h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

With an election due in April or May (and before the election is called and we may not be allowed our free speech as seemed to happen with the Obama election , what is their legacy going to be?

Taking the UK into Iraq and Affganastan.
The resettion.
Beginning the end of the UK university systems.
Distroying all the hard work late 80's early 90's, that went into providing the ability for disabled students to study at University.
Failing to do anything with the NHS and schools except institute yet more levels of management and beurocracy.
Turn UK politics into a media show.
Pass endless unnecessary and often contradictory laws.
Eat away even further at civil liberties.
Failed to invest in a suitable infrastructure accross multiple fields, from telecoms to roads and rail and airflight...
I'm sure they might have done a couple of good things but I can't think of any.

Of course, as yet none of the two other main partys in the UK have offered a single alterntive to any of the failures of the labour party, cept perhaps the libs, who I think are still claiming to stand by their policy of removing tuition fees within six years of coming to power...

That's a pretty good summary of it, I think.

Continuing with a vengeance the policies initiated by Thatcher in 1979.

<>

I'm trying to think. There must be something.

I can think of at least one immediately.

Mental Health services around here have improved out of all recognition from the days of the Tories. Thank god.

Labour, friend of nutters and mentals

Actually I can think of loads of others because for me the Tory years were an utter nightmare.
But I don't think this thread is all that much my cuppa. So I'll take my leave already

Well, that's one thing New Labour has done for us, then.
But apart from that, what have they done?

The aqueduct?

You might as well say aquaduct, 'cos they've done all for the roads.

Good things? Scottish Devolution, particularly with the voting format which stopped Labour having a pretty-much guaranteed majority. It was a good idea in theory (and in practice*) to give the Bank of England control over managing interest rates. I think they did well on grounds of discrimination for the most part. 'Institutional racism' probably got more done about it than the Tories would have.


For me though, their legacy is being Thatcherites and not having the guts or the intellectual framework to move away from it. Even now, after the Credit Crunch and the recession, they're still tied to free market ideas, and groping towards an alternative. GB's handling of the economy was.. well, he *did* manage something like 11 years of constant growth. It's ironic though the Labour Iron Chancellor was undone because he followed a free-market ideology. Sums up New Labour pretty well. I have to say though, GB did do a huge amount to stop the recession from turning into a Depression, although, typically, he'll not get much credit for it.


They've been a massive letdown over global warming. The govts of Germany, Denmark and Spain have had an industrial policy which will bring dividends to them for decades to come as oil runs out and energy switches from fossil fuels to renewables. I can't really blame them, in a way, for not being more proactive on this issue; society just doesn't care enough for it to be politically justified just now. OTOH, isn't that what leadership's all about?



Overall though, I think it's an enormous chance wasted to set the UK on a better path than it had been. Their aim was merely to govern, not to change the country.




*what was an awful idea was taking house prices out of the inflation index, with all the ramifications that had.

Well not really one to defend a labour Government I intensely dislike (though probably for very different reasons from KWGZ)...

Anyhow signing the social chapter and the minimum wage.

Both great things for ordinary people that would never have happened under the Tories.

FB

Oh and the Human Rights Act.

A towering achievement both in the fact that it is a great statement of values, and because it so narks the right....

FB

Labour's movement toward better support for mental health issues can be personified by their poster boy for having a breakdown and bouncing back - Alistair Campbell. He has his uses.

Writing off third world debt is something to remember them for, but domestically the thing they should be known best for is the target culture that was designed to provide them with a stack of statistics which could be trotted out at PMQs but which mired the public sector in so much bureaucracy and navel-gazing that it put countless organisations in deficit and resulted in services being slashed all over the place.

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Yes. They seem extremely keen on expanding airports and building new coal fired power stations.


What about selling loads of Bank of England gold at rock bottom prices? That must be part of Gordon's legacy.

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Pretty minor though.

So KZWG, what are your feelings on the minimum wage?

FB

I think it's a good thing.

There was some economist in the Times today was explaining why the minimum wage was a bad thing economically, but to me it seems good.

I would say Labour's lasting achievement will be the revolution in British attitudes towards sexuality. It wasn't so long ago that "poofs" and "queers" were openly derided in public and in the media. That is unthinkable nowadays. This has been a long time coming, from the first stirrings in the early 70s, but only New Labour has actually done anything concrete about it. In so doing, they have transformed the lives of tens of thousands of people and should be applauded for it.

Their biggest failing has been to the poor. Thatcherism was harsh but upfront about people being encouraged to help themselves. New Labour utterly abandoned the worst off in British society. It is almost unthinkable that a Socialist movement which took over an economy on the up and little debt should do so little for the poor. True, under the Tories I have no doubt the gap would be wider, but it is still unconscionable that Labour has done so little for the poorest.

And, considering Blair said something like "This is the first generation that will not know war", this Labour government was very fond of sending our troops off to die. Tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands are dead because of New Labour and George Bush. That's a horrendous legacy in itself (although again, I doubt the Tories would have done differently).

Minimum Wage - well done. Pity they and the unions have done all to oppose zero hours contracts, which kinda negates that gain.

Overall, I don't see a difference between 1997 and 2010. Two long-term governments coming to an end with third-raters in charge and enmired in sleaze and corruption.

Omfg, I agree with swl.

Except for <>

New Labour are not, and have never been, a socialist movement.