I will never agree with you about john leech. Simply because he was a good hardworking councillor for us, and has done nothing wrong as far as I'm concerned so far as an MP.
Admittedly voting for mps is different from voting for councillors and I would not have voted Lib Dem if I hadnt lost all faith in Tony Blair.
Trouble is, Brown is about to succeed him. I don't see how he can credibly claim to be any different. He's been number 2 to blair for 10 years.
And despite all the claims about his financial expertise, I think that is a smokescreen. This country now has £1 trillion personal debt. Building societies now have to advance 5 times income to fund mortgages. Students are leaving university £10 000 in debt before they start out. Pensions have fallen way behind earnings; the minimum wage level is a joke; pensions are in crisis; massive funds have been thrown at NHS, yet it is in financial crisis; manufacturing industry is in crisis; vast swathes of national assets have been sold off, frequently to foreign investors.
In other words, ordinary people are up to their necks in debt, the nation's assets have been mishandled.
Yet the wealthy have got massively wealthier. Directors' pay went up 28% in the last year alone. From an already obscenely inflated figure. Under a LABOUR government.
I have a 6 figure income and no debts. Yet I pay the same council tax as the old age pensioner 3 doors away. As a percentage of disposable income I pay less tax than my cleaner. I have any number of ways of avoiding tax legally(I don't use them). If I chose to defraud the revenue, the chances of being caught would be virtually nil, because there is such a huge underinvestment in personnel in the relevant departments. VAT fraud doesnt get inverstigated if it is under around £50 000. There is not enough staff to do it. Under a LABOUR government.
Labour needs to rediscover its soul. I think it needs to fail at elections in order to do so.
And I hate saying all of that. A fiscally competent Labour government with an ethical foreign policy and a domestic agenda aimed at ensuring ordinary people got their proper share of national wealth and at ensuring public services were free at point of delivery and the best in the world would be a dream come true.
