The Tories accuse Labour of being the
Party of Welfare. Well, so what if they were? What’s wrong with
that? It didn’t hurt me to say it, so why should it hurt anybody who
cares? Except of course, Labour are far from being that sort of party.
Following on from my last blog, I looked at
definitions of ‘welfare’. As I mentioned I
understand welfare to mean looking after the health and well-being of my fellow
human beings. Dictionary definitions will define welfare as 'the health,
happiness, and fortunes of a person or group' and 'statutory procedure or
social effort designed to promote the basic physical and material well-being of
people in need.' So what on earth is wrong with being the party of
welfare? Instead of shying away from it, shouldn’t Labour be embracing
it? Shouldn’t they turn it back on the mean and nasty Tory rhetoric and simply
say, ‘Yes, we care about people and we’re proud of that, we would be deeply
ashamed to be the party who took that basic security away from people. What
sort of a government would be?’ Labour have missed the opportunity, so fearful
are they. That much is obvious to me and many people.
But such is the climate of harshness and
brutality that while the two main parties are so busy locking horns to see who
can be the meanest (and dragging in smaller bullies like UKIP) there’s a gaping
void meanwhile waiting for somebody to fill with benevolence, compassion and
humanity.
