Vote Labour, Get Tory Policies

Jeff has flagged up the new Labour campaign: 'Vote SNP, Get Tory'. I've already taken a look at whether or not that's actually possible without Labour's own failing taking a share of the blame, and mentioned the obvious implication that Tories are bad.

Which is why it's a little bit rich coming from a Labour party that has spent twelve and a half years emulating Tory governments.

Labour abolished the fifty-year-long principle of free education by introducing tuition fees, then introduced variability to the fees a few years later.

They propagated the idea of a two-tier NHS with the Foundation hospital model and maintained the idea of the internal market using the buzzword 'choice' - which seemed to involve cutting services.

Their spin doctors used 9/11 as a 'take out the trash day', then a row between spin doctors ended up overshadowing a royal funeral.

They celebrated the relentless march of easy credit and unsustainable growth, which led to the Credit Crunch and saw entire banks fail.

They privatised the Air Traffic Control System, and waited for several fatal train crashes before doing anything about the Tories' botched privatisation of the rail network.

Even now, they're still looking for family silver to sell and the Channel Tunnel and the Tote are next for the clearout. Even student loans are getting sold off.

They made fraudulent expense claims - like Elliot Morley getting money for a mortgage he'd paid off ages ago - and only bothered to put right any of the damage when they got caught - a hallmark of the latter years of the Tory Government (say what you like about Alex Salmond's food bill... at least he bought the food in the first place!)

We had the image of John Prescott cavorting around his grace and favour home, and David Blunkett's indiscretion.

We had Anne McGuire presiding over the running down of Remploy, closing 28 sheltered employment sites at a cost of 2,000 jobs for disabled workers. That's not protecting vulnerable people, that's hitting those who can't fight back, and not even Thatcher stooped so low as to twist the knife there.

Then last but not least, they dragged us into the mess that was Iraq - and even fabricated a pretext for a naked war of aggression!

So Labour can crow all they want about the Tories, but their Government has been a carbon copy of a Tory Government. Voting Labour might not get you a Government run by the Tory Party, but since 1997, it's got you one practising Tory policies.