Why does Starmer keep insisting that the public are wrong?

Keir Starmer was elected as Labour leader on the back of 10 pledges, which promises party unity, the continuation of Corbynite policies, and a clear cut commitment to communal ownership of vital infrastructure and services like water, rail, and energy.

Starmer knew he couldn't win the Labour leadership without promising these things, because public ownership is not just overwhelmingly popular with the Labour Party members who were voting, they're popular policies across the entire British public.

Polling consistently demonstrates that overwhelming support for renationalisation of the energy sector, the water supply in England, and the railways.

In the two years after his election as Labour leader circumstances have handed Starmer a series of ideal opportunities to promote these overwhelmingly popular renationalisation policies.

Raw Sewage

In 2021 Johnson's Tory rabble triggered a massive public backlash when they voted to allow privatised water companies to keep artificially inflating their profits by dumping vast quantities of raw sewage into our waterways and coastal waters.

Starmer could easily have used this scandal to promote the popular policy of bringing England's privatised mess of water suppliers back under public ownership.

Instead he sent his subordinates out to argue that the profiteers must stay in charge of the water supply, in order to signal that Labour represents no threat to vested capitalist interests.

Energy Crisis

We've all seen the chaos of massively inflated energy bills, soaring energy producer profits, a sequence of energy suppliers going bust, and the government regulator forcing abandoned customers onto much more expensive tariffs.

Starmer could have highlighted the way the French government imposed a 4% cap on energy bill rises onto their publicly owned energy company (EdF), while the Tory government allowed EdF and other energy companies in the UK market to raise bills by an astonishing 54%.

He could have offered the public the renationalisation policies they want, but instead he decided to once again adopt the position that the public are wrong, and that the private profiteers must stay.

And Starmer didn't just spurn the opportunity to promote the energy renationalisation policies that the public want, and that he pledged in his leadership bid, he even publicly bragged that he lied in his leadership campaign, and insisted that he'd lie to people again to win more power!

Rail Strikes

Labour is supposed to be the party of working people (the clue is in the name), but Keir Starmer has decided to oppose the RMT rail strike against below-inflation pay offers and mandatory redundancies.

He's so vehemently opposed to the strikes that his minions are trying to force Labour MPs to apologise for showing solidarity with striking workers!

It's truly absurd to see Starmer's shadow cabinet team insisting that they won't support the strikes because they don't want to "pick a side".

It's capitalist profiteers and a profoundly malicious Tory transport secretary against ordinary low-paid rail workers (not train drivers).

If Labour won't even pick a side in this scenario, what the hell is the point in them.

And then the polling has come out to show that the British public are overwhelmingly on the side of the rail workers, meaning once again Starmer has positioned himself far to the right of public opinion.

Outflanking the public to the right

Despite pledging popular renationalisation policies in his leadership election, Keir Starmer has deliberately placed the Labour Party well to the right of the British public on water, energy, and now rail.

Instead of offering the public what they want, Starmer is siding with the capitalist profiteers and insisting that the public are wrong to want things to just be a bit better and fairer for British consumers and British workers.

Starmer's dedicated to the protection of vested capitalist interests, so he's going to keep Labour positioned well to the right of public opinion; offer a bland and uninspiring "more of the same" policy platform; and hope that he can win the next election purely by not being quite as repulsive and divisive as Johnson.

It looks a lot like a deliberate attempt to replay Ed Miliband's catastrophically uninspiring 2015 Tory-lite election campaign, in which Labour decided to pathetically imitate Tory austerity ruination, rather than opposing it and pledging to invest for the future instead.

It seems an absurdly inexplicable strategy to repeatedly chide the public that they're wrong to want things to be a bit better, and then expect them to vote for you regardless.

Unless of course Starmer considers the protection of capitalist profiteering to be so important that he'd risk driving millions of traditional Labour voters away, and throwing an election over it.

And if that's the case, what the hell is this absurd person doing as leader of the Labour Party?

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Is this the dodgiest Lib-Dem bar chart ever?

The Lib-Dems are absolutely notorious for producing absurdly misleading bar charts aimed at duping the gullible into voting for them, but this year the Lib-Dems in North East Somerset have absolutely outdone themselves by producing one of the most shockingly deceptive political bar charts ever.

The North East Somerset constituency is a Tory safe seat for Jacob Rees-Mogg on 54%, with Labour trailing almost 20 points behind on 35%, and the Lib-Dems in a distant 3rd on just 8%.

So in order to produce a favourable bar chart for themselves the Lib-Dems conducted an absurd push poll asking "Imagine the result in your constituency was expected to be very close between the Conservative and Liberal Democrat candidate, and none of the other parties were competitive..."

They created a scenario that doesn't exist in reality, purely in order to manipulate non-Tory voters into saying they would vote Lib-Dem.

To put what they're doing into perspective, it's useful to consider the biggest constituency swing of all during the 2017 General Election, which happened in Gordon, north east Scotland.

The swing in Gordon was 20.4%, representing just over 15,000 votes.

If Labour were to defy the odds to win North East Somerset from 2nd place, they'd need a huge swing of 19% (over 10,000 votes).

If the Lib-Dems were to take the seat from 3rd place they'd need an unprecedented swing of over 35% (24,500+ votes).

The Lib-Dems are absolutely desperate to trick people into supporting their hopeless lost cause.

And the method the Lib-Dems have come up with to con people into voting for them is to pretend that they're the second party (when Labour are), and that Labour are in a distant third (when that's actually where the Lib-Dems finished last time).

If you ever needed more evidence that the Lib-Dems simply can't be trusted to be honest about anything, this staggeringly dishonest abuse of statistics, polling, and observable reality is surely it.

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OR

Our future is in the hands of these maniacs!

Our future as a nation is in the hands of a tiny unrepresentative clique of Tory party members who will chose our next Prime Minister for us.

This selectorate is made up of people who are so obsessed with Brexit that they'd be happy to see Scotland and Northern Ireland depart the United Kingdom to achieve it!

The official name of the Tory party is the Conservative and Unionist Party, yet an overwhelming majority of their members now see Unionism as such a low priority that they'd gladly trigger the break up of their beloved Union in order to achieve Brexit (a Brexit that still somehow remains undefined over three years after people voted for it!).

Aside from wilfully lobbing Centuries of Tory unionism into a skip and burning it, Tory party members have also entirely offered up the carefully crafted myth of Tory economic competence to the flames too.

An astounding 61% of Tory members would gladly cause severe economic damage to the UK economy in order to achieve a still-undefined Brexit, that's not economic competence, it's economic insanity!

If they're willing to destroy two of the fundamental pillars of Toryism (unyielding Unionism and the pretence that continually favouring the rich equates to economic competence) then it should come as no surprise that over half of Tory party members would gladly see the permanent destruction of the Tory party in order to achieve their still-undefined Brexit ambition.

But the craziest thing isn't what Tories would give up (Scotland, Northern Ireland, any pretence at being Unionists, any claims on economic competence) and destroy (the Union, the Economy, Britain's reputation, their own damned party) in order to achieve Brexit, it's what they say they'd give up Brexit to avoid.

The only option that makes them so afraid that they'd give up on their Brexit obsession is Jeremy Corbyn as Prime Minister!

These people would be satisfied with the permanent loss of Scotland and Northern Ireland from the Union, reducing the UK to a rump of just England and Wales!

These people would be satisfied with a severe economic meltdown that would destroy tens of thousands of British jobs, trash the value of the pound, cripple British businesses and institutions, and reduce us to a laughing stock on the world stage for having wilfully done this to ourselves!

They'd even gladly see the destruction of their own beloved political party in order to deliver this United Kingdom-busting, economy-tanking, reputation-trashing Brexit dream of theirs!

But when it comes to the idea of an old guy with traditional democratic socialist principles holding power for a few years, they'd willingly abandon all of their Brexit insanity to prevent it!

• What could it be about not-for-profit public ownership of the railways, National Grid, water supply, and Royal Mail that terrifies them so much?

• What could it be about commonplace social democratic style economic ideas like a National Investment Bank, and decentralisation of politics and the economy away from central government to the regions that drives so much fear into their hearts?

• Why are they so absolutely terrified of reversing economically illiterate austerity fanaticism in order to properly invest in our schools, hospitals, emergency services, local councils, and infrastructure in order to maximise the nation's future economic potential, rather than strangling it?

• Why are they reduced to gibbering with fear at the thought of sensible British foreign policy that avoids turning entire countries (Iraq, Libya ... Iran?) into lawless terrorism breeding grounds based on packs of lies and ridiculously dreamy "spreading democracy" propaganda?

• Why are they reduced to quivering fear by the concepts of full-time workers being paid sufficient that they don't end up relying on benefits and food banks just to survive, and disabled people being freed from persecution and abuse by the state?

The results of this poll paint a picture of a Tory party membership so frightened and confused that they'd wilfully give up the core elements of Toryism, and even the Tory party itself, in order to achieve an objective that they're still unwilling and unable to properly define.

These are people who are so brainwashed and bamboozled that they'd deliberately break up the United Kingdom and wilfully cause a humiliating self-inflicted national economic meltdown in order to achieve their Brexit pipe dream, but they'd give up the thing they'd sacrifice all of their principle for if Brexit meant temporarily having a democratic socialist as Prime Minister!

And the scariest thing about all of this is that the future of the nation is entirely in the hands of these frightened and brainwashed Brexit maniacs.

They get to pick the next Prime Minister between themselves, while the rest of us look on in horror at what they're going to choose to inflict on us.

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OR

Theresa May's extraordinary incompetence is fracturing the political right

The Tory Blue-Kip strategy was 20 years in the making, but when Theresa May activated it in April 2017 by triggering the snap election, it backfired spectacularly and actually ended up costing the Tory party their parliamentary majority, and now, just a couple of years later the Tory party is teetering on the brink of electoral ruin thanks to multiple splits in the political right.

The Blue-Kip strategy

Before Theresa May called the 2017 General Election, the numbers seemed to make perfect sense for the Tories. If they could combine the Tory vote with the UKIP vote, Labour would be annihilated and the other opposition parties wouldn't stand a chance either.

After years of upping the far-right, anti-immigrant, ultranationalist rhetoric in order to appeal to the Ukip crowd, Theresa May and the Tories decided to put their plan into action, and to an extent it worked. The far-right ultranationalist boost increased the Tory vote by 2.2 million from 2015, but what they didn't count on at all was the Corbyn surge which added an astounding 3.6 million votes for Labour.

Not only did the Tories fail to achieve the 150-200 seat mega-majority they'd dreamed of, they actually lost their parliamentary majority and put themselves at the beck and call of the Northern Irish DUP sectarians.

Demographics

One of the most obvious consequences of this massive shift in British politics was that the Tories have rendered themselves utterly reliant upon the extremely fickle Blue-Kip demographic, because if the 2.2 million flowed out as quickly as they'd flowed in, the Tory party would obviously end up getting hammered at the next General Election.

So the Tories were forced to continue pandering to the Blue-Kip demographic with far-right politics, anti-immigrant posturing, rabble-rousing, and overt displays of ultranationalism, despite the fact that the less rabid type of Tory voter and the younger generations are absolutely repulsed by this stuff.

In a way Theresa May and the Tories did reasonably well to keep this almost impossible shambles rolling for as long as they did, alternating top spot in the polls with Labour for the next year and a half.

OK they've had the majority of the mainstream media firmly on their side, and "centrists" continued helping the Tories by refusing to critique the ruinous austerity policies that trashed our living standards and caused the Brexit vote in the first place (the Lib-Dems who colluded with austerity fanaticism for five years, and the Labour right-wingers who lost the 2015 General Election by pathetically imitating austerity instead of vehemently opposing it) but the demographic trapdoor they've painted themselves over was always going to give way at some point.

And now that the Tories have failed to deliver the far-right ultranationalist fantasy of Brexit they're clearly in very deep trouble.

Brexit

Delivering Brexit was always absolutely crucial for the Tories to retain the support of the fickle Blue-Kip demographic.

I guess May imagined it would be easy enough to do with a 150-200 seat mega-majority in parliament, but once that fantasy was destroyed by the Corbyn surge in 2017, delivering any kind of Brexit became impossible, hence the national humiliation of the UK government having to go to Brussels to beg the EU to give us more time to sort out the extraordinary constitutional deadlock that Theresa May has created for us.

She knows that her endlessly repeated threat of punishing the British people with a devastating "no deal" meltdown if she didn't get her own way would have utterly destroyed the myth of Tory economic competence and driven millions of people away from the Tories for ever, so she knew that she could never actually follow through on her threats, despite wasting literally £billions on "no deal" planning to make it look like she was serious.

And she also knows that she can't get her shitty almost universally unpopular deal through parliament without significant compromise, and that any compromise towards Customs Union membership, Single Market access, protected workers' rights and the like would sound the death knell for Toryism by driving the far-right Blue-Kip demographic away from the Tories for good.

So she can't deliver Brexit, she can't follow through on her threats, and she can't compromise.

After steering the nation into this absurd deadlock situation and then simply clinging to power instead of letting someone else have a go, it's extraordinary that the Tories have any political support left at all.

Brexit Party

Theresa May's failure to deliver Brexit has led to her worst nightmare, the resurrection of UKIP under a new shinier brand, and in a matter of weeks pretty much the entire Blue-Kip demographic has surged away from the Tory party to pledge allegiance to Nigel Farage's new opaquely-funded Brexit Party.

The worst Tory local election results since 1995 (despite the Brexit Party not even standing candidates) have been followed up by extraordinary polls showing Labour establishing significant leads after huge numbers of people have abandoned the Tories to switch support to the Brexit Party.

So the people Theresa May has spent her entire time as PM pandering to have disappeared even more quickly than they flocked into the Tory ranks in the first place!

CUK and the Lib-Dems

The Brexit Party is clearly Theresa May's biggest problem, but then she also has another major headache too because there are two so-called "centrist" parties jostling to hoover up the Tory vote at the other edge by imitating their pro-austerity, pro-privatisation, orthodox neoliberal policies under the Remain banner.

At the 2016 EU referendum 57% of Tories voted for Brexit, but 43% voted Remain, which is hardly an insignificant proportion.

If these people start to believe that they can have the exact same "impoverish the poor to further enrich the wealthy" neoliberal policies elsewhere, without the inconvenience of being ideologically tied to this Tory Brexit shambles, significant numbers of them are going to buy into yellow or grey versions of orthodox neoliberalism, and the more effort Theresa May puts into preventing the Blue-Kip exodus, the more she's going to drive people out at the other end of the party.

The egotistical CUK squatters have made an absolute mess of almost everything they've touched in their first three months, but picking an ex-Tory leader who positions them to the right of the Tory party on economic policy, appointing the austerity fanatic Chris Leslie as their economics lead man, and the pro-privatisation Angela Smith as their business, environment, and transport bod are clearly moves designed to bring orthodox neoliberals into the CUK fold, and to attract the big money donors who are getting close to losing their patience with bankrolling the decaying Tories and their interminable Brexit farce.

Division of the right

Even those of us who were only children, or not even born in the mid-80s know all about the SDP and how divisions on the political left ended up handing Margaret Thatcher a majority so large that it wasn't finally eroded until 1997, but now, as a result of Theresa May's extraordinary incompetence, the political right is fracturing into various factions.

The far-right ultranationalists are deserting the Tory party in droves to back the Brexit Party Faragists and the remnants of UKIP, while the orthodox neoliberal right-wingers are ever more tempted by the pro-austerity, pro-privatisation, pro-EU posturing of the CUK squatters and the Lib-Dems.

It's looking increasingly likely that all that will be left of the Tory party will be the rump of political tribalists who treat political parties with the same undying loyalty as football fans treat their teams (no matter how shit they are they'll never abandon them to support another team, the worst they'll ever do is stop turning out to support them).

Labour

The division of the political right and the vast Labour membership surge since Jeremy Corbyn binned orthodox neoliberalism and returned Labour to their democratic socialist roots mean that the party will probably never have a better shot at regaining the government than the next General Election, and finally reversing the neoliberal economic fanaticism that has done so much damage to the UK since Thatcher infected the Westminster political establishment class with this toxic hard-right militancy in 1979.

Of course the CUK squatters and Lib-Dems will try to erode the Labour vote too, by appealing to the orthodox neoliberals in the Labour ranks, but grotesque living standard-eroding stuff like austerity dogma, privatisation mania, brutal social security cuts, and deliberate infrastructure under-investment have far more appeal to right-wing Labour MPs than they do to ordinary Labour Party members and voters.

Labour will continue to be attacked from both sides for their policy of trying to de-escalate Brexit, rather than whipping it up even more for their own political purposes with cries of "betrayal" and "treason" from the Brextremists, and the desperate pining for a final 'do or die' 'now or never' clash of civilisations 'another roll of the dice' referendum from the Remain Ultras.

This is unfortunate, but the Tories created this massive social division, and political opportunists from both sides are fully intent on whipping up the hate, and actually widening the divide for their own selfish political purposes, rather than seeking some kind of compromise that neither side will particularly like, but most ordinary people can live with.

This isn't to say Labour shouldn't back another referendum (they've voted in favour of one twice already), it's just that they should make sure they offer a more moderate Brexit (Customs Union, Single Market, protected workers' rights, co-operation on science, security & environment) and do everything in their power to make sure ruinous undefined options like "no deal" are kept off the ballot (surely the #1 lesson from the 2016 referendum is that undefined options in national referendums are a dreadful idea?).

The worst mistake Labour could make is to follow Theresa May's lead and pick one side of this hyper-partisan Brexit division, because you only have to look at the chaos she's created through this wilful partisanship, and the ongoing breakup of the Tory vote to understand the risks.

 Another Angry Voice  is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.

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HMP Birmingham: A case study in failed Tory privatisation mania

In October 2011 HMP Birmingham became the first British operating prison to be fully privatised when the Tory-led government handed operations over to the corporate outsourcing giant G4S.

By 2014 whistleblowers at the prison were reporting widespread violence and drug use, prisoners staying in bed all day, and experienced staff quitting in droves.

In 2016 the prison was rocked by a 14 hour riot involving some 500 prisoners. The Tory government then attempted to bury the report that cited staff shortages as a major factor.

In 2017 the Chief inspector of prisons found a violent, dirty, lawless, drug-riddled hovel rated as the worst prison h'd ever inspected.

In 2018 the Ministry of Justice demonstrate the shocking scale of this ideologically driven prison privatisation folly with the emergency state take-over of operations.

Amazingly the privatisation-fixated Tories knew exactly how bad HMP Birmingham was for several year, yet they just sat back and watched it deteriorate rather than admit their ideologically driven prison privatisation agenda was failing.

Even in the days before the emergency take-over they were still delaying because they were busy negotiating "commercially sensitive" contract terms with G4S!

Imagine how badly the contract must have been drafted if the private sector operators can turn a functioning prison into a violent drug-riddled horror show that even the guards are terrified to work in, and still think they've got a leg to stand on to quibble over contract terms when the the government steps in to take over the mess they've created.

Even more amazing is the fact that the Tory government have announced that they plan to hand the prison straight back to G4S after six months!

So G4S take over a functional prison, turn it into an absolute hellpit for the inmates and staff alike, hand it over to the government to clean up at public expense, and then waltz back in six months later to wreck it all over again!

Instead of negotiating over contract terms and then promising to hand the prison back to the failing outsourcing company after just six months, the government should be immediately banning G4S from bidding for any more Ministry of Justice work, calling a moratorium on all justice system privatisations, and announcing a wide-ranging public inquiry into how the prison privatisation agenda went so wrong so quickly.

To anyone with any sense the whole idea of handing prisons over to private companies is absolutely perverse. Only the most fanatical of hard-right neoliberal pro-privatisation freaks could try to argue that the primary function of prisons should be for private companies to generate private profits at the public expense, rather than keeping the public safe from dangerous criminals and rehabilitating lawbreakers so that they can reenter society with the skills and attitude necessary in order to avoid recidivism.

But this is where were at now. The cult of neoliberalism is so embedded within the Westminster political establishment that the majority of MPs and political journalists never criticise the ideologically driven privatisation of prisons, the forensic science service, electronic tagging of prisoners, the probation service, court translation services, or even front line policing. 

Meanwhile the minority of MPs who espouse renationalisation and a preference for not-for-profit public services are continually derided as the dangerous radicals and extremists!

The polling evidence is absolutely clear that the majority of British people are strongly opposed to privatisation mania, but the Westminster political establishment remain stubbornly impervious to the public view that ideologically driven privatisatise everything agenda absolutely stinks.

And that's the problem with the cult of neoliberalism - you can point to as many privatisation failures as you like (HMP Birmingham, collapsed and fraud riddled academy chains, Carillion, the rail privatisation farce, the G4S Olympic security failure, the G4S electronic tagging fraud, the forensic science privatisation calamity, the shambolic privatisation of the probation service, the absurdly inefficient Work Programme, the rip-off water companies, Royal Mail being flogged off at way below its true market value, flogging off the NHS blood supply, and dozens upon dozens of other examples) and you can point to the polling data that says the public hate it, but the neoliberal cultists will simply shrug their shoulders, ignore the evidence, and adopt their arrogant and elitist "we are the enlightened few, and the public are wrong again" stance.

 Another Angry Voice  is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.

OR

If you hate socialism, then you hate the NHS

Millions of people in Britain have allowed themselves to be conditioned into hating the concept of socialism by the toxic influence of the hard-right billionaire propaganda merchants.

The way they do this is by steadfastly ignoring the reality of what socialism actually means, and continually offering absurd caricature definitions of socialism like "spending other people's money" or "jealousy at other people's success" instead.

In reality socialism is about making sure public infrastructure and services (like schools, hospitals, public transport, the police and judicial system, libraries, roads, and energy infrastructure) are run for the public good, and kept out of the hands of private profiteers.

It's all about getting people to hate a ridiculous caricature of socialism, rather than explaining the political situation using accurate definitions.

The polling data shows that a clear majority of British people who express an opinion either way strongly support the fundamental socialist principle of public ownership when it comes to police services (96%), schools (93%), the NHS (89%), the Royal Mail (76%), the railways (71%), the water companies (70%), and the energy companies (63%). [source for statistics]

Given that the socialist policy of public ownership is so overwhelmingly popular with the British public, it seems incredible that so many British people have allowed themselves to be conditioned into hating "socialism" so much that they go out and vote for a radically right-wing political party that is hellbent on ignoring public opinion, scrapping public ownership, and continually transferring the operation of our police services, schools, NHS facilities, and Royal Mail into the hands of private sector profiteers.


Around nine in ten people support the socialist policy of running the NHS as a not-for-profit public service, so mainstream media propagandists have to use all kinds of deceptions to confuse people into hating "socialism".

One of the most important tricks they use to get people spewing bile like a pack of slavering Pavlov's dogs at the mere mention of "socialism" is to completely whitewash the positive aspects of socialist policy.

The political right hate the NHS with an undying passion because the concept of prioritising health care on the basis of need, rather than the ability to pay for it, is a fantastic demonstration of socialism in action.

Right-wingers are smart enough to realise that the British public love the concept of universal health care, so instead of attacking the NHS directly, they undermine it on the sly whilst pretending that they actually love it.

You'll never hear a Tory admit that the NHS has been a shining example of socialism in action ever since it was founded by the Labour Party in 1948. Neither will you see right-wing columnists and political commentators admit that the NHS that they pretend to support is actually an unmistakably socialist endeavour.

This refusal to define the NHS as an example of socialism in action is deception by omission.

Right-wingers want people to immediately think of stuff like bread queues in communist Russia or their ridiculous caricatures of socialism as "spending other people's money" whenever the subject of socialism comes up. 

They definitely don't want people thinking about the fantastic hard-working NHS staff who have helped them and/or their family members through accidents, illnesses, and/or child birth.

However it's vital to understand that even though the political right are unwilling to describe the NHS as the socialist enterprise that it is for fear of demonstrating that almost everyone in Britain has been a beneficiary of socialism in action at some point in their lives, they hate it with an unbridled ideological passion.

These elitist right-wing ideologues don't want to identify the NHS with socialism for fear of giving the "lower orders" the idea that socialism is actually a good idea. So they just quietly work to wreck it through massive funding cuts, service closures, deliberately manufactured staff shortages, and an ever accelerating privatisation agenda.
  

Then when their wrecking agenda comes to fruition, and the NHS is reduced to a hollowed out and under-funded wreck that is incapable of dealing with public demand, they'll suddenly reverse their embargo on describing the NHS as socialism, because once it's been reduced to ruins by the right-wingers who always hated it, they can use the wreckage they've created to support their deceptive argument that socialism doesn't work.

As long as the Tories and the right-wing press continue their strategy of obscuring the fact that the NHS is an example of socialism in action, we can be fairly sure that they fear that it's somehow still working well enough to actually give socialism a good name.

But when they suddenly start spewing propaganda about how the NHS is failing because socialism doesn't work (rather than as a result of their deliberate wrecking agenda), we'll know that they're on the brink of completing their project to run the NHS into the ground in order to justify their decades-long dream of privatising the remains and scrapping the "free at the point of need" principle.

 Another Angry Voice  is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.

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The Tories are the political extremists with unpopular attitudes and unwanted policies

Ever since Jeremy Corbyn was elected as Labour Party leader in 2015 the mainstream media have worked tirelessly to create the narrative that Corbyn and Labour are scary political extremists, while the Tories are safe and sensible political moderates.

The problem of course is that this near constant mainstream media trope is a complete reversal of reality. 

When it comes to party policy it's Labour who promote policies with lots of public support like reversing the ongoing Tory privatisation of the NHS (84%), renationalisation of the railways (60%) and Royal Mail (65%), and public ownership of the water companies (59%). Meanwhile it's the Tories that have been enacting radical hard-right policies with practically no public support like the mass privatisation of state schools (6%), privatisation of police services (3%), and privatisation of NHS services and facilities (10%). [source for percentages]

When it comes to other Labour policies like free university education, running the National Grid as a not for profit public service, and the establishment of a National Investment Bank, these are not radical or extreme policies at all, in fact they're actually commonplace across the developed world.

When it comes to party policies it's clear that Labour have some very popular ideas that are considered completely normal across the rest of the developed world, while it's the Tories who are intent on pushing a radical and extreme political agenda that has very little public support.

Aside from the mainstream media campaign to smear the Labour leadership and Labour policies as scary and extreme, there's also a concerted and ongoing effort to portray ordinary Labour Party members as a bunch of dangerously radical nutters with extreme ideas that are miles away from the political centre ground.

The problem of course is that this is another deliberate reality reversal by the mainstream media.

An in-depth survey of political party members by Queen Mary University and YouGov has demonstrated beyond doubt that Labour Party members largely share the same political territory as the Lib-Dems and the SNP, while it's Tory party members who hold the radical and extreme beliefs. 

When it comes to attitudes on immigration Labour, Lib-Dem and SNP voters are clustered extremely closely together on the belief that immigration enriches British cultural life, while Tory members are the radical outliers who believe that immigration undermines Britain's cultural life.

When it comes to representation in parliament a clear majority of all of the other party members wanted to see more parliamentary representation for women, disabled people, the working class, ethnic minorities, young people, and the LGBT community. 

Tory members were the only group where the majority don't want to see more parliamentary representation for women, disabled people, the working class, ethnic minorities, young people, and the LGBT community. 

Presumably they don't want increased political representation for any of these groups because they're perfectly happy to be ruled over by an over-privileged elitist clique in which wealthy, white, able-bodied, older males are massively over-represented, and every other demographic is significantly under-represented.

When it comes to austerity dogma, Labour Party members have broadly similar views to the SNP and Lib-Dems that austerity has gone too far, while Tory party members are the fanatical extremists who still overwhelmingly support the demonstrably ruinous economic vandalism their beloved party has been inflicting on the nation for almost 8 years. Presumably they cling to their belief because to admit that it's been a failure now would be to admit their own role in damaging British society and the British economy, so it's easier for them to maintain their delusion than to just admit their mistake.

When it comes to a whole range of other subjects, from a second EU referendum once the actual terms of the deal are clear, through forcing school children to uncritically obey authority, to reintroduction of the death penalty, Labour members align closely with the views of SNP and Lib-Dem members, while it's the Tory members who hold the radical and extreme positions.

Whichever way we look at the situation, it's clear that the Tory party are actually the dangerous radicals.

Theresa May is a weak and directionless leader who threw away her majority and put herself at the mercy of some of the most extreme elements in British politics (the headbanger Tory hard-right, the ultra-nationalist blue-kip demographic who abandoned UKIP to prop up Theresa May's Tories, the DUP who she had to bribe into supporting her government, and the fanatically right-wing propaganda merchants like Rupert Murdoch, Paul Dacre, and the Barclay Brothers).

The Tory party have spent the last seven years imposing one radically right-wing and spectacularly unpopular policy after another. From trashing our local services to lavish huge tax breaks to corporations and the mega-rich, through their systematic abuse of sick and disabled people, to spectacularly unpopular privatisation scams. They're demonstrably a bunch of extremists with practically no regard for what the public actually want.

Then there's the actual Tory party members. What else can we say about this bunch of regressive, xenophobic, hard-right, anti-worker, elitist, homophobic, austerity-fetishists? Is it really any wonder the Tory party is so full of horrific politicians pushing grotesque policies given the absolute state of the Tory party membership?

So next time you see the mainstream media trying to portray Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Party as the scary political extremists, just remember that they're deliberately reversing reality to confuse you, and that it's the Tories who rely on the bunch of regressive political deviants in the Tory party membership to help push their radically right-wing and highly unpopular policies.

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