We’ve had the general election but we don’t have a new government yet, the negotiations will continue over the weekend which will result in the formation of a government that can start cleaning up the mess left by the Labour party. Since the general election resulted in a hung parliament, have the smaller political parties learned anything from it?
The final leaders debate produced a number of revelations about immigration from the mainstream parties. Then there was the current prime minister calling a pensioner in Rochdale a bigot because she raised a question about the number of eastern European immigrants in this country. The single biggest point though, was that no current UK government can do anything about the fact that the majority of immigrants come from the EU.
In case you haven’t seen it:
The Labour Party like to trumpet the loudest about their achievements with the NHS and healthcare in general. At first glance, it does seem like a much improved service. Labour claim that waiting lists are the lowest since records began, 3 million more operations are carried out each year and the list goes on. They also love to shout about all the new hospitals they have built. So why is their health policy (seriously) ill?
Gordon Brown used the phrase “British jobs for British workers”, but since 1997 it has been more a case of ”British jobs for non-UK born workers”. The statistics are a little awkward to work with, but based on figures from the Office of National Statistics, the employment figures do make grim reading.
Although immigration is clearly a hot topic in the run up to the general election, we are still hearing a lot of rhetoric from the mainstream politicians – none of them are offering any substance though. There is a new take on the immigration issue now too, with the surge in popularity of the Liberal Democrats, their amnesty for illegal immigrants has come under the spotlight.
What happens when you discover that none of the mainstream parties are a exact match for what you believe in? You have a choice. You can either vote for the party that is the closest match to your beliefs (even if they stand no chance of winning), not vote at all, or vote for the big party that you have tended to vote for in the past. This doesn’t feel especially democratic though.
I don’t agree with Nick Clegg, or Gordon Brown or David Cameron for that matter. Unlike Gordon Brown, who seemed to agree with him on pretty much everything. It doesn’t really matter what the polls say over the next few days either, since a lot of it will be a knee jerk reaction to the television debate on Thursday evening. This was history being made since it was the first debate of its kind in the build up to a UK general election.
With the UK’s continued membership of the EU costing an estimated £120bn per year, you have to ask, why would you vote for a party that doesn’t even offer a referendum on membership of the EU? Not the Lib Dems, and definitely not the Labour Party or the Tories even mention the issue in their manifestos.
The Liberal Democrats released their manifesto today, with lots of rhetoric about a “fairer Britain” and, compared to the Conservatives, a different approach to tax and the budget deficit. Perhaps most noticeable is that they want to raise an extra £17bn – and then spend it all on giving it back to us. Also, the idea of apparently giving an improved personal tax allowance, only to take it back again in other taxes, sounds a lot like a Labour strategy.