Death Of A Party

Amidst celebrating the filthy rich and proposing that every Brit should swear an oath to the Queen, New Labour has plunged to new depths in his quest to outTory David Cameron.

This week Business Minister John Hutton confirmed that over half the UK population is in desperate want of political representation. His speech to the Progress organisation was eerily reminiscent of the halcyon days of Thatcherism, later replicated by Blair in his pal-with-the-Gallaghers Feelgood Britannia phase.

For those of you who've spent the last few years awash in denial, Hutton hammered the point home. This is what New Labour's basic tenet should be: big money as the sole source of worth and righteousness. Don't question - the New Labour Minister warned us - the morality of million-worth pay checks, city bonuses and financial engorgement. That's got to be celebrated instead. We should be happy that Britain is host to a number of super rich. In fact, we need more of them.

In other words, New Labour's priority shouldn't be one that offers a realistic way out of financial trouble (poverty is so passe') to working families and individuals. Perhaps next time Hutton and his lot will unveil Labour's new target: by 2010 everybody in Britain should be persuaded to play the lottery. That way, hope and glory currently denied by the notoriously socialistic British state will be made available to all.

'Course Hutton didn't say a single word about the record of growing inequality under 11 years of New Labour. While busy celebrating (read negotiating his way up the millionaires' backside), he never mentioned the fact that too many of them pay less tax than their cleaners. Instead, Hutton remarked, the real scandal is that, for society's sake, barriers are erected that prevent the very wealthy from getting even wealthier. Perhaps, he was thinking that in 2006 the richest people in Britain paid 0.14 per cent of their income in tax. But we forgot: don't question the morality of that.

Not content with ten years of Blair, and totally blind to the fact that it's their core voters who are deserting the party like a sinking ship, today's New Labour appears even more desperate to outTory the Tories. Just look at the reluctant, pathetic, token attempt to tax non-dom billionaires a-la Roman Abramovich. In the face of public outrage, all Gordon Brown could master was a measly £30,000 a year in tax- and only when the filthy rich tally seven years in Britain. Even that was saluted by a gospel choir of shock, horror and disgust by Britain's big business egged on by David Cameron and the Conservatives. Those miserable, penny-pinching, millionaire "wealth creators" threatening to up sticks and set up shop in Bermuda or Singapore was possibly one of the most repulsive displays of class arrogance since the 19th century Corn Laws controversy.

Hutton's remarks can be seen as the by-product of a party overly anxious to assuage the superwealthy. Similarly, this same week, Brown's cabinet proudly turned down the Unions' request to extend basic rights to agency and temporary workers. A Labour government that legislates in favour of sick pay or indemnity? You've got to be joking.

And so what's left of what was once the Labour Party? Token talks of eradicating child poverty, I guess...but when you find a politician publicly claiming to be against that don't forget to drop us an e-mail.