Depression – Counting Cats in Zanzibar.
I started to write a brief comment over at Counting Cats, where blogger NickM is depressed about today's election. One of his commenters, IainB, said that Labour would not be destroyed as it deserves because of its "client vote". I am sure that hardly alleviated Nick's depression and I tried to weigh in gently. My comment grew and grew however, consuming my blogging time budget for the day, so I am recycling it here.
Many bitter words have been said in the past few weeks. I defer to no-one in my contempt for the Labour Party, but today - as we try to influence our collective future - we should be one nation. We must try to hate the sin and not the sinners, at least as far as Labour voters are concerned
...even those on the client payroll must know in their hearts that this can’t go on. I feel sorry for some who will vote Labour today out of fear for their non-jobs or the future of the lame “services” on which they depend. Apart from the underclass (probably less than a million individuals) they are not willing parasites. They simply have no experience of providing for themselves. More to the point, given the economic destruction wrought by Labour and the lack of any clear, honest solution from the Tories, they understandably have no confidence that any likely government will ever leave them enough of their own earnings to do so.
Of course I am disappointed in anyone who votes for fairyland politics today, but I accept they are not deliberately destroying our country. They are clinging to its wreckage, with no idea what else to do. Most (if they are honest) know in their hearts that they are stealing from their children and grandchildren. They are familiar with the concept because it’s just what their parents and their grandparents did to them with their unfunded Welfare State. It was only during Blair’s time in number 10, after all, that we finished paying America back the money our grandparents borrowed to fund their great “vision” in 1946. Their “stamps” didn’t pay it all. We did.
None of this is Gordon Brown’s fault. Blair concealed his motives well, but Brown has been openly, honestly intent on reducing us to the living standards and civic culture of the former East Germany. He sincerely believes in “equality” and seriously thinks that we will be poorer but happier in social solidarity under firm government. Under his leadership, Labour has once again been an honest party of losers, for losers. It has openly promoted loserdom as a lifestyle. No, the fault for today’s impending fiasco lies entirely with HM Opposition for failing to sell reality to the deluded and/or terrified voters.
My wife says Cameron had no choice. The voters are hypocrites; complaining that no-one tells them the truth, but punishing anyone who tries to do so. She thinks Cameron will imitate Blair in substance as well as style; pretending to be ideologically close to the outgoing government but then introducing by stealth every aspect of his true agenda. I am not convinced, which in a way is a compliment to Cameron. I don’t think he is that warped.
It has come to something, has it not, when our only hope is that David Cameron is a despicable liar? Just like Blair.
The ordinary people of Britain have never had a greater enemy than the Labour Party and, like Nick, I long to see it fatally crushed today. But too many of my friends and family are Labour voters for me to hate them for their political errors. They are my fellow citizens too and today I simply hope against hope that their folly does us all less harm than that of their predecessors in our parents' and grandparents' generations.
Whatever you do today, vote. I am disenfranchised as a long-time expatriate, so if you weren't planning to do it for yourself, please go vote for me. Good luck.
