The UK General Election

The UK General Election will take place on Thursday May 6th this year. For the first election in four, there is seen to be a genuinely tight contest and some uncertainty about who will form the next government. New Labour have been in power for 13 years and their time there may be at an end.

Hoping to replace Gordon Brown as prime-minister is David Cameron, the Tory leader. He is a PR man, whose image is in the mould of Tony Blair, from an exceedingly rich background, and is flanked by George Osbourne, his shadow-chancellor, from an even richer background. Leading up to the campaign, it had looked like the Tories would gain enough votes to have a small majority and thus form the government. But there has been something of a resurgence by New Labour, meaning that the Tories will now be lucky if this occurs.

This campaign has also been a first in terms of the live TV debates that have been aired. Heavily stage-managed affairs, these see Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Nick Clegg (leader of the Liberal Democrats) being asked questions and then debating amongst each other. At the time of writing, two of these have occurred. Nick Clegg, mostly an unknown figure to the general public, has been seen as the overall winner, largely due to cynicism about the two largest parties and his being seen to represent a change. His performances have been hailed by the press, and the impression formed of a much more impressive figure than Clegg actually is. In my view, neither his policies or his performance were of a much higher standard than his competitors. Nevertheless his party has recieved a boost, adding to the uncertainty. There is speculation that is the Tories do not win an overall majority, Clegg's Lib Dems may form a coalition of some kind with New Labour, allowing the latter to remain in power.
If neither of these things happen, the result will be a hung-parliament, which could lead to another election.

The major issue in the campaign is the state of the public finances, in particular the deficit and the mounting national debt. The Tories want to make harsh cuts to public spending immediately in order to bring this down, whereas New Labour advocate a more gradual approach and warn against the Tory measures which they say will damage the economic recovery that is tentatively underway.
Lurking behind all of this are the international banks and debt markets, who have the power to increase interest rates on borrowing, effectively a veto on public spending.

It is distressing that all of the three major parties, including the Liberal Democrats, while disagreeing tactically on how public spending will be cut, are silently unanimous in their desire to appease the bankers and to have the general population pay. They all agree that the cuts needed will exceed in magnitude those made by the Thatcher government on the 1980s.
That's a sobering thought and it is quite astounding that there has been no high-profile challenge to it, nor any suggestion that the banks or the wealthy should pay instead.
The public debt that exists is a result of the behaviour of the banking sector - caused both by the drop in tax receipts brought on by the recession and by the bailout of the banks to stop them going bust. A modest deficit was run by the Blair government prior to the crisis, but this accounts for only around a fifth of the debt.

Thus it is not inaccurate to say that having caused all of the problems in the first place, and being propped up by taxpayers, the financial institutions are now blackmailing the same taxpayers into cutting back on their living standards. And the main parties, having assisted in allowing the greed and speculation the entire time meekly accept this, proposing only very limited regulatory reform on the banks, who all the while continue to break their own records for bonuses and golden handshakes.

Notwithstanding the arguments made against them by New Labour, it is my view that it would be a dreadful state of affairs if the Conservatives to win. Their main slogan in the campaign is about the "Big Society". The implication is that the size of the state would be cut - that is funding for schools, hospitals and other services - and for control to fall to "society" instead. Of course, society is this context does not refer to any form of popular control, but to big business.
Contrasted with this, a New Labour - LibDem coalition may well be the least worst option.