Clause 41 was added to the bill with the aim of protecting scientists and staff at Huntingdon Life Sciences and other animal testing laboratories from the frightening tactics of some animal rights activists. However, its provisions have been drawn so widely they threaten to criminalise rather than intimidation, it is claimed. Andrew Phillips, the Liberal Democrat peer and solicitor...said the clause amounted to 'by far the most draconian restriction of peaceful protest ever contemplated for our law'. He also predicted it would join the libel writ in the armoury of those with crookery and corruption to hide.

    N.B. Obviously if New Labour had kept its election promises regarding animal welfare, the anti-Huntingdon Life Sciences campaign would not even be necessary.
    As the time approaches for the next election, The Observer reported (essentially what was painfully evident to everyone anyway) on 6 May 2001, in the article 'Blair scrapped damning public services report':

Tony Blair secretly scrapped an official report detailing how Britain's public services are still failing under New Labour amid fears that it would give ammunition to the Tories so close to an election. According to leaked memos obtained by The Observer, Blair's officials had drafted an astonishingly candid confession that Britain's schools, hospitals, criminal justice system and core services lacked 'sufficient sustained investment', suffered from hortages, low pay and poor leadership, and let down their users...But the paper was shelved days before publication - even after Blair himself had publicly heralded it in a newspaper article - when aides decided it was still too weak.

    In 'super-spin' as the June 2001 election approached, New Labour began to make pledges. Apart from their pledges being valueless in view of jettisoning them whenever it deems fit, the 'Five promises for the next five years' announced on May 10 2001, are as usual, purely 'gimmicky', and shown to have no value whatsoever, also revealing the Party's utter contempt for voters.

    Barely three weeks away from the June 2001 election, there were more clear confirmations that New Labour has abandoned everyone except the affluent Middle Class. On 12 May, The Independent in an article 'Blair's anxieties over middle income taxation rebuffed by cautious Brown', reported that 'Labour was forced to deny a split between Tony Blair and Gordon Brown...amid speculation that the Prime Minister was worried about the number of middle-income earners being dragged into the top 40p rate of tax'. The Observer of 13 May included an article which commented that 'The middle classes are swinging behind Tony Blair in their millions and deserting William Hague...'. As Blair is now little different from a Conservative, this is hardly surprising.
    It was also interesting to note that the same issue of The Observer, in the article 'Three out of four crimes are unsolved', advised that 'Fewer crimes are being solved by British police than at any time since 1993. Detectives are failing to 'clear up' nearly four million of the 5.3m offences reported last year, according to unpublished Home Office figures seen by The Observer. The news will embarrass Jack Straw...'. This merely confirms the obvious, i.e., Straw's unsuitability for such a post, or indeed any Government post.

    After the fiasco of Blair interfering with the London mayor and Welsh Assembly elections, one would have thought that he and Party headquarters at Millbank would have avoided doing anything that confirmed the accusation of being 'control freaks'. However, this was not to be. As The Guardian of 14 May 2001, reported:

Shaun Woodward, the Conservative defector and co-architect of Neil Kinnock's 1992 election defeat, yesterday narrowly won the Labour nomination for St Helens South, reviving charges that Millbank's ruthless election machine is prepared to compromise its stated commitment to local party democracy. The party leadership pushed the letter and spirit of the party rulebook to its limits to secure Mr Woodward the rock-solid Labour seat. The selection of former Tory MP who joined Labour less than 18 months ago will delight Tony Blair.
...A Labour national executive committee panel met on Saturday to exclude from the four-strong shortlist the most serious rivals to Mr Woodward, leaving the St Helens party without the option of choosing a local candidate...

    At this point in the election, virtually all of New Labour's electioneering related to business, profits, and supplying businesses with employees under the 'New Deal' (in other words, cheap labour). New Labour's campaigning at this stage in the run-up to the election was barely different to Thatcher's in the 1980's with an emphasis on business and profit.
    Yet another similarity of New Labour with Thatcher's discredited Conservative Government was advised on 16 May in the Guardian article 'Secret reform agenda revealed':

Policy advisers close to Downing Street are proposing as a centrepiece of a Labour second term that private contractors routinely run swaths of publicly owned services, including clinical health services, school management and most aspects of local government.

    On 16 May 2001, without the carefully selected and staged 'sympathetic-to-New-Labour' audience, senior Party members were confronted with the real life from which they usually successfully shield themselves. One individual poured scorn on Blair due to the poor treatment received by her partner in hospital while suffering from cancer. Blair seemed unwilling to discuss the matter and could only make the repeated request for her to 'come inside', presumably to ensure she was no longer in camera view. In Rhyl, North Wales, Prescott had an egg thrown at him by an individual and Prescott promptly turned the event into a street brawl. The Guardian of 18 May 2001 reported the man who threw the egg was 'an ordinary country bloke who enjoys hunting with dogs' who has 'has associations with the Flint and Denbigh hunt'. In view of this, some might suggest that Prescott may have now had the benefit of encountering the typical mentality of those types involved in hunting. Meanwhile, on the same day in Blackpool, Straw was heckled at a Police Federation conference.
    Despite the appalling behaviour of New Labour, it was being suggested at this point that New Labour would secure a 179 majority in the 659-seat House of Commons. If this is correct one can only conclude that the majority of British voters have an in-built masochism. An alternative explanation is simply that this country has become a one-party state.
    On 20 May 2001, The Observer reported a visit to the Halton Moor estate to ascertain current feelings. It concluded:

'The electorate is as lively and intelligent as any group of people I've come across. They are largely contemptuous of politicians and their timid, passionless double-speak. The withdrawal of their vote is a statement of their contempt. The very poor are getting poorer, and nobody seems to care. To paraphrase Malcolm: It's crap and it's getting crapper'.

    The Sunday Telegraph of 20 May 2001 reported:

'Neighbours reject Blair in his own constituency':
'Many disillusioned Labour supporters in Trimdon Colliery, where the Prime Minister has had his constituency home for 18 years, are saying that they will not be voting Labour, for the first time in their lives.
Although the former pit village is in solid Labour heartland, local people are frustrated that the Government had fallen so short of their expectations. Standing at a bus stop yards from Mr Blair's home, Joan Blakey, 57, a lifelong Labour voter, vented her anger. The unemployed single mother, who lives with her son Jeffrey, 20, said that when Mr Blair was elected she hoped that her life would improve but for the first time she would not be voting Labour. She was particularly dismayed when lone parents' benefit was cut during Labour's first year. She is also upset that job opportunities have not improved in four years. "I am worse off now than I've ever been in my life," she said. "It is despicable what Labour has done for people like me, a single parent struggling on benefits. I really thought things would get better when Labour got in. Instead they have had no effect on areas like this where we need help the most."...
Local people also said that levels of social deprivation had hardly been dented. The unemployment rate for the district is eight per cent, twice the national average. Dole queues in Sedgefield have fallen by only 300 since 1997, crime is rife in some areas and children as young as 12 have been taking heroin.
With a majority of 25,000, there is no doubt that Mr Blair will be returned as MP for Sedgefield in two weeks, but many of his constituents will continue to resent the fact that, even though their MP is Prime Minister, local conditions remain so poor'.

    In another article The Sunday Telegraph also reported:

'The leader of Britain's nurses has joined the onslaught against Labour's record on the NHS, warning that patients are being treated in "offensive" Third World conditions...
Labour's problems over health began last Wednesday, when Ms Storer harangued Mr Blair on a visit to a Birmingham hospital about her boyfriend's inadequate cancer treatment. They continued two days later when the Prime Minister, touring a hospital in Norfolk, was confronted by a doctor who warned of "rock bottom" morale and accused Labour of failing to deliver on health'.

    In the week beginning 21 May 2001, New Labour accused the media of 'staging' events, i.e., those events which embarrassed attempts at Party electioneering; this was somewhat ironic in view of the obvious stage-managed manipulation of people and news coverage by New Labour. This was followed by, as reported in The Guardian of 23 May 2001 that 'Ministers last night faced accusations of covering up the scale of the foot and mouth epidemic as scores of extra vets and army reinforcements were sent to North Yorkshire to deal with the re-emergence of a disease that many thought was disappearing'. This is apart from the fact that it had already been reported that up to a third of the animals slaughtered had been free of the disease.
    On 25 May 2001, The Guardian reported:

Unlike the Tories, Labour used to believe that public services should be provided as far as possible by public sector employees. Now that Labour is contracting out support services and building PFI hospitals, people are a little confused. What's the difference between Labour and the Tories on this issue? Very little.....
Expect more "cinderella" NHS services such as elderly care and mental health to go into private control, together with parts of NHS management, support services such as catering, and "back office" administration such as IT and payroll services. However, privatising core clinical services, and transferring the contracts of doctors and nurses to private employers is politically risky; it remains Labour's nuclear option of last resort in the struggle to improve the NHS.

    The next day, 26 May, gave further indication that New Labour was incapable of dealing with the Foot and Mouth crisis when there was news that people living near the burial sites of animal carcasses were at risk of contracting diseases (e.g., CJD) from those carcasses. This is apart from the toxic fumes which were passed into the air from the carcass-burning.
    By the end of the week, just six days before the election, Blair had experienced several uncomfortable episodes with the public concerning the NHS (these were of course rare as most 'public appearances' were carefully stage-managed to have only loyal New Labour supporters surrounding him). Blair then appeared to have had a dramatic relevation which caused him to believe that it was education and hospitals that needed the most urgent attention and so we were treated to endless references to 'schools and hospitals', or 'hospitals and schools' from him and his minions. With this there was endless spin and incomprehensible (and highly dubious) statistics about how New Labour had improved the health service in its four years of office and would recruit thousands of doctors and nurses, but without any mention of how this miracle would actually be financed.
    On 2 June 2001, The Guardian reported that 'Successful schools and local education authorities are to be given new powers to contract out key services to the private sector in one of the first reforms of a Labour second term...The proposal will be contained in an education white paper to be unveiled within weeks of the election'.
    At the beginning of the last week before the 7 June election, New Labour continued with its message of 'schools and hospitals', and 'hospitals and schools', as if this was something that had never occurred to them before, and promised to provide the required resources for both; the obvious question which arises in this is why New Labour did not do this in its first term of office?
    On 3 June, Channel 4 televised a documentary produced by political commentator Nic Cohen; this revealed a number of interesting features about all three main parties. One, in respect of New Labour, was a memo from Blair to his colleagues bewailing the fact that his image had been recently dented and asking for suggestions for new laws that could be made with which he could be associated, that would restore his image to the public again. It is nothing less than bizarre and wholly improper that a leading politician uses the legislative-making system and the law simply as a means of 'looking good'. However, the election campaign has only confirmed that New Labour is only concerned with image and 'spin'.
    On 5 June, on being asked a question about Vaz, Blair clearly showed his annoyance, demonstrating how he resented anything which spoils New Labour's election campaign which was composed of spin, rhetoric and little else.

     In view of the above, I have now reached the same situation as I did in the early 1980s when I simply have to turn away whenever Blair appears. In the 1980s, Thatcher repulsed, offended and repelled me in view of her hypocrisy, her contempt for the poor and her high regard for greed. Blair now has the same effect on me. In sum, New Labour is hypocritical, it breaks promises, it gives wealth a high (or the highest) priority and ignores those aspects that need urgent attention. With the sleeze that has accompanied it, New Labour is not a Party that I could ever vote for again.
    I raised many of the issues mentioned above with the New Labour canvasser when there was a local election last year; he could only reply that 'many members [of the Party] were also very concerned about these issues'. Needless to say, I did not find this comment to be particularly helpful.
    Living in an area which has had a Liberal-Democrat local authority, I have formed the opinion that those representing this Party are as inept, apathetic, and/or hypocritical as the Conservative and New Labour Parties and there is really very little difference between the three. As The Guardian of 20 March 2001 reported of Charles Kennedy, the Liberal-Democrat leader:

At his pre-election conference in Torquay, however, he [Charles Kennedy] sounded different. He barely came over as a liberal at all. There was scarcely anything different between his discourse and his rivals'. It seems that with an election beckoning, the Lib Dem leader thinks he should sound safely familiar, knocking the other two but junking what is unique about his own party. Charles Kennedy is a liberal too. But with him there's a problem. Roaming round the platform at Torquay, letting his stream of consciousness run on, he somehow found no room for the core of liberalism. He alluded to justice and liberty, but dwelt predominantly on the money...

    Thus, many traditional Labour voters now find themselves without a political party to vote for. And this, for the reasons given above, is precisely my own situation. I would therefore urge the many traditional Labour voters who are not satisfied with the New Labour Party to refrain from voting for the Party in the next election.

Say NO to 'New Labour'

    As was to be expected, New Labour was returned to Government on 7 June 2001 with a sizeable majority only slightly less than it had before. However, what was noticeable was that over 1 in 4 electors did not bother to vote, presumably because with the demise of the traditional Labour Party, there was no Party that represented their views.
    It should also be noted that due to the country's bizarre electoral system, although Labour has 413 seats and a 167 majority over all the other Parties combined, it actually only received just 42 per cent of the votes cast. Consequently, with less than 60 per cent of the country bothering to vote, and New Labour receiving much less than half of those votes that were cast, it hardly has a mandate to govern and certainly cannot term itself a democratic government (democratic = 'will of the people').
    I sign off with two articles which appeared during early June.
    The Guardian of 9 June:

In this election voters have allowed Labour time to finish the job. They've been willing to do so essentially because the economy has been strong and the opposition divided and second rate. It is unlikely to be as easy next time...
But can excellence be achieved within the constraints of the current tax take? There's an awful long way to go. NHS waiting lists still run to more than a year, waits in casualty are hours and hours, the premises are often rotten and forbidding, the working practices archaic and slow. Secondary classes are far too large, teaching standards very variable, many (or most) schools are ones to which the middle classes wouldn't send their children. The roads are jammed, the railways break down, the tube is a horror. Excellence, at least if it is to be measured in public satisfaction and confidence, is a long, long way away.

    And on 6 June 2001, Reuters reported:

Britain is no longer a world power populated by affable eccentrics, but an isolated, insecure nation unable to care for its people, at least according to European commentators watching this week's general election. Several foreign commentators have seized on the campaign for a close look at Britain's quality of life and role in the world.
In some cases, their verdicts read like appeals to send food packages across the Channel. 'In the poorer urban districts malnutrition among children is widespread, and even tuberculosis is becoming a problem again', Berliner Zeitung newspaper said in an article last week.
'The motherland of democracy and the centre of an empire that spanned a third of the world has become a state on the margins of Europe - with crumbling infrastructure and a standard of living that, experts say, can be compared at best with central Italy, except that the weather is worse'...
Now the election campaign's focus on crumbling public services has provided an opportunity to put the boot in. 'In the country of William Shakespeare and Harry Potter one in five adults is practically illiterate and has difficulty counting his own change', Stern magazine wrote. 'Welcome to cool Britannia'. Politicians admit that public health, transport and school education systems are second-rate compared with the EU average.
Years of underfunding left the National Health Service battling long waiting lists and a crippling shortage of nurses. None of the parties' spending pledges would bring the NHS up to EU standards in the foreseeable future. Newspapers are full of stories of patients waiting hours in hospital corridors for treatment, children getting sent home from school for lack of teachers, or inter-city train journeys taking longer than flights to New York.

The following links relate to different websites which include comments of dissatisfaction with the New Labour party for various reasons: What's wrong with Tony Blair Ideology and ethics of Tony Blair A critical look at Britain under New Labour New Labour. New car...? Labour's tranport policy The New Labour Party of Great Britain New Labour - Same Old Danger! New Labour hypocrisy New Labour attacking poor The New Labour ideology

Email:no2labour@yahoo.co.uk