Every government seeks to remake the nation in its own image.
And what a cruel, reckless, dysfunctional nation they're turning this into.
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And what a cruel, reckless, dysfunctional nation they're turning this into.
Thread/
Their vision appears to be of a nation where no one does anything for the sake of any one else.
In which self-interest rules.
In which we become people
“… who'd never heard
Of any world where promises were kept,
Or one could weep because another wept.”
In which self-interest rules.
In which we become people
“… who'd never heard
Of any world where promises were kept,
Or one could weep because another wept.”
In which we have boundless compassion for pets, but none whatsoever for asylum seekers.
In which, if you are poor, sick, disabled or homeless, you are treated as a nameless embarrassment, invited to shuffle off quietly and die.
In which, if you are poor, sick, disabled or homeless, you are treated as a nameless embarrassment, invited to shuffle off quietly and die.
In which a favoured enclave of party donors and old friends is invited to extract money from human suffering, using crises such as Brexit and covid-19 to enrich itself massively at public expense.
In which a predatory class is empowered to erect a private tollgate in front of public services. To rack tenants for enormous rents, transferring money from the poor to the rich. To treat students as a corporate ATM.
In which we are distracted by endless scapegoats – asylum seekers, immigrants, Gypsies and Travellers, Muslims, “woke” – while power is ruthlessly concentrated, and our informal constitution exploited to turn democracy into a hollow shell.
In which the government preaches “personal responsibility”, while washing its hands of its own responsibility.
In which environmental targets are racked up while implementation, monitoring and enforcement are wound down, turning government commitments into a cynical farce.
We urgently need an Opposition prepared to call this out for what it is. And to articulate the opposite vision: a nation in which empathy and decency come to the fore. A nation that takes responsibility. That meets its commitments and turns democracy into a lively reality.
Where is that call? Where is this vision? Where is the confident proclamation of the better nation we could be? Where is the political narrative that takes us from here to there?
Where they should be, there is instead a political vacuum. Labour urgently needs to fill it, preferably in coalition with Greens, and drawing on popular movements (XR, BLM etc) that know what they want and have something to say.
The time for dithering and triangulation is over.
We need Vision. Opposition. Action.
We need Vision. Opposition. Action.
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