Betrayed by conscience

This morning I woke up on the left. I’m not sure why. I’m not proud of myself. I’d still happily vote for Cameron over Brown and I’d still happily vote for anyone other than the Lib dems. I still think that state interference in the economy, while essential, needs to be kept to a minimum and when done, it needs to be done effectively. Yet I am certainly on the left today. I haven’t been this far left for several years now. It is a worry.

My conscience is playing up. The UK has poor people. Why? This seems to me to be a crime. We are one of the world’s strongest economies. People, even poor people, can pretty freely participate in the economy however they please and with a bit of hard work and skill should be able to escape the working classes and their ‘chav’ status. But they do not.

I do not think we, the oh so gracious middle classes of Britain are doing our fair share for our less then glamorous working class chums. We have the wealth available to make a real difference. If invested soundly we could really turn some areas of Britain around. We could give people a decent education and security in the form of healthcare and housing. We could pull these people up ‘to our level’ of enlightened living. We could face these people we fear and educate them. Instruct them to take off the fake hats and become our friends. It seems we spend so much of our time serving businesses that only act to extract money from our economy without any hint of reinvestment. This is surely wrong. Reinvestment needs to be made far more attractive. More than that communities themselves need to become willing to both take more control and contribute for their own upkeep and growth.

Yes we have a welfare state. We should be doing more. I see no reason why this should necessarily inhibit the economy; it could boost it if done in the right way. I’m not even saying government is perhaps the right vehicle for doing it. Yet we have a duty and a responsibility to ensure that the middle classes do not leave the working classes behind. We do not want to end up like America; I do not want to see an English underclass that we would happily let drown in its own sorrow. We need to turn things around. It can’t go on for much longer, Paris found that out only recently. We need to do something.

I say I woke up today on the left. I may have actually awoken as a snob.