May 11th
Well it was not as bad as I had feared. I certainly didn’t stay up throughout the night as I would normally do at a General Election but woke to that unusual prospect of a hung parliament. The coalition that eventually was formed only confirms my suspicion that the rhetoric in the run up to the Election was hollow and that so called principles and values go out the window when there is an opportunity for power. On the one hand, I can’t quite believe that the Liberal Democrats have gone in with the Conservative Party but it certainly confirms my suspicion that they have always been a party of opportunists and that a genuine left of centre socialist agenda is safer in the hands of the Labour party in whose roots those values are enshrined. I am disappointed that Labour didn’t get its fourth term in office but can see where it ran out of steam. Allied to this with the influence of the unelected media and particularly the Murdock press who decided last autumn that they would set about dismantling Gordon Brown and discrediting him as Prime Minister, the outcome was inevitable.
He may not have been the greatest political leader the party or country has had, but I do believe him to be a genuinely good man of great integrity, moral, character and spiritual standing who was in politics for the very noblest of reasons. I am one of many who can testify that under his years as Chancellor and later Prime Minister, vast areas of Britain including the poor and disadvantaged have seen a difference for good in the quality of their lives and opportunities. Add to this the difference that Gordon Brown made in the cancelling of debt and the alleviation of poverty for several thousands of people in Africa and I am sad at his departure as Prime Minister. Widely respected on the world stage yet vilified at home. The media at least allowed him the opportunity to be seen exiting Downing Street in the dignified, graceful and human way in which he did so. I certainly don’t think it will do the Labour party any harm to have a leadership contest which I hope will be more about substance than style, policies as opposed to personalities and the huge increase in new members to the party following the election augers well for the future.
My prayer for the coalition government is that as they tackle the immense economic problems we in the Western world face they may do so with compassion, a trait singularly missing during a similar period in the 1980’s which so damaged communities that they carried the scars and wounds from which some have never been able to recover to this day.
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