What liberal democracy please? Archived Message
Posted by Chris Rogers on September 11, 2019, 5:00 pm, in reply to "Re: What the **** is Tom Watson trying to do?"
I find it most strange posters on this Board referring to Liberal Democracy, which, and forgive my ignorance, died a death some near 30 years ago, in its place we've had a neoliberal socioeconomic order, the so called 'Washington Consensus" underscored by global supranational bodies such as the IMF, and closer to home Westminster & Brussels, unless of course I'm missing something? As a result of the prevailing Western economic orthodoxy we've witnessed massive wealth distribution upwards, with little in real terms for workers, and that's before attacks on welfare from our neoliberal chums. Of course, fools like myself had rather hoped that Blair/Brown would turn back the tide on neoliberalism encroachment on the UK, instead its first task was to give independence to the Bank of England and fawn over the City of London, whilst continuing the deregulation and privatisation process Thatcher begun - the poor and those in employment were issued crumbs and inequality became higher, not lower in the 13 years New Labour were in power. The GFC in 2008, caused by malfeasance on a huge scale and a very lack regulatory environment resulted in financial service losses be placed upon the shoulders of the average Joe, the EU/ECB continued this abuse, the bailout of French and German banks via the destruction of Greece being a classic example of this fact, the same applies to the USA under TARP. Since the GFC, the neoliberal economic order has been under attack by so called populist parties on both sides of the Atlantic with Trump's elevation and the Brexit Vote being examples of this trend. Now, please explain to me what's so liberal about the representative system we labour under, given since 2010 both the UK and much of Western Europe has suffered austerity, be it under the auspices of Westminster or Frankfurt via the ECB in defence of the Euro. Of course there was always going to be blowback as the fact remains the entire system is broken and many have had enough of so called Liberals talking down to us in defence of the undefensible.
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