







"a huge con that left us with delays, antique trains and a vast bill", admitted that he'd stopped believing in free-trade and asked "What on earth is the point of the Labour Party if it cannot even oppose the mad disaster of railway privatisation?" It's not often that I find myself agreeing with anything Peter Hitchens says, so I was taken aback when I stumbled across an old article of his in the Daily Mail calling for the renationalisation of British Rail, in which he described rail privatisation as, admitted that he'd stopped believing in free-trade and asked



Once I got over the shock of agreeing with something this right-wing blowhard had said (by telling myself that even a stopped clock tells the right time twice a day), I got to thinking about the answer to the question: What is the point of the Labour Party?



I know what the point of the Labour Party used to be before Blair and Brown took over in 1994 and replaced the principle ideologies of the party with a Once I got over the shock of agreeing with something this right-wing blowhard had said (by telling myself that even a stopped clock tells the right time twice a day), I got to thinking about the answer to the question: What is the point of the Labour Party?I know what the point of the Labour Party used to be before Blair and Brown took over in 1994 and replaced the principle ideologies of the party with a Rupert Murdoch approved version of neoliberalism-lite (Thatcherite economic policy with a sprinkling of pseudo-socialist window dressing). The point of the Old Labour party was to maintain a social democratic system in which the public are provided with a social safety net and enough opportunities in life to stop them from rising up and overthrowing the establishment.





In my view the achievements of the post-war Labour Party were the great political legacy of the 20th Century. The NHS, full employment, decent housing, and a more equitable share of the wealth for the bottom 90% of society. The truly incredible thing is that as all of this was being built and maintained, the national debt fell from 238% of GDP in 1947 to just 43% of GDP in 1979, when Margaret Thatcher tore up the post-war consensus in favour of ideologically driven right-wing neoliberalism , since when the national debt has skyrocketed back up again (especially if you include the deliberately hidden costs of

PFI debt legacies and

the bankers' bailouts).

The privatisation of British Rail has been the most visible failure

The Labour leadership seem to think that attacking genuine left-wing parties and offering the electorate nothing more than

will be enough convince the public to vote them back into power in 2015. Even though they've experienced an opinion poll boost on the rare occasions they have offered anything even remotely radical, they're still intent on pushing a Thatcherism-lite agenda in the vain hope that the Tabloid press will take it easy on them. They haven't reailed that the Murdoch press and the Daily Mail will attack Labour whatever they offer, and that by attempting to suck up to the right-wing press, they're simply driving more and more left-wing people away from the Labour Party in exasperation.





So in answer to the question of what the Labour Party is for?

The Labour Party has become nothing more than an empty power structure, so far divorced from its founding principles that it exists only to seek and maintain political power. The party leadership isn't driven by any objective other than the pursuit of power for its own sake. The Labour party strategists imagine that the only path to achieve this political power is through eschewing any kind of radical, progressive or left-wing policies, in favour of promoting a Thatcherism-lite agenda designed to appease the right-wing press, and by conning the public into voting for them with a few lame bits of pseudo-socialist window dressing.