Left or right?

Once again, an editorial proudly parades The Press’s neoliberal colours. Lamenting the demise of the ACT Party, it says: ‘‘In a political world which in practice leaned to the left of the spectrum, ACT never had, and was never likely to have, a large influence on public affairs.’’

Is this not the party founded by the architects of Rogernomics, itself the most profound change to our society in half a century ?

Has not labour been systematically destroyed since then – the Employment Contracts Act, the suppression of inflation via high unemployment, free trade?

Have we not become a low-wage economy, with continued offshoring of manufacturing jobs ? Is not the gulf of inequality between the rich elite and the rest of us as wide as ever and getting wider ?

Has not Helen Kelly of the Council of Trade Unions been reduced to meek protest with each new initiative to further cut the economic and political power of labour?

Has not the Labour party itself lost its way for decades now, having no answer to the antilabour, neoliberal policies that have become the current dogma?

A political world that leans to the left of the spectrum? Yeah, right. IAIN McINNES

Bryndwr