#we should have gone for the chaos with ed miliband

[fairyspheres]

a good time to remember this tweet i think. gaze upon the man who set off this shitshow

[notasapleasure]

actually fuck it no, I'm done cringingly fawning to people who were never going to be happy about this. I so viscerally remember the misery of 2010, watching the wrangling go on through the morning and knowing Clegg had already made up his mind never to engage with Brown, knowing that power had flipped and in the crisis state following the recession we were going to get a government determined to cut and cut and cut and undo so much of the good that thirteen years had tried to entrench (SureStart centres, do you remember those, and the massive impact they had? Gone in England, Wales and Scotland, like they never existed. Libraries in rural areas! Remember when we had those? Regeneration in sad little market towns and unloved post-industrial areas, that was a thing once upon a time!). Utter misery on that Friday in 2010. I've rarely been angrier than I was that day. I will never forgive Clegg and many of his contemporaries. But I can still be delighted by the Lim Dems' 71 (SEVENTY-ONE!!) seats today. I was on the No Cuts march in London, and what an atmosphere. What hope, to think a new government formed on a hung parliament might actually listen to the approx. 1 million people who took to the streets (it wasn't as big as the Iraq protests, which also didn't work, but it was one of the biggest since, and it felt like it might be effective, in the flush of democratic fervour just following an election...) - and then the cuts went ahead anyway and we've had fourteen years of Tory entitlement and lies and misrule and sleaze and scandal and people who were fired for misconduct spinning round the roundabout and slotting right back into another job in high office after a token slap on the wrist. The repeated narrative that people want tax cuts and bootstraps rather than public services and basic rights...I'm so, so incredibly glad that's over. I cannot tell you how relieved I am.

Anyway, here are some things from the 2019 manifesto that we have just voted in with this government:

Bringing the railways back into public hands as each contract comes to an end. This is no different from Corbyn's policy. GB Energy, a nationalised energy provider, which is a development of the unplanned ambitions of 2019. Stopping the special treatment of fee-charging schools (by charging VAT on fees, it's an easier fix than removing their charitable status but achieves a similar thing). Building a vast number of new houses.

Other notables: no one is getting deported to Rwanda now. Do I like the rest of their language on immigration? No, but this is still a significant victory against what would have been a horrifying precedent. Unequivocal support for Ukraine's right to defend its soverign territory, no Putin appeasement. Also, a legal review of arms sales to Israel. It might not give the result I want to hear, I remain cautious, but the willingness to review this, and the committment to acknowledge the Palestinian state, is a big shift in the conversation from a sitting government that is undoubtedly a step in the right direction. Votes for 16 year olds! Many of them may turn out to be reactionary little shits, but if they're old enough to join the army and fuck, they're old enough to vote. Scrapping the Troubles Legacy Act in Northern Ireland, which was designed to protect British actors who committed war crimes and has brutally reopened old wounds here. Good fucking riddance to that.

And I just think Ed Miliband should be allowed to have a little chaos and tax a few oil giants. Just for funsies :3