Category: Keevil

(The last of three reposts from an initial political blog in 2011 – Keevil)

A Local Elections Blog Post, by a new Labour Councillor could not go without comment.

(It is no longer available to view. Which highlights the lie that things are on the internet for ever, and that people aren’t fans of archiving – Keevil)

As much as I don’t want this blog to be a constant rebuke to things that other party members say,

(which is why this blog was created! – Keevil)

sometimes it is needed to raise the level of debate in these towns.

(it’s still needed. again hence the new blog – Keevil)

In it, it said;

“Despite the protestations by those on the left; if the Green Party or this TUSC band of lunatics, we would have been able to dent the Tory majority. This point is stressed every single time – if you split the left vote with fringe parties (and lets be frank they are not a realistic prospect of being in government, and even less so with no AV) then you open the field up to the right. Fact.”

I’m not indifferent to the situation. I was inclined to only reply to this with a West Wing clip, which makes the point I would like to make marvelously, though you have to wait till the end of the clip.

(at about 1:49. if you can’t watch it all – Keevil)

However, I couldn’t just leave it there, for one simple reason.

“Fact.”

The blogger in question had used that at the end, and by the rules of intellectualism had won the point. The only thing they could have done to make a stronger point would have been to put “QED” at the end of the sentence. Now I don’t fully understand this, but a housemate used it all the time at Uni, and he got his way a lot.

Anyways.

(a decade later and I’m still not over it – Keevil)

There are two points, firstly the admission that the voting system is unfair under FPTP (which favours a two party system)  compared to what it would be under AV, or heaven forbid Proportional Representation.

(There having been a referendum – a completely fair and open referendum at that – this topic can never be again discussed – Keevil)

Secondly is the idea that the Green Party should stand aside for the Labour Party. This implies that the voters like sheep would automatically vote Labour which they wouldn’t. Also I could not in good conscience support a local party which refuses to apologise, on any level, for the New Labour Government.

If I concede that good things happened under New Labour, will the blogger concede that bad things did to? Or will the very attempt cause them to go into mental breakdown?

Thirdly, they should look at the large percentage of people who don’t vote in Medway and ask themselves what they did to encourage/discourage higher turnout.

I am reminded of a ballot paper in the second By-Election where the voter had written no in every candidates box. Except mine. Except for the Green Party.

How could I stand aside in my

(by my, I meant I lived there, not owned it – Keevil)

ward for two Labour representatives, one who in his acceptance speech upon becoming Councillor stated regarding his Conservative opponent

“we agree on a great many things”

(nearly half a decade later and I’m still not over it – Keevil)

The other who argues loudly for cuts and defends Trident, despite it being illegal and unaffordable.

Labour members continue to assume they have a right to be the party of opposition, whilst siding with the Conservatives on issues and ignoring the growth of a party which now has an MP and successful councillors in Brighton and Norwich.

The Brighton Politics blogger, in his Post ‘Labour is no closer than ever to understanding how to respond to the Greens’  talks about how Labour have rejected a coalition with the Brighton Green Party.

(That blog is still there. Brighton bloggers, showing it how its done – Keevil)

“There is no way that Labour will come anywhere near taking control next time. The next locals are likely to take place on the same day as the general election in 2015. Caroline Lucas will be re-elected with a thumping majority, with Labour coming in a distant third.”

They go on to state that Labour have misled the public twice in recent Elections and that Brighton Labour activists are blinded to reality.

“Labour’s obsessive attacks on Caroline Lucas make the party look like bad losers, and many people are delighted that the City has produced the first Green MP.”

Can we one day expect as has occurred in other areas, a Labour campaign of;

Vote Green get Tories.

(There has been instead a rise of the UKIPper instead. Who do campaign under ‘Vote UKIP, Get UKIP’. Ahem – Keevil)

All I know for certain is that in the first By-Election I stood in

I beat the BNP.

And they didn’t stand in the second.

Come the next election, should the opportunity arise I will most likely stand again,

(which I did. Yay me – Keevil)

and I will definitely support any member of the Green Party that stands also. As I can not support a party which assumes too much and concedes nothing. More importantly, I shouldn’t force the people that voted for me or the Green Party to do it either. QED.

Keevil

(The following comment was left on the original post and I present it here, unedited – Keevil)

It would be worth asking a conservative if your most ravenous, militant revolutionary anti-capitalist is evil – they will say yes, certainly and probably cite a similar argument to the one in your former Tory Councillor’s blog post that you referenced. These political differences are a conflict of social and economic interests – ‘lefties’ aim to do away with the excessive economic privileges of the minority of successful capitalists and share this wealth amongst all people to raise their living standards, what act is more evil than this to a businessman or the elected representative that swears to protect his interests? By their standards, they have earned this privilege through hard work – it would be very evil in their eyes for this to be taken away. On the other hand, the ‘leftie’ sees this privilege as something built by the masses of labourers who are the physical power behind all of these economic gains, therefore not one individual’s efforts can be attributed to these gains and they should be shared out for the benefit of the common good – for a small group to enjoy these gains is an evil act in this regard, or at the very least a horribly greedy and immoral act.

In reply to the Tory’s argument that you posted, I would say to him or her that wonderful capitalism causes more deaths, either directly or indirectly, every year than any kind of alternative ever has had the chance of causing and if pushed I would ask all of my leftie friends to help me dig out numbers to highlight this fair point.

Is a Tory evil? The Tory is just a person and his/her politics represent a certain set of interests that they may well find totally morally correct. With the definition you posted in mind, I will take one word: immoral – this will be the word for the basis of my determination of whether the Tory’s political and economic outlook on life is evil in relation to the interests I find morally correct.

Here’s one of the latest Tory policies that has made me feel sick to my stomach – is that immoral? Based on the false election pretenses alone, such as the ‘big society’, it is nothing short of immoral (unless we consider our homeless citizens outside of this ‘big society’).

Take your pick of other Tory policies implemented post-election – for me, it would be incredibly difficult to find a Con-Dem cut that could be morally justified. Perhaps we can justify these policies from an economic standing-point, from the perspective of business interests, but I would not accept the notion that the economic interests of those with a lot of money is a moral interest that has the majority of people in mind, from the single-mother who’s benefits are being cut, to the homeless man on the streets of London who’s soup kitchen has been closed down – what do these people care about what’s good for business? What’s good for business is almost always bad for these people.

So what can we say? Can the individual Tory, who really believes that what (s)he’s doing is morally correct, be called ‘evil’? I would say that they represent a political force which has a whole political and economic outlook that is immoral in a broad social sense, and I would argue that the policies they defend have met a majority of the population with significant misery and poverty – morally wrong or bad; immoral; wicked are words I think are perfectly adequate in this regard. With my perspective on the table, we assume that the individual Tory is either politically evil or politically naive and therefore evil by proxy of his or her ignorance.

The same goes for all mainstream politicians with my perspective in mind, or rather, all of those who are conscious in maintaining a system that is inherently immoral, as it serves a minority’s interests over the majority’s and is responsible for war, famine, poverty and conflict all over the world (including at home). These people, whether Tory, Labour or Lib-Dem all have lied or will hide behind nice, morally correct terms like ‘the big society’ whilst continuing wars, taking away people’s services, selling off their healthcare to private interest, evicting them from their homes and taking away their soup kitchens. It is not the individual that matters entirely, but the system they represent which is fundamentally immoral and perhaps evil by the definition provided.

Individually, these politicians might be the nicest, most loving people you could ever meet, but we separate their politics and their person and judge them accordingly. People aren’t inherently evil I wouldn’t say, but their actions can be, and Tory politics are inherently immoral by my ‘leftie’ standards, so perhaps Tories are evil by proxy of ignorance or they are evil because they actually like making people’s lives a misery in order – who knows?

I was talking to an ultra-conservative the other day and we had great a great conversation when politics was aside – I still find his views fundamentally morally wrong or bad; immoral; wicked though.

Olie Martin / June 4, 2011