an eleventh new reflection... 'black friday'

It was a chastening and thoroughly disappointing night (May 7-8) for the Labour party and their supporters, myself included, waking up to the cruel, unforgiving white, blind light of another five years of Tory government.

The exit poll - a sample of c20,000 people interviewed about their vote across the country just after casting - was almost bang on in 2010, and again in 2015 caused alarm bells to ring in Labour and liberal circles, with the Tories seemingly well on the way to 326 votes and a Commons majority.

If there is any consolation it is that the majority the Tories have achieved in the Commons is small, which will expose Cameron to the vagaries of his back-benchers and to the potential opposition of the House in general.

Public spending cuts, one hopes, are going to be the area where Cameron and Co. (or should that be 'private ltd'??) receive the most obstruction. The future of the NHS is in the balance, sadly the Health and Social Care Act will live on, but please, please, please no more legislation to create competition and the inherent cost cuts and care path fragmentation when people’s lives are at stake.

Indeed, it is Cameron’s desire to forcibly create circumstances for competition in every walk of British life that worries me enormously, save perhaps the job market, where at least c1m are back in work (the caveat being that many of these workers are not paid a living wage, or indeed suffer the desperate uncertainty of zero hours contracts).

Education, so important in creating a fair and just society from the bottom up will, if Cameron’s plans for hundreds more free schools go through, also be reduced to a race to be the best. Boards of free schools will quickly become dominated, as they already are beginning to be, by the wealthy and the free schools themselves populated by their children. Meanwhile, Tory zero tolerance schooling goes against the comprehensive ideology of learning for pupils of all abilities. Only the ‘cream’ will rise to the top under Cameron, every other poor kid trampled under foot.

Does Cameron care?

He made a lot of pledges (once again) in the final weeks of campaigning and to keep all, even a few of them is likely to be difficult for him. But people have (once again) swallowed his po-faced insincerity (which begs the question is apathy and complacency toward politics so widespread people think our democratic right, our voice simply begins and ends on polling day?!). Last time around we were promised a Big Society for all, which in reality became Big Society for a small, let’s face it, privileged few; last time we were promised an end to top-down politics, but we got it in the shape of the aforementioned Health and Social Care Act, the Bedroom Tax and on and on.

It is interesting that, generally speaking, the Tories, didn’t do so well in London, a humming mass of humanity living cheek by jowl, where whether rich or poor or in between it is difficult to ignore the brass of the mega wealthy, at the same time as, and most importantly, the anguish, simmering anger of the unloved, humiliated and undervalued. Cameron’s politics threatens to turn Britain into a nation where if you are light in wallet, short in intellect you have little or no worth.

It is so sad.

And it is so sad Labour could not reach out to those in Scotland or, for that matter, in the provinces where fears about Labour’s economic policy of yesteryear must have played a significant part in their downfall (see the demise of Ed Balls in Leeds). Thanks Gordon! Thanks Tony!

Where Labour go next will be fascinating. Straight off the bat there seem to exist two options. One: address aforementioned fears over Labour’s ability to manage the economy by taking the party back to the centre with more a protectionist approach. Two: take the party further left, to get back to the John Smith days and reclaim democratic socialism for what it is. There are risks in both and strong leadership will be required.

Strong leadership is something that a number of people with whom I have discussed the election this year did or do not associate with Ed Miliband. It is true that Miliband only really found his feet following the Scottish independence referendum, which in retrospect can definitively be seen as his major political gaffe in traipsing after Cameron’s lead on Scotland, rather than, in the great tradition of liberal politics, letting the Scottish people decide without interference.

Still, I think society today has a confused idea of what it is to be strong, what it is to have strength - at least when it comes to society and politics. The political media, led by borderline egomaniacs including Andrew Neil, Jeremy Paxman and John Humphrys, has imbued the electorate with a sense that politicians have to exhibit all the undesirable characteristics of peacock masculinity: big balls, metal faces, hard minds. The truth is in our leaders we should see strength as being gentle, kind, sympathetic; to be able to hear, to listen, to act and work for reasons beyond personal gain, to be able to think and act beyond the scope of their immediate horizons. Cameron embodies macho cronyism and rump politics, Miliband, I think, stands (and stood as Labour leader) for the opposite, for inclusive politics.

I hoped Miliband would stay on as Labour leader (my vote is now for Harriet Harman), and hope the Labour party, taking his example, continues to listen, reach out and appeal to the philosophical, liberal and green sensibilities of the electorate as well as more broadly their aspirations (this last point perhaps where they want awry this time). I believe at heart people want to live in a fair and just society where our neighbour is equally (as far as is possible) content, a situation mirrored (as far as possible) wherever we go. As my sister quoted me this week we are after all 'a nation of millions not a nation of one.'

First, of course, we need a more sophisticated and inclusive approach to and debate about politics that can further educate the electorate (myself included) in the realities of varying standards of life in the multifarious parts of the country, and to challenge Cameron’s narrow designs on British living.

I am talking, of course, about AV, and this afternoon a genuinely inclusive* society with alternative politics seems a way off.


* This said I applaud Cameron on one thing - his championing of gay and lesbian rights.