Anyone who was been following the Conservative party conference this year will notice a distinct lack of the ‘compassionate conservatism’ that Cameron supposedly champions. From yet more attacks on the unemployed by George Osborne to Theresa May’s attacking of immigrants and our legal system, the whole conference has focused on attacking the weakest and most vulnerable in our society, as if to make out they are responsible for the crash rather than reckless lending by an under-regulated financial sector.
Samuel Fawcett from Taunton Labour Party writes : I have not seen a single positive policy or announcement come out of this conference. Everything has been about announcing more spending cuts, attacking trade unions or talking tough on immigration and crime. It would seem that empathy has become the latest victim of the Tory cuts.
Right wing press
The right-wing press are no better. Anyone who saw the Daily Mail’s latest disgusting article on Ed Miliband’s dead father and subsequent refusal to apologise cannot deny that this really is a new low of depravity from the press, who have clearly learnt nothing since the Leveson report.
Ironically, it would seem that the Tories are taking Tony Benn’s advice on how to control people: ‘frighten them, then demoralise them’. This is all the policies and rhetoric of the Conservative party has become: scaremongering and cutting real income to millions of people while telling them it is the only way.
It Doesn’t have to be like this
But it doesn’t have to be like this. On Thursday in Taunton there is a by-election in the Halcon Ward of Taunton Deane Borough council. Anna Lynch is standing for Labour and will be fighting to retake the ward from the Liberal Democrats. Anna has great experience of local government as a former councillor and deputy mayor in Tower Hamlets, London. In her working life as a nurse she has served on the front line of delivering public services to the most vulnerable in our society. Anna is exactly what Halcon needs from their new councillor – a strong local voice with the necessary experience to get the most for what is one of the most deprived wards in the South West. A ward that has been let down over decades by the Liberal Democrats and Tories in Taunton Deane and has now been let down nationally by the Liberal Democrat/Tory coalition government – of which our local Lib Dem MP, Jeremy Browne, is an enthusiastic member.
Vote Anna for Halcon on Thursday 3rd October
A Labour government in 2015 would, by contrast to coalition fear, bring in measures to support ordinary people by repealing the Bedroom Tax, freezing energy bills for 20 months and breaking up the big six energy companies, building a million more new houses, extending free childcare, keeping schools open longer to support working parents and offering a guaranteed job to anyone out of work for over two years.
Change will come, but it must come from below, at a local level with district and city councils falling to Labour. The Tories have already lost control of the Borough council; let’s cement this with a Labour victory in Taunton on Thursday.