The simple fact is that the Tories are lying so low that they are invuisible and they are allowing their junior partners to take all the flack-and the real punishment hasn't even started yet.
The Lib-Dems have proved nationally what we have known locally for three years, that they are hopeless in power and have only one ambition-to get into power.
This Tory government is going to be the worst since the Duke of Wellington, it will be brutal,ignorant and self serving.It will also be the cleverest Tory government and will achieve the narrow ideological purpose that it has set itself.
It will destroy the welfare state and it will ensure the hegemony of the rich and powerful for decades.
And all this will be done with the willing complicity of the Lib-Dem dupes-if they think partial electoral reform is the big issue-then they are more stupid than they look and sound.
Of course the problem is compounded by the collapse of the Labour Party.After all when they rail against dismantling the health service,creating a target driven public service,see the creation of more academies and the return of selective education.When the Tories roll out more PFI initiatives and weaken public housing what can the Labour leadership say?
Oh Gosh-you've pinched our ideas!
Just reading Chris Mullin's second volume of diaries that argument is self evident in the first few pages, when in 2005 a Tory MP gleefully tells Mullin the sad and obvious truth- a Tory government will continue Labour policies but more efficiently.
If people think that the Tories will be more generous on civil liberties,especially with their little Liberal helpmates-wait till you see the sort of immigration controls this lot will bring in.I expect they have envoys over in Paris as we speak taking notes on how Sarkosy is dealing with Roma's !
There was a time of course when we might have turned to the Unions to provide some resistance,but then we had a strong manufacturing sector and powerful union organisation throughout the private sector as well as within the public sector.
But years of attrition after Thatcher and the wholesale failure of Blair and Brown to restore any meaningful rights to trade unionists has left them weak and powerless.
There are fewer unionised workers today than at any time since the 1920's.
very soon the Tories and Liberals will pick a fight with a public sector union,probably a small one and they will be relentless in the pursuit of that union-and the hapless TUC and Labour Party-will they offer anything more than those cowards did when the miners took on the state-firstly in 1926 and then...?
With a ruthless government,its tame toadies and its weakened opposition what hope is there?Should we all put our collective head in a privatised expensive gas stove and hope for the worst?
Or do we need to see new forms of organisation emerge,perhaps syndicalist trade unions based on location rather than trade?
Should we hope for a resurgence of localised campaigning like the sort Lansbury led in Poplar?
Or should we hope that people will turn to Miliband-Ralph that is!
