Labour loses one of safest seats in by-election

Labour’s loss of Glasgow East to the SNP should surely be seen as marking the end of the New Labour project? It is probably too late for the party to save itself before the next election. Even if Brown was replaced, the party has become too homogeneous to give room for another way of thinking to emerge. It will need to be out of office for at least a decade for that to happen. What happens next?

It seems as if the United Kingdom is slowly heading for break-up. This is not inevitable but the pressures are there and the loss to a Scottish National just adds a bit more. But if one looks at the SNP’s policies, it is evident that they do next to nothing to address the real economic problems that affect Scotland; they are grounded on the same inadequate economic theories as Labour’s are. The same applies to the Conservatives. The only difference is that the the other parties are putting a slightly different spin on what are again, essentially the same economic policies based on the same understandings of how the economy functions.

Whatever the outcome, in this situation politics is bound to fail and lead to disillusion. But it is no use blaming politicians. They merely reflect the public at large. If people are not, as individuals, willing to think and to question statements and opinions but just take them for granted, or they avoid thinking about important subjects altogether, then nothing gets addressed as it should. The politicians cling to the old theories and come up with the same old policies that have always failed,

What happens in a country depends on the people’s ability and willingness to think, take responsibility and work together to make the right things happen. If the UK has politicians that for generation after generation fail peoples’ expectations, and the people themselves opt out of their reponsibility for what happens in the public arena, then those people should blame but nobody but themselves when their expectations turn to disillusion. It is no use blaming “them”. The problem lies with “us”.