Thursday, 25 April 2013

did Labour win the 2005 general election?

New Labour: read more on bbc.co.uk
Len McCluskey, Unite’s general secretary, has issued a statement calling for Labour leader Ed Milliband to sack three Blairite MPs after ex-PM Tony Blair criticised Milliband’s leadership style. Given Tony Blair’s record on democracy, specifically the fact that he may not actually have won the 2005 general election at all, McCluskey may have a point.

Initial warning signs came in April 2005, when results of three 2004 Birmingham council elections were overturned due to electoral abuses that take the breath away. The World Socialist Web Site lists a catalogue of infamy relating to the conduct of former councillors Mohammed Islam, Muhammed Afzal and Mohammed Kazi, including a postman being offered money for a bag of postal votes and threatened with death when he refused, children sent to steal postal votes from letter-boxes and Labour supporters buying postal ballots on the streets.

In 2005’s May general election, Labour won 9.5 million votes, and the Conservatives 8.7 million. On the eve of the election, the Conservatives’ Liam Fox warned there would be a staggering six million postal votes, which would be an amount over seven times larger than Labour’s majority.

Note that this is not to say Blair was a saint when democratically elected: his devotion to the illegal war in Iraq – opposed by 139 of his 412 MPs – weakened allied operations in Afghanistan and killed 179 British soldiers and up to 112,000 Iraqi citizens.

We urgently need to revisit the 2005 election results to determine whether Blair’s last government was democratically elected or was a fascist dictatorship. If the latter, all British and EU legislation adopted during Labour’s last term in government has no democratic legitimacy.

And Len McCluskey? Given Unite was a main offender in the money-laundering scheme funding Labour’s 2010 campaign, he should watch out for his stones coming back to his own glass house.

Gerry Dorrian
300 words

Resources

UK Political Info:

Britain: opposition to Iraq war led to Labour vote-rigging in 2004 elections - World Socialist Web Site

Voting scandal mars UK election bbc.co.uk April 2005

Tories highlight vote fraud fears - bbc.co.co.uk April 2005

Union behind BA strike receives £18m from taxpayers in ‘money-laundering’ deal with Labour - telegraph.co.uk (Martin Beckford) 2010

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