All of this simply goes to to show the dire state of UK politics.

All the main parties lack a coherent ideology that goes beyond unregulated capitalism and this is why modern politics has lost the trust of most people. Turning your electorate into consumers might have seemed like a good idea when taking your inspiration from Thatcher's brutal monetarist policies, but this bid to attract the middle classes into the New Labour fold has backfired badly.

What Glasgow East has demonstrated is Labour have gone so far down the road of Thatcherite free market economics they have effectively alienated their core voters - the less well off who still believe in socialist policies they thought they were getting when electing Labour in 1997.

This along with the rush to war at side of a right-wing American Neocon puppet and the subsequent betrayal of the trust of the UK electorate when the entire debacle was found to be based on a pack of half-truths and lies has damaged Labour so much they will probably loose the next election to one of the most policy-deficient Tory parties ever seen (in fact, until Thatcher dies this is likely to remain the state of the party as they cannot seem to escape her not inconsiderable shadow).


"People have realised that Labour no longer speaks for the under-priviliged and that they are even worse than the Conservatives when in power"

I doubt if the men of Clydeside, Steelos, Bilston Glen or the Yorkshire coalfields would agree with this Ake. The minimum wage itself was no mean feat to introduce, and provides some protection for those in the lowest paid jobs. They have introduced devolved government in Wales and Scotland and were instrumental in facilitating the stopping of the war in the North of Ireland (remember Mo Mowlem visiting the Maze to persuade the hard-line Loyalists to sign up to the peace process - a Tory would never have had the courage to do that).

We need a return to the politics of principle, and the rebuilding of ideologies that can take us forward as a society, for the benefit of all. What a shame Tony Benn has retired.