UK General Election: Democracy hits the bottom

We are forced to choose between dubious pledges by low-calibre leaders nobody wants

by Stuart Littlewood , Veterans Today.com: 

It’s polling day and Britain faces a miserable choice. Whichever way it goes it’ll be disastrous.

The two main parties, Conservatives (Tories) and Labour, are neck and neck with a passel of smaller parties snapping at their heels with increasing support.

The economy is still in a deep hole. The much trumpeted recovery is half-baked and fragile. It is based on an increasingly low-wage economy while the fat cats at the other end of the scale keep getting fatter.

The Tories continually blame Labour for the crash of 2008 although they were Her Majesty’s Opposition at the time and tasked with holding the Government to account. The two sides now bore the electorate rigid by bickering endlessly over how best to slice up the same old cake. It hasn’t occurred to them that they must bake a new, bigger one. In other words, we need to re-industrialise and expand our manufacturing base. But that obvious truth is not part of the election debate, nor have the media probed in that direction. Why not?

Because they don’t know how. There seems to be a conspiracy to supply us only with leaders who are political automatons and have no understanding of industry. Otherwise we would not, for example, have allowed foreign corporates to walk in and plunder the opportunities provided by our natural wind resources and develop huge offshore and onshore turbine ‘farms’ using foreign skills and foreign equipment and taking the profits home to Germany, Norway, Denmark etc. We’ll face a similar threat from US corporate giants when the trans-Atlantic trade deal (TTIP) currently under negotiation with the EU is completed – and who trusts that unelected mega-bureaucracy to get anything right?

Where did election front-runner David Cameron come from, anyway? Nobody outside Westminster had heard of him until he suddenly and inexplicably popped up as leader of the Conservative Party in 2005. Before then he had worked for Conservative Research Department and as a ministerial ‘adviser’. He also held an executive job with a media company but had only 4 years’ experience as an MP when handed the top job.

He was educated at Eton and Oxford University where he was a member of the Bullingdon Club, an exclusive clique for toffee-nosed hooligans and upper-class oiks. Other members included chancellor George Osborne and London mayor Boris Johnson.

And where did Labour’s Ed Miliband spring from? If we didn’t have Ed as leader we’d have been saddled with his brother David who has already caused great embarrassment as Foreign Secretary gallivanting around the world making new enemies and grovelling to Israeli war criminals. The party has genuine talent, so how did this dismal duo rise to the top?

Their father Ralph, a Marxist Jew, came to England in 1940 as a refugee escaping the Nazis. His two offspring have wasted no time satisfying their craving to run the country and rule the people. Unfortunately Ed doesn’t seem to have held any meaningful job outside politics and it shows whenever he opens his mouth.

Cameron’s campaign director Lynton Crosby’s firm is thought to have lobbied Cameron and the government on behalf of private healthcare clients to expand privatisation in the NHS – something Cameron has sworn not to do. You’ll remember too how Cameron hired another dodgy character, Andy Coulson, as his communications chief. He was mixed up in the big phone hacking scandal and went to jail. Cameron is not blessed with good judgement.

He voted for the Iraq war, demonstrating a woeful flack of due diligence to ensure that the decision to go to war – the most awful and serious step anyone could ever make – was based on truth. He voted for the devastation of Libya in 2011, as did both Milibands. In 2013 he was straining at the leash to bomb the hell out of Syria but, mercifully, was stopped in his tracks by a narrow vote in the Commons.

Most disturbing of all, Cameron is a self-proclaimed Zionist with unswerving adoration of the Jewish state. “I am a passionate friend of Israel – and that’s the way it’s going to stay,” he told a Conservative Friends of Israel lunch. And addressing Israel’s Knesset he pledged to defeat any boycotting of Israel. “Britain opposes boycotts,” he said without bothering to consult the British people and ignoring the rapid growth of the BDS (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions) movement. He also told them that Israel “is founded in the spirit and strength of your people. It is founded in international law. It is founded in the resolve of all of your allies to protect an international system that was forged in our darkest days, to put right historic wrongs…”

What a disgraceful distortion.

Cameron’s other suck-up remarks to Israel’s rulers include:

“Proud to be pursuing the strongest and deepest possible relationship between our two countries….”

“Delegitimising the State of Israel is wrong, it’s abhorrent…. ”

“With me, you have a British Prime Minister whose belief in Israel is unbreakable and whose commitment to Israel’s security will always be rock solid…. ”

“When I became Prime Minister I legislated to change it [the law on universal jurisdiction]. My country is open to you. And you are welcome to visit anytime.” A red carpet for war criminals and child torturers, then.

According to the Jewish Chronicle http://www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/113527/cameron-reassures-british-jews-over-iran-nuclear-deal , Cameron assured Jewish leaders: “As far as I’m concerned, an enemy of Israel is an enemy of mine. A threat to Israel is a threat to us all.”

This eagerness to be influenced by a foreign power – and one that bristles with nukes, refuses to sign the non-proliferation treaty, refuses to allow its nuclear facilites to be inspected by the IAEA or placed under international safeguards, and is run by mentally disturbed thugs – is unbelievable from a man whose first loyalty is supposed to be to the British people and their interest. Clearly he shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near the levers of power.

Cameron was painfully slow to criticise Israel for its wholesale slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza last summer. He displays a warmongering tendency and doesn’t seem to mind how many lives he wastes pursuing armed conflict. And where he can’t start a war he’ll impose sanctions, especially on Iran and now Russia. He also wants to renew our non-independent nuclear deterrent and its Trident submarines at a crippling cost to the British taxpayer. He’s seeking an unfettered second term and thinks he’ll get it. Fortunately others are determined to rain on his parade, principal among them the Scottish National Party (SNP) under feisty Nicola Sturgeon who has promised to “lock the Tories out of Number 10″ if she gets the chance.

And she might well do, as the SNP will probably end up with 50+ seats in Westminster and upset everyone’s arithmetic. The Tories are already near-extinct in Scotland – only one seat – and Labour faces being almost wiped out too. Such is the Scots’ anger and disgust after decades of neglect at the hands of the Westminster establishment that the SNP is enjoying a massive surge in popular support following the narrow defeat in the independence vote last September.

The also-rans could between them come away with nearly 100 seats out of the 650. Neither Cameron nor Miliband look like getting an overall majority, and whichever can cobble together a coalition is likely to pay a very high price.

Silliness has set in and feathers are getting very ruffled. Only on 8 May will the fun really begin.

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