The most significant (and obvious?) thing to emerge from the EU elections is that the Labour Party's awkward coalition of minorities has come apart at the seams in a big way. Just 5% of the electorate voted Labour - one in twenty - and now the Auld Fraud Broon is busy telling us that having torn up the manifesto of the last general election, and avoided an awkward election on his assumption of the role of PM, he's going to reform the nation. Without any sort of mandate; indeed in the face of coming 3rd in the most recent test of national opinion.
We appear to arrived at the moment when if HM decided it was time exercise her power and dissolve parliament, it's unlikely that many would complain.
Labour has long be a fundamental contradiction in that it appeals to best and worst instincts: the lofty altruism of social justice and fair shares for all, and that rather darker contract with its "grass roots" supporters that amounts to selling its soul to the lowest common denominator by promises of soaking the rich to pay for an endless public employment gravy train.
And such a perfect opportunity missed to hold a cost-effective referendum on the Lisbon Treaty. Although we suspect that idea is now irrelevant, since the question of the Tories' referendum will be a rather more fundamental return to the original Treaty of Rome and reprise of the free markets - without the increasingly unloved and irrelevant social engineering agenda. After all, that's what we actually voted for in the first place.
Whatever, we continue to live in interesting times.
No comments:
Post a Comment