We don't have left-wing parties in the UK. What we have instead are three right-wing parties, one of which has a radical ultra-right arm, who are obsessed with free-market monetarist policies beyond the point of common sense. Their ideals are profoundly undemocratic and utterly opposed to liberal values. They believe in a Darwinian world where the strong have every right to dominate and exploit the weak. They are militantly capitalistic and against the common good. They put strength above morality and despise the common man. There is no society in their philosophy, just a collection of individuals competing against one another.
You might think that David Cameron's coalition is right-wing, but to to hard-right in the conservative party, poor Dave is seen as a feeble wet: an appeaser to the spineless liberal-democrat section of the coalition. If it was up to the hard Tory right, Britain would be suffering a far more brutal austerity programme than we're seeing now. And as it is, things are bad enough.
I'm not against capitalism. Capitalism has given us the technological world we live in, without which, our lives would be shorter and harder. What I'm against is an unrestrained capitalism that benefits a tiny elite group at the expense of everybody else.
Britain's economy has barely grown since the austerity measures began. We have the highest level of unemployment in fifteen years. The government has slashed public-sector jobs, putting more than 100, 000 people out of work. These deficit-reduction policies have failed to revive the business confidence that was supposed to encourage private-sector hiring. No effort has been made to stimulate growth by spending, because this runs counter to the right's myth that all government spending is wasteful and harmful.
This is blundering idiocy. Any fool can see that these policies are driving the country into the ground, but our glorious leaders are so wrapped up in their dogma, that they'd rather destroy the economy for a generation, than admit they're wrong.
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