Well ……..a victory for Ed Miliband’s “hard working families”!!! They spoke yesterday, not politicians, and said loudly and clearly just what they wanted: more of the same; this Country had not put up with five years of enormous difficulty and sacrifice to throw it all up at the last. “We have not come this far to fail now” echoed yesterday through Polling Stations across the Land.
UK Business’s ability and freedom to create wealth to grow employment and generate taxation to pay for our hospitals and schools is secure. Interventionist Socialism has been defeated by the people.
Three early reflections:-
1. You will never win a UK General Election from the Left; the Great British Public are conservative (small c) and Labour will only carry England from the Centre……just ask Blair.
2. Where is the fairness in a system that delivers the SNP 56 seats with 5% of the popular vote and UKIP just I seat with twice that figure or the Greens just one seat with a larger share of the popular vote than the Scottish Separatist Nationalists? Surely the time has come for Electoral Reform? We will not achieve much-needed increased engagement in the democratic process (especially by the young) if we do not ensure that every single person in our Country feels their vote matters.
3. It was, I think, Hogarth some 150 years ago who said that there are few more ridiculous sights than that of the Great British People indulging in one of their periodic bouts of hypocrisy. Spare a thought for the LibDems; five years ago they shrugged off the role of being a party of protest, they went back on manifesto promises to put their Country before their Party (something the Electorate always say that politicians never do) and stabilise the economy, to ensure on that weekend when we were bust and going south that the UK did not become Greece. Their reward? Electoral annihilation. Funny old world isn’t it!
So businesswomen and businessmen across the Nation, and those who work for and with them, can get on with the job………free to do so for the benefit of everyone.
Lord Digby Jones