It was breath-taking and depressing to observe the transformation of New Labour after 1997, from the party of open government, human rights and civil liberties into an increasingly paranoid group of power-hogging and repressive political control freaks, who have done more damage to fundamental human rights in the past 11 years than any other (sequence of) government(s) in any comparable-length stretch of time since the Glorious Revolution.
Bollocks. There was never any transformation, only some propaganda which fooled the naive. The rest of us understood precisely what labour was all along.
“The rest of us understood precisely what labour was all along.”
Even so, the Tories had to be put out of our misery.
I’m still waiting for my second experience of meeting a Labour stalwart who is even vaguely liberal. I’ve met lots of Tory liberals and even Scot Nat and Liberal liberals.
That might have something to do with the fact that New Labour was never anything more than an electable front to convince the middle classes to change their allegiance.
The hopes where high for Labour in 1997, after years of propoganda about how nasty the Tories were they couldn’t be much else. Let’s not forget the did do some things that were good for liberty, equalizing the age of consent for gays as an example. That was forcing the state to withdraw a little from people’s personal relationships and a good thing for liberty.
However the seeds of Labour’s authoritarianism where always there. Socialism is not liberalism after all, and then they got rid of that in favour of naked desire for power at any cost (the New Labour project).
Oh joy. Once again the price we pay for having a Labour government is having the country go bankrupt. I console myself by saying that I never voted for the twats. Not that that really helps. What saddens me though is that 30% of people polled say they will vote for them again!! Ye Gods. Turkeys voting for Christmas.