Run rat run

Labour MPs are, of course, far more concerned for themselves than either the governance of the country or their party. Here's just some of the utter nonsense, the self-serving anti democratic idiocy they and their leaders have been up to recently.

• Spending £3bn on new nuclear warheads despite not providing British troops in a war zone with the right body armour and posturing about Iran's nuclear ambitions.
  
• Umming and ahing over vehicle excise duty despite it being clearly sensible to charge more for the most polluting vehicles. And while we are on carbon issues, why doesn't aircraft fuel attact any duty at all?
  
• Utterly failing to reform the tax system to make it fairer and to prevent the rampant abuses of both corporates and wealthy individuals.
  
• Continuing to pursue the disaster that is PFI despite overwhelming evidence that there is little risk transfer to the private sector and excessive cost. Follow the New Zealand example instead and renationalise.
  
• Creating massive uncertain long dated liabilities by allowing new nuclear power stations to be built. Oh, and letting the company concerned, with a guarantee on clean up costs of course, be sold to the French.
  
• Failing to stop the free markets are the best thing ever for everything brigade from further ruining our public services. Damn it I'm a derivatives specialist and I'm far less keen on the power of the markets than Alan Milburn is. Maybe that's because I actually know something about them. And as for Hazel 'sum of all fears' Blears - heaven defend us against her kind of 'reform'.
  
• Not dealing with the utter mess that is MP's expenses. Stop spending my money on Lembit Opik. Or a ridiculously grandiose and over budget Olympics.
  
• Enacted the biggest snooping law in British history.
  

Now, I admit it, I cheered for Tony in 1997. I drank a lot of wine and ate pasta and stayed up until Portillo was gone. But now, please, can I have a Labour party back that is actually socialist, or at least has some vague aspirations other than leaving the rich alone, lining their own pockets, and trying to find some tiny chink of public life that has not yet been infected by Thatcherite free market dogma.