Thursday, November 19, 2009

Changing the rules mid game.

It's often true enough particularly recently that any political party on the verge of losing their majority and hence their ability to govern look to change the way we vote in order to shore up their political careers.

Labourlist have a letter from 34 Labour PPCs asking Gordon Brown to have a referendum on the current political polling system. I don't know who any of these people are, but I'll hazard a guess that they are all in seats likely to fall to other parties (probably Conservative) in the next general election. The real bit of political chicanery is in this paragraph...
A referendum on polling day on a system that delivers real voter choice would see hundreds of Liberal Democrats switching to Labour, hundreds more stay-at-home Labour supporters coming out to vote for the government and every Tory opponent on the back foot trying to explain why the failed old system is worth keeping and why Cameron wouldn’t give the people a say. So we just need to switch the date and fulfill our 1997 manifesto pledge.
It's all just a vote grabbing effort, a means to steal Lib Dem votes in marginal constituencies in order to secure their political careers. This is truly an act of desperation and one I have no doubt that Gordon Brown will consider doing. It takes scorched earth policies to new heights all simply to spite their political opponents and keep power and privilege in Labours grubby little hands.
Why didn't they honour their manifesto pledge back in 1997? Simple really, the current system got them re-elcted, why do they want to honour their pledge now? Simple, they are going to lose their seats.
Now don't get me wrong here, I believe political reform is a necessary and ongoing thing, but, it should only be attempted at the beginning of a governments assumption of power, not as a last gasp attempt to change the system to ensure that a political party in trouble will benefit.

This is corruption in a higher form, a truly disgusting attempt at keeping power despite the unpopularity of Labour in general, I don't know if Lib Dems would be any too happy with it either even if it means reform, they'd be seen to be siding with an out of touch corrupt government desperate to try anything to win votes.

If Labour adopt this, they should be ashamed of themselves, that they wont be ashamed, is a given, because all they care about is holding onto power and not the best interests of the country. They have spent the last 13 years driving this country into the ground, spending taxpayers money like it will never run out and when the chickens come home to roost, they propose altering the rules to keep themselves in power.

How terribly New Labour, they make me sick!

2 annotations:

James Higham said...

Still, that would be great and then we can tack on the extra little question about the EU.

Quiet_Man said...

That's the last question Labour want answered James, but it would be a very good point of attack if they go along these lines.