Oh, Labour (part 1)

Oh, Labour! No, you do not speak for me.
Please understand: I want you to.
I listen and I read and wonder
Who on Earth you think you’re serving.
What am I to think
But that you don’t consider me deserving.
What I mostly see is you preserving ideologies
For which I have contempt
And so it worries me that you might rather form
A carbon-copied government of Hobson’s choice
And so empower yours than be the People’s voice
And raise the fundamental arguments
Against this crazy, neoliberal cruelty.
Your fealty to narcissistic economics is a deathly blow:
That you’d forgo my dignity
To please the grubby tribes with promises
That promise no improvement
To the lives of the majority of citizens you’d claim to represent.

The denizens to which you pander are a poison,
Yet you hold aloft the near-same gilded chalice,
Just as if your lesser malice were sufficient sop
To damp this futile piety and quell the swelling of anxiety,
For all the ‘difficult decisions’ of this inept unelect you cowardly support
Are frankly risible.
How can you keep invisible
The counter to this crude miss-framing
But that you conceive yourselves inadequate to challenge it
Or that you actually believe this farce retains some merit
And embrace the blame you’ll share
When you inherit all you failed to rail against…

Oh, Labour! What’s the point of you if all you’ve got to offer
Is that Labour will be tougher?
Oh, I mourn the loss of intellect;
The caving in to pseudo Reason;
Automatic disrespect for half of your electorate.
I just cannot accept this inability
To paint the bigger picture
Nor the failure to connect the dots that got us here,
That you would use to keep us captive.
Who’s side are you on that you would actively perpetuate
The false and patronising songs
Of Blair’s and Thatcher’s mighty wrongs:

You know that competition is no guarantee of choice
And, that Public Service, privatised,
Removes the People’s voice.
You say the welfare of the country needs a safety net
But then neglect that if it cannot be upheld,
Then your responsibilities have fallen short of being met.
To blame the poor for being poor
When those ‘above’ decide the policies of economic climate
Is malfeasance multiplied unto a treason
And, that you would fall for such rhetorical appeasement
As to advocate a cap, implies your idiocy flows on tap
And, though you utter here and there the odd sage observation
And some worthy remonstration,
They are merely optimistic glimpses pinned on good intention
That are thrown to me as scraps and leave me feeling,
I still greatly fear,
You’d trap the nation in the same manipulative crap.