BROWN OUT?

The British people will soon be faced with the prospect of Capitalist Party B taking the reigns of political power at 10 Downing Street from Capitalist Party A.

While the gap between Labour and the Conservatives has narrowed, raising the possibility of a hung Parliament, the odds are against Gordon Brown being returned as Prime Minister.

Labour have consistently trailed in the polls for over three years and, at this late stage in the game, there would have to be a dramatic collapse of the Tory vote for Labour to squeeze out a victory.

If the Conservative Party does win the General Election it'll be because the British working class just couldn't bring themselves to vote Labour again, which will parallel what happened in New Zealand in 2007.

Like the Clark Government, the Labour Party of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown has pursued a neoliberal agenda and have been unswerving supporters of privatisation, deregulation and a economy that was based on nothing more than rising property prices and easy credit. That particular economic bubble, of course, burst in 2008.

Labour's problems have been compounded by supporting unpopular wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

And Labour has been severely damaged by the revelations that many of its ministers and MP's were grossly fiddling their expense claims. This resulted in several resignations but the stench of corruption still surrounds Labour.

While the corporate media continue to pump out good news stories, the economic crisis is far from over. But both Labour and the Conservatives remain committed to exactly the same neoliberal policies that contributed to the crisis in the first place.

Labour has simply been a disgrace. As one British union leader recently told a union conference:

'I say to you that if you judge the government as an employer, this is the worst government in the history of this country. I’ve got no illusions in David Cameron, I know he’ll be dreadful. But in the last four years, we’ve lost 100,000 jobs. We’ve had more privatisation than under Thatcher and Major combined.'

And Brown - like Cameron - has some nasty neoliberal measures awaiting the British people if he does manage to stay in Downing Street.

As one British blogger notes:

But with a budget deficit of close to 12 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), Labour has committed itself to reducing the gap by 50 percent in the lifetime of the next parliament, which will call for deep spending cuts. Although it has sought to keep such plans under wraps until after the election, estimates suggest that a spending reduction of this magnitude would require departmental budget cuts of between 10 and 20 percent over the next four years.

Whichever party gets into power, the British working class face severe austerity policies, designed to make them pay for a continuing economic crisis they are not responsible for.