Perhaps I ought to have started that sentence with, "Compared to the current government..."



I agree with your comments regarding the political class as a whole, but on balance, I still think Labour are the best of a bad bunch.

The touble is the more people who have the same view as yourself the more likely we are to get another Tory government. My Grandad was a local Labour councilor and one time Mayor in Hindley near Wigan and despite the area being a staunch Labour area he never took the Labour vote for granted. His view was that Tories always vote. There is a core of Tory support that always turns out and this in my opinion is true.



from what you have said I am pretty sure you don't believe the Labour party would continue the thinly disguised assault on the welfare state that has been undertaken under the guise of necessary austerity cuts. If we get another five years of the Tories, especially in a majority government the NHS will be well and truly a thing of the past.



Andy Burnham and his views on what he would do with the NHS is therefore in my view reason enough alone to vote Labour for anyone. The party is far from perfect and as has been pointed out "new labour" was as wedded to neocon politics as any of them but the alternative is even worse IMO.



With the first past the post system we have voting for fringe parties IS a wasted vote. We are stuck with a poor choice but I would have thought the blatant and deliberate dismantling of the welfare state undertaken by the Tories while the Lib Dems sit meekly by is enough to vote them out and the only way to do that us vote Labour.

I've likewise only ever voted Labour or LibDem. My problem is that Labour started the processes which have lead to ridiculous fees for higher education and creeping privatisation of the NHS. They lost my vote when they introduced student fees and they've done nothing since to incline me to reverse that decision. The LibDems are off the agenda for obvious reasons. At the moment I'm left with the Greens as the only palatable alternative and the last time I read one of their manifestos it was a joke.

I look at it this way:



There are two parties that have a realistic shout of securing a majority. If I don't vote for one of these parties, I'm effectively wasting my vote (given that I won't ever vote Lib Dem again). Out of the two, I'll be voting for the one that is less likely to shaft the average man in the street in a bid to make things better for the richest few per cent.



Labour are far, far from perfect, but they're the best choice available if you don't want to see a Tory majority.

Until I moved down here, I'd only ever voted Labour, even when living in Cottingham (staunch tory) but I soon realised that a Labour vote down here really is a wasted vote, so switched to LibDem. The incumbent has managed to scrape through at each of the last three elections and much as I hate the Quisling, bearded, fat bastad that is David Heath, the alternative to him would've been Rees-Mogg's sibling Anunziata and that was unthinkable. So come 2015, Heath will probably get my vote again.



I also imagine there will be increasing numbers in the nation who will vote ABC - Anyone But Cameron

Huge amount of truth in this.



Although at present, I live in one of those areas where you could pin a red/blue/yellow rosette on a monkey and it would get in. So in a way, I have the luxury of being able to vote in a way that does not demand tactical voting. Makes bugger-all difference, though.

Oh aye - I'm aware of the pragmatic position. It might be that come election time I'll put my principles to one side, hold my nose, and vote Labour for the very reasons you outline. I won't be happy about it though. Labour may do less damage in general but by introducing charges for higher education they enabled the current Government to blight an entire generation with a lifetime of debt. Since that includes both of my kids you'll have to forgive me if I take it rather personally.

Likewise in my constituency although we did once have a Labour MP, just for one term, other than that its been a Tory one for the whole of my life until the last two elections when we've had LibDem, at the moment he'll get my vote next time for two reasons, he keeps a Tory MP out, and he loves a beer and fights for small breweries and against large brewery tied leases.

I see your point about Labour having 'started the ball rolling', but it was the Tories/Lib Dems who raised the fees to such a ludicrous level. One could argue that the fees were manageable under the Labour system (though I am very much of the opinion that higher education should be entirely state funded), and that it's unfair to blame them for the Tories tripling the levels of debt most students are likely to leave university with. And I reckon the Tories would have found a way to introduce the fees without Labour having laid the groundwork.

Labour broke with the principle of free higher education. It was entirely predictable that fees were only ever going to rise. Moreover, in order to do so they started the stereotyping of privileged students being funded by the underprivileged masses. If they had done neither of these things it would have been hugely more difficult for the coalition to have introduced fees, let alone at the current ridiculous levels. It also made it impossible for them to mount an effective counter-campaign when the fees were increased, as they had started the ball rolling themselves.



I don't think people realise the long-term damage that the current system is doing to this country. And Labour started it.

It was, but I don't think it's reasonable to say that the rise the Tories introduced could have been foreseen at the time Labour introduced fees. The Tories have opportunistically utilised the financial crash as justification for the rise (and for most of their other abhorrent policies), and, since few people predicted the crash, even fewer could have predicted the tuition fee rises that were later blamed upon it.







They did, but there's only so much blame they can take for that. If the Tories abolished the 22p tax rate, would you blame Labour for having abolished the 10p rate first?

The biggest damage is that the huge increase in school leavers going onto university has lead to large gaps at the bottom end of the employment market, and also a steep rise in youth unemployment due to over qualified people leaving university with totally inappropriate qualifications for the modern day jobs market.



There is nothing wrong with encouraging youngsters to make the best of themselves, but logic tells you that not everybody can be a highly paid doctor or executive.



Also, the huge increase in university numbers could never have been funded 100% by the taxpayer.....30 or 40 years ago when only the cream went there, then maybe, but in these days of every Tom, Dick and Harry going there, then it made common sense to bring in some sort of fees system.