f4f3 | The Politics

It’s been a while since I’ve written about politics here. Partly because I’ve been busy at work, and interweb deprived at home, and partly because I’ve been pretty unsure what to write about a few issues.

First, and predominant, what are my own politics, and how do they fit within the current political landscape.

I don’t think my personal politics have changed much since I was 15. Oh, sure, the Thatcher Years hardened my position in a lot of ways, but mostly by providing graphic examples of what I hate – selfishness, bigotry, and greed were writ large all through that time, and that confirmed me in my belief that politics should be about inclusiveness, tolerance and sharing.

In the 80’s I was comfortably within Labour’s broad church. So that was a decade and a half of frustration and political impotence guaranteed. I was emotionally and intellectually in favour of an independent Scotland, but that aim was very distant and unimportant in a climate where more than 2 million people were unemployed, anti-gay legislation was firmly on the statute books and enforced in the class-room, and single mother’s were number one on the Governments “little list” of social evils.

The priorities were pretty obvious. Get a government in that would protect the poor and at least recognise that fairness was an aspiration. And 17 years of impotence meant that I welcomed Labour in with open arms.

Since 97 the political landscape has changed beyond recognition. There’s a minimum wage in place. Same-sex marriages are legal. Unemployment has been massively reduced. And there’s a Scottish parliament.

But it’s really starting to look as if there will be a Conservative government in a couple of years. No matter what Scotland votes, there will be a Conservative government. And, unlike in the 80’s, I have an alternative to fighting the long defeat by supporting Labour. I could work for the SNP instead, and for an independent Scotland, where there would be far more chance of a socialist government.

Should I just abandon the UK as a lost cause, and become a Nationalist?

Luckily, the SNP have made my choice easy. A couple of weeks ago, Alex Salmond started publicly courting David Cameron, and talking about how closely an SNP government in Scotland would work with the Tories. And then Salmond himself flew to the UK Parliament to vote for a reduction in the legal abortion time to 20 weeks.

I won’t be a member of that sort of party. I sent off my party membership application to Labour.

Now we have the 42 days detention without trial proposal.
I loathe everything about this idea. I hate detention without trial, or without charge. I don’t want to live in a country that has that sort of law on the statute book. I’m contemptuous of the way it has been driven through the House of Commons. I shudder at a government being beholden to the DUP.

More to come, on this and David Davies...