I read an excellent article in the Independent yesterday by Christina Patterson (www.twitter.com/queenchristina) in which she pointed out the pressures on all of us economically which lead us to conclude that we should turn our backs on those in the Horn of Africa who now face starvation. She laid out all the arguments for pulling up the ladder and shouting “Yup all ok up here Jack” and then she made an excellent statement that topped and tailed her argument – ‘we are the luckiest people on the planet. We think corruption is MP’s claiming for bath plugs and poverty is eating at McDonald’s. We’re lucky to have food, and water and shelter and a government we elect’ – her point was well made; we are way beyond the poverty of Africa and we must help those less fortunate who cannot help themselves; even when we have to also accept that corruption is so bad much of what we donate will never reach them and may well pay for guns. I read it, I didn’t agree with her but I truly wished I could see her argument and could support what is clearly a fine set of principles – much finer than mine. I have to simply accept she is a better person than me.
But the fact was, no matter how many times I read the article I would never agree with her; when we are driving people into poverty here (even if our definition of poverty is very different to that used in Africa) simply for ideological reasons I cannot agree with our government which, on the one hand tells us we have messed up our country, then starts playing the big men of the world spending our money in countries that do not agree with any of our ideological foundations.
I find myself thinking that as these countries are Muslim why don’t the worlds super rich Muslim countries help their brothers; the Arab countries provide virtually nothing in aid with Qatar (just as an example) giving less than 1% of the international aid we do. I hear the arguments that say we should rise above that but should we? Really?
I have had to accept lately that my self assessment of my own intellectual ability (and hence my philosophical stance and outlook) are not what I had hoped. I’m clearly not the developed, balanced sophisticated intellectual that I thought I was, as I simply cannot agree with the arguments propounded by the great and the good anymore.
Perhaps it’s because I don’t have the fancy job, expense account and ultimate security of earnings that Christina Patterson and folk like her have. Perhaps it’s because I regularly head back to my home town of Bradford in Yorkshire and see the poverty, social decay, racial tension and educational vacuum that typifies the north (ultimately the place I try to be proud of) but I just cannot think as these supporters of wider, purer thinking then mine propound.
And here’s the thing. For almost 40 years I have been a card carrying paid up member of the Labour Party. Earlier this year I cancelled my membership and after I had got very upset (incandescent I might say) at the fact that nobody from the Labour Party seemed to care I had quit, I sat back and tried to understand why my intellectual and ethical belief system that made me a ‘man of the left’ was now letting me down.
I found myself unable to support council workers who strike to protect their jobs and benefits, I lost my faith in the European experiment and its principles and I started to contemplate that a largely privatised NHS might actually provide decent healthcare unlike the system we have now. Had I turned Tory overnight! Well clearly I hadn’t, but the loss of blind faith in Labour that grew from the selection of the Trades Union man Ed Milliband as leader when nobody else in the Party’s electoral college wanted him, and the subsequent rallying behind a man who is neither tough enough nor savvy enough to handle the current situation had been the catalyst for my resignation. The decision by these weak and spineless characters to then rewrite history to distance themselves from Tony Blair (the finest labour leader there has ever been in my view) and become apologists for the modernisation that he achieved in the Labour Party finally led me to tear up the card. The thing that finally convinced me I was right to do it was the announcement this week that the election of cabinet members would be dropped so that ‘Ed’ could hand pick his brown nosers and finally put the Blairites to the sword; the horror being I now hope he suffers a massive electoral defeat and his brother is then allowed to pick up the pieces and put the party back where it should be – I have never in my life wished labour to fail but now I do.
And I know that this is not because I am no longer philosophically a Labourite, it is because I am also a strong man (like Tony Blair) and not an apologist. I fight my corner and I expect the party I support to do the same as it has throughout its history – I am not interested in the over analysis and tedious ponderings of the EM Labour movement; it is no longer my movement and it will fail as it will lose its core support.
So I now rationalise the fact that I don’t want us spending what little money we have on aid, I want us to spend it here, helping our own. I do not feel guilty and ‘anti-labour’ by thinking that way, I don’t feel like I’ve lost my socialist mojo.
I also don’t feel guilty that I cannot support the actions of our council workers who I believe have had it too good for too long. I believe there is massive over employment in the public sector and now the lie has been exposed that they must protect their pensions because they earn less (it turns out they earn more than those in the private sector like for like jobs) I want to see them grown up and swallow their medicine like the rest of us are having to.
So the autumn is going to be interesting for me I guess. For the first time in my life I have no political party to lean on, no politicians who I admire whose words will guide me, I am going to have to think for myself! And that process leads me to understand that defining myself by political definitions is wrong (as politicians are power hungry so glibly change the definitions to suit the mood) – I like honesty and everybody to pull together, council workers don’t care about the rest of us they are looking after themselves and they are hiding behind false statements to try and get our support, it won’t work with me anymore.
The message here is clear. Be fair and carry your own can and I will support you. Try to hang onto your cushy number where there are at least two people for every job and too many invented jobs that don’t need doing and I lose interest. And finally if you want to spend my money in Africa instead of at home I will oppose you as you are delusional.
I also want to see us out of the joke that is the EU, get our jobs back in the hands of Brits and stop giving £1.4billion contracts to Germans but then maybe that’s just too much to expect.
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