I’m a British citizen, born and raised in the beautiful and historical city of York, and I am utterly appaled and disstisfied by the state of UK politics today in the run up to the General Election on 4th July 2024. To put it simply a choice between Sir Keir Starmer and Rishi Sunak is like a choice between a shit sandwich with Reggae Reggae Sauce and a shit sandwich with wholegrain mustard, but whichever way you look at it, it’s still a shit sandwich. Both Starmer and Sunak are the establishment candidate, and there is virtually no political difference between them. Both are economically ideological neo-liberals and answer to special interest groups and to big business. Neither are interested in delivering any kind of substantial positive change to the lives of ordinary working people, to tackle wealth/income inequality or to challenge the power and influence of the military industrial complex.
According to a May 2024 BBC article, “The couple’s fortune [Sunak and his wife] was estimated at £651m in the latest [Times Rich] list, up from £529m in 2023. This was mainly due to [Sunak’s wife] Ms Murty’s shares in Infosys, the Indian IT giant co-founded by her father. It means they are richer than the King, according to the annual list of the UK’s most wealthy people.” Man of the people he is not! This is a person who didn’t even know that the Welsh national football team wouldn’t be playing at the Euros this summer!
He is a member of the super wealthy billionaire class who despise ordinary working people and view them as little more than peasants, serfs or slaves. In the same BBC article, it also states “Mr Sunak worked as a hedge fund manager before entering politics and is personally wealthy, listing £2.2m in income, earnings, and capital gains last year in his latest tax summary. But he owes his place at the top table of wealthy Britons mainly to his wife’s Infosys shareholding, estimated to be worth £590m last year.” If you are expecting this man to be a servant of the people and to tackle the problems that the UK faces you are monumentally naïve and, at the minimum, somewhat delusional.
On the balance of probability Sir Keir will be the next UK PM, but in common with Sunak he cares not one jot for the lives of ordinary Britons. When standing for leadership of the Labour Party Sir Keir made ten pledges, all of which he has either abandoned completely or watered down massively. Any claims to a moral compass that he or his supporters make are absolute rubbish, he will abandon any election promises that he’s made when it is politically expedient to do so without hesitation. Sir Keir, like his political mentor Sir Tony Blair, will take the UK into bloody and expensive wars of domination and send young working-class British men off to die in those wars. The children of Starmer, Blair and their allies will not be fighting in these wars but many in their inner circle will financially profit from these wars while the UK economy continues to unravel.
There are many politically aware people who will say something along the lines of, “we must get the Tories out” or “Starmer is the lesser of two evils”. Really? Is that the best that democracy can offer up? The lesser of two evils? Whether this is true or not is debatable, but are you really going to endorse a system that sets the bar so low by voting for one of these clowns?
If you are convinced of the need for change, then spoil your ballot paper (not since 1997 has the UK GE seen a turnout of over 70% – if those 30%+ of people who don’t normally vote turned up to their local polling station and spoilt their ballot on election day it would send an extremely strong message) or vote for an independent candidate. If the people who don’t normally vote all voted for independent candidates, then we could end the duopoly of British politics. Do not under any circumstances vote for “the lesser of two evils”, vote for a candidate who you have faith in or spoil your ballot. Or do you not understand that the lesser of two evils is still evil and that the justification of a political mandate will be used to take away your hard-won freedoms in the next parliamentary term? Because be in no doubt that Sir Keir will have no hesitation in going full authoritarian if he deems it ‘necessary’.
Referances:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-69027955
