Usefully Useless

We’re seeing quite a lot of this in the news, but we haven’t had one recently. So what exactly is it?

To start off we need some General Election results, so I’ll use an Ipsos Mori poll, which gives 37% to the Tories, 31% to Labour and 17% to the Lib Dems. Assuming next year’s election has the same result, this would result in a hung parliament.

When parliament is “hung”, it means there is no government. A government is whichever party has control over the House of Commons and at 37%, the Tories would not have control: They could be defeated by the combined 48% of Labour and the Lib Dems.

After an election, the Queen asks the leader of the controlling party to form a government, yet no party would be in control and hence the electoral process is “hung”, it cannot proceed. By “in control”, it’s meant that a single party could unilaterally introduce and pass legislation.

The last time this happened was in 1974, where a re-election happened again in the same year. There are usually three options:

1. A coalition government can be formed. On the continent, this tends to be the norm. Two (or more) parties will agree to work together to form a majority government, subject to certain concessions. If our 2010 election is hung, the balance of power lies in the Liberal Democrats – Whoever they form a coalition with will be the government.

2. A re-election can be issued. There are no guarantees that such an election would result in a clear majority, but they often do.

3. A minority government can be formed. This is the weakest option, as the government would not have control of the House and so could be defeated at any time and an election forced. A minority government is usually the party which has more representation than any other single party, but if the opposition parties were to band together, they could defeat the incumbent, something not possible in a majority government. A minority government can have severe problems passing crucual legislation, such as The Budget and will often have to make serious concessions in order to pass such legislation.

In all likelihood, the Conservatives will win the election outright and Brown will be probably resign as Labour leader but if they don’t, then whoever Nick Clegg decides to work with will be the key question being asked.

Between the European Parliament and the local elections taking place on Thursday, we learned quite a few things. The first and most obvious is that the people have completely lost their support for New Labour.

This turn of events is not at all surprising as people look for someone to blame for the financial crisis, it’s easy to blame the government. This isn’t all, however. Tony Blair oversaw a fundamental shift in Labour’s political stance. Prior to about 1997 or so, Labour were a leftist party which championed the rights of the common man in contrast to the Conservatives, who sought to undermine those rights in the interest of security.

Now the roles are reversed. Blair’s revolution shifted Labour to becoming a conservative party, politically almost identical to the US Republicans, they removed a great many rights from the people. Firearm ownership was banned (and gun crime went up), police gained the power to search anyone on the street without any form of warrant (and concealed weapon crime like knives went up) while economic regulation was abolished (and we entered the worst economic crisis anyone can remember); These are all very reminiscent of Margaret Thatcher’s rule.

David Cameron’s Conservative Party has become what Labour once were. Now they champion economic regulation and seek to restore the rights of the people, which is exactly what Labour used to be.

Not only that, but Labour fostered a culture of fear. We’re told to be scared of terrorists and that the police need all these new powers to help combat terrorists, it’s blanket coverage all across the media. Yet in the 1970s and 1980s when the IRA was bombing the shit out of city centres nationwide, the police didn’t need these powers.

The plan was that a scared populace was an obedient one, first noted by Julius Caesar and again stated by Herman Goering at the post-WW2 Nazi trials and by Donald Rumsfeld in the run up to the invasion of Iraq. As people naturally do not want war, the government simply states there is a danger to the people, denounce the pacifists for exposing their country to danger, and the populace will support whatever they’re told to – it worked in the US, Bush gaining his second term – but has not worked for Labour.

It has worked, however. People are scared of foreigners, usually Muslims but anyone who looks a bit tanned is suspect. They do not, however, support Labour, they’ve gone to support the British National Party, a hilariously named bunch of neo-Nazis who share ideology with banned German extremists: They are not British and the core values we hold dear as British values are hated by the BNP. They hate Britain and all it is, wishing to transform it into a dystopian hellhole.

Proof? The BNP gained tremendously in the European Parlimentary Election, even gaining a seat. If they continue their advance, we are all screwed. Nationalism can only work on fear, it always has to be attacking someone who’s different to the majority, so long as it retains the veneer of protecting the majority, it’ll remain in power. The BNP in the past have attacked blacks, Jews and Muslims, blaming all kinds of maladies on them. Their entire political viability is based on the politics of fear.

So let’s say they kick every Muslim out of the country and all the “foreigners” (basically, non-whites) – the BNP have stated they will do this, first by “voluntary repatriation” of non-white Brits, then by forced expulsion. Who do the masses fear then? Probably Jews, Nick Griffin is on record stating his belief they’re everything wrong with the world. So we perform a second holocaust, set up concentration camps and gas chambers (oh yes, part of their manifesto is to bring back the death penalty). Then who do we fear? Likely homosexuals. We imprison them all or just execute them. Then who do we fear? Probably Catholics, so we ban its practise and raze its churches, outlawing public protests. Then who do we fear? The Irish, so we invade and annex them. Then who do we fear? Dissidents who obviously want to weaken our nation, so we outlaw elections and imprison the dissenters. Then who do we fear? Intellectuals, the educated, the “elitists”, so we imprison or exile them. Then who do we fear? Well, there’ll likely be not many people left.

In the process we’ll have lost our ability to get these idiots out of government when they banned elections. We’ll have lost our ability to protest against the government, that’s banned too. All the foreign professors, scientists and engineers we attracted will have fled to other countries during the repression of the elitist intellectuals, crippling our economy and innovation.

Britain would be destroyed and we’d be its destructors, the British values we stupidly thought they’d protect would be obliterated. That is why we cannot continue playing the politics of fear. That is why Labour has lost its support to the BNP.