You Are Missing the Point, Davids

David Milliband wrote a thoughtful piece in The Times on 8 March about why the Left is losing across Europe.  It was thoughtful but wrong, especially as it concerns why Labour lost Britain. The message was essentially that old chestnut of the Labour Left - the electorate did not get it. 

As someone who until recently was a life-long Labour voter let me explain why Labour lost me.  It is all a question of discrimination and competition.  The whole point of government is that it discriminates - in favour of its own people.  That is why its first mission is to secure the interests and well-being of its own people.  Labour forgot that simple rule.  Rather, Labour in government became so obsessed with the interests of minorities that it started to actively discriminate AGAINST its own people. 

There were several reasons for this.  First, the Labour Party moved to the dogmatic Left after the disastrous Iraq War and became the play thing of minority interest groups.  By the time Gordon Brown seized power the Labour Government was an unelected and increasingly extremist tax and spend left wing government that had lost the trust of that crucial constituency; Middle England.  Second, Labour used human rights and equality legislation to quosh dissent over the disastrous impact on society of uncontrolled mass immigation.  Indeed, by 2007 even dissent over policy was met by the accusation of racism and free speech became incrasingly subject to authoritarian race laws designed to prevent an open debate over rapid changes in society that few wanted.  Consequently, the white British working class became disenfranchised, marginalised and dangerously disenchanted with too many offering their support to the extreme Right.  Hailing as I do from the back streets of central Sheffield I can only attest to the widespread anger, resentment and hopelessness among many of Labour's traditional support base. Third, the Equality Act was used to actively discriminate againt the indigenous population in the labour market...and still is.  One is used to seeing those seemingly inobstrusive little boxes on job application forms asking for nationality and ethnic origin.  I have clear proof from a friend who sat on a selection panel for a university post that far from being merely for statistical purposes they are indeed actively used as a tool of discrimination. 

The other issue is competition.  The world is becoming hyper-competitive and yet Britain has just spent the last decade or so trying to wish such competition away.  Be it in education, the media or wider society the Left tried to banish competition rather than properly prepare people for it.

Now do not get me wrong.  I am not ADVOCATING discrimination. I know a thing or two about prejudice.  We have the society we now have and rules and laws MUST be applied fairly and justly to all.  However, the twin mantras of the Left, 'social justice' and 'fairness' actually fostered the opposite - the new discrimination which today so divides British society and which has rendered Britain today such a fractured and fractious place

Minorities are of course welcome and they must be properly protected from intolerance and injustice.  However, that can never be achieved by government placing their interests above those of the majority. Sadly, David Milliband and the Labour leadership still seem incapable of accepting the consequences of their own policy actions.  Therefore, until Labour re-learns that in government its first task is to serve first the greater good of the majority, irrespective of colour or creed,  I will never vote for Labour again.  And, I suspect nor will millions like me.  Why? Because I simply lack any faith that having been sold one set of policies to get me to elect them I will not a short time later witness a left-wing government enacting misguided policy in my name. 

It is therefore, not without irony that the Coalition Government seems to be falling into the same trap.  To ring-fence aid to rich India when so much is wrong in broke Britain is simply another example of a British government that places the good of others above that of the mass of the British people for the sake of some vague and misplaced dogma.   You are missing the point, David...Cameron.