Three negative and a positive reason to vote Labour:
1. The Tories have not specified 10 billion of proposed welfare cuts because they are going to be nasty (one proposal they’ve looked at is removing all carers’ allowances). There’s a good chance there will not be much a of welfare state left in five years’ time.
2. If Tories win the NHS will continue to be privatised. Competition and choice make no sense in health care, and only lead to a fragmented health service without a sense of public service.
3. Osborne slowed down austerity 3 years ago in order to get growth back in time for the election. If returned as chancellor he will turn it on again and it will again slow the economy. There will be riots.
4. Miliband is taking a modest first step away from the Thatcher-Reagan free market model (followed by New Labour) of the past 35 years which has produced (i) great inequality, (ii) lower growth rates than those enjoyed in the more regulated period of 1945-1975, (iii) great financial instability, culminated in the global meltdown of 2008.
It’s not a big step, but it’s fairly radical in breaking from the orthodoxy of the last 35 years. That’s why the Daily Mail/Telegraph/Murdoch hate him.
Conscience and Consciousness 