NONE of the three main parties have very much to shout about over the outcome of the Wythenshawe and Sale East by-election.
Labour’s Michael Kane won with 13,261 votes, on a 28% electoral turn-out, with 72% of the electorate declining to vote.
This is despite the huge crisis that is gripping the UK. There are crashing living standards, huge price increases, massive youth unemployment, savage cuts in services, with even the end of the Union, with Scotland breaking away, now an issue.
Labour is clearly not seen by 72% as the force that will put what is wrong right.
UKIP’s John Bickley, with 4,301, came second with the Rev Daniel Critchlow, for the Tories, third on 3,479 votes, and with LibDem Mary Di Mauro, fourth on 1,176, losing her deposit.
At the 2010 general election Labour got 17,987 votes, the Tories 10,412, with the LibDems on 9,107, on a 54.3 % turnout.
The coalition and some Labour MPs are saying that strike ballot results should not be considered legal unless 50% of the workforce turn out.
On this basis, the Wythenshawe result would be declared null and void.
The result is a condemnation of Labour’s pro-Tory, anti-socialist policies, its refusal to pledge that it will renationalise the energy companies, halt the privatisation of the NHS and restore all the savage Tory cuts that are destroying working class and middle class families all over the country. This is what produced this tiny turnout, and small Labour vote.
The 72% non-turnout represents the majority electorate view that Labour will be no different from the Tories.
The fact that UKIP’s Jon Bickley came second, with just 4,301 votes, while Critchlow for the Tories got 3,479 votes, leaving the LibDems to lose their deposit with 1,176 votes is the kiss of death for the Tories and the LibDems.
The by-election took place at a time when the Tory regime is hated by all, including its own supporters, many of whom are currently under water and suffering from the savage cuts made by the government in the Environment Agency, with the rest victims of the high cost of living, suffering wage freezes and cuts while the banking class, who caused the economic crisis, is rolling in massive bonuses.
No wonder Tories are staying at home or voting UKIP to show their opposition to Osborne and Cameron.
The LibDems are, meanwhile, viewed by the electorate as being beyond contempt, with their Judas kiss on record when they voted for £9,000 tuition fees, and delivered the children of the middle class into permanent debt servitude to the banks, having to pay back a combination of debt and loans amounting to tens of thousands of pounds.
Now the professional debt collectors have been set on students with the selling off of the student loan debt, while their job prospects are zero.
No wonder the LibDems are finished, with the coalition now bound to break apart, as the rodents leave the sinking ship.
The working class and the middle class have had enough of the parliamentary game at their expense, and no longer believe that British capitalism can be restored to what it was.
In Osborne’s words, the future is of generations facing austerity to try and put Humpty Dumpty back on the wall.
We urge the trade unions to put an end to this obvious farce. Now is the time for the TUC to give up its two-year reckoning on the practicalities of calling a general strike in favour of calling one.
The feeling of the electorate is right. Labour will be little different from the Tories, while UKIP is just the hopeless rebellion of disorientated Tories.
The TUC will win the support of the vast majority of the population by taking action to get rid of bankrupt British capitalism with a general strike to bring down the Tory-led coalition, to bring in a workers government and socialism.
This will expropriate the major industries and the banks to bring in a socialist planned economy to rebuild the country, its housing stock, its flood defences and its industries, providing jobs for all, restoring free state education, and a training in skills of all kinds for the millions of working class and middle class youth at trade union rates of pay.
Capitalism is visibly disintegrating. It will drag down tens of millions with it unless it is replaced by socialism and a planned socialist economy where production is to satisfy people’s needs, and where the maxim of society is from all according to their ability, to all according to their needs.
