April Fools

We return once again to a timeless classic; what is the point of the Labour Party? I’m serious. Where once Keir Hardie’s band of brothers joined the struggle to wrest workers’ rights from the hands and whims of capricious High-Church philanthropists; where once the impetus was to put the means of production under the control of those who toiled, now it is, what, to turn out victims? In an effort to be all things to some men (the others are out at work) Labour has totally lost the plot as quickly as it has just lost its grip on the moral high ground.

After the failures of the overly-mighty union days and the overwhelming evidence that having horny-hands on the levers of industrial power is not such a great idea because they don’t always play nice, the parliamentary Labour Party needed a new mission. Having essentially lost control of and hence interest in the workers they decided that what society really needed was a ground-up remodelling. Hence the rise and rise of the special interests groups; but, when everybody has special needs, nobody is particularly special any more.

The moral crusades of the last few decades have not been about uniting the majority of the population in a common cause, but about dividing society into ever more nuanced variations. Variety may be the spice of life but nobody lives on spice alone... and too much spice can give you indigestion. It is little wonder then, that in a world where the microscope is used to discern the slightest difference on which to squander public money, scant attention is paid to the much wider world beyond the eyepiece. Forget them; they’re all right, Jack. All we need from them is the tax they must pay.

To the socialist, all money comes from tax. They have no interest in how the wealth which attracts that tax is generated. So, in order to feed the burgeoning equality and diversity industry, ever more government jobs need to be created, replete with all the hard-won rights won by workers who actually grafted to create the wealth that is now being squandered. Government jobs create no wealth. Government jobs outside the essential services and bureaucracies to administer them create no value either. But at least they come with tenure, eh?

Once again the laws of unintended consequences rise up from the depths to bite them on the arse. Why work hard to acquire a useful skill, a trade, a saleable portfolio of competencies when you can turn to the state instead. No father of Old Labour would have said “Today, son, I’m going to show you how to be a loser, a needy person.” But today it could be deemed useful advice. And if you can’t actually be a loser, you can always train to recognise and serve those losers, by joining the army of occupations that start with socio and end in misery.

This is the socialist mire: The more state jobs are needed to serve the dependency culture the smaller is the talent pool for productive employment. Taxes rise. The more capital flees, the greater the demand for state assistance. Labour’s solution? Yet more government intervention and an expansion of the system which created the problems in the first place. Eventually all you have is a machine for spewing out ever more demand for resources and no more resources to go around.

Trust me - there's nobody here but us chickens...

How do you sell this pack of trivialities and neediness to a wider public fed up of seeing the squeaky wheels of protest getting all the grease? Apparently, you recruit even squeakier wheels and put them in positions of power. Men on all-women short-lists; women on the boards of heavy industries entirely composed of male workers; perpetual victims to play the role of advocates for ever more wasted spending; foxes in charge of hen houses. And Eddie Izzard on the NEC. Send in the clowns.