Talking the Talk 2
David Cairns, after the Glasgow East By-Election result:
“People have given us a message. The issues have been overwhelmingly about the cost of living, about food prices, petrol prices, utility bills. People understand the global situation but they look to the Government to sort things out...But the message to the entire Government is that people want to know that we understand that they really are feeling the pinch. The entire Government has to reflect on that and bring forward policies that take on their concerns.”
Today's Scotsman:
"Labour proposes to focus on Mr Grant's record as council leader in Fife, a post he took on after the 2007 Scottish council elections."
So the lesson was to have answers for the problems that people are actually facing, Labour promised to learn the lesson and now in their next electoral test, they're intending to do the same thing that cost them first place in Crewe & Nantwich and in Glasgow East.
Someone once said that the first sign of madness is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result each time. After Glasgow, Labour even claimed to know why things went wrong, and put them right. And yet, once again, here we are.
Of course, the one of the first things that the SNP Government did was get rid of the Forth & Tay Bridge tolls - which were basically a tax wanting to get into or out of Fife. Then the first SNP Budget saw Council Tax frozen - which in a time of rising prices, helps to ease the burden on families who are finding it harder to pay the bills. Labour increased tax on the lowest wage earners so everyone else could benefit.
Labour are in Government. They're supposed to be able to do things to help, but instead they find ways of making life worse for people. Then they sit there and carp at the other parties like they're the ones in Opposition.
Well, because of that, they're in Opposition in Fife. And in Scotland. They seem destined for Opposition at Westminster. And still they're doing the same old thing.
It didn't work last May. It didn't work in Crewe. It didn't work in Glasgow.
It won't work in Glenrothes.
1 comment:
Whilst the systemic errosion and corrosion process going on in Labour may be a bad thing for UK politics in general, it has beomes a fascinating if somewhay sad and morbid affair.
I conlcuded at the point of the second illegal and immoral invasion of Iraq that the Labour Government, and that meant auromatically ithe docile Labour Party behind it, has become an instituion incapable of perception, learning and adaptation. Of course all that followed the invasion, dodgy dossiers, dead scientists etc., was further evidence of this inability to even perceive what is really going on in the country.
Almost everything that has happened in, to, or (more and more) around this Government and the Labour Party, confirms what seems to be a terminal process.
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