I don't claim to be an expert but after witnessing the Blair years I don't see how anyone can claim that New Labour is any better than the other main parties.
They aren't.
There seems to be a belief that any party with remotely left-wing leanings is currently unelectable, so all the parties are focused on occupying the centre ground (though that is moving right). I don't understand this position - particularly just now - when there is so much dissatisfaction with austerity and 'big business'. I don't understand why Labour doesn't go back to making sure it's traditional vote turns out for it instead moving way right to try and pick up Tory votes.
None of the major parties is interested in convincing the likes of me to vote for them.
The Tories know they can't get my vote and Labour complacently assume that I'll vote for them because they are marginally less nasty than the Tories and because I would have voted for 'Old' Labour.
Only the likes of the Greens or the Socialists want my vote.
But because of the wonders of the UK voting system, there is no point in me voting for the Greens or the Socialists, so Labour's complacent assumption that they'll get my vote may end up being correct.
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So where, now, does the disappointed Yes generation go? Not to the SNP, for sure – or not in large numbers. And not to Labour: a big part of the marginalised urban poor of western Scotland has had it with them. The revolt on Clydeside was a swing to a form of populist leftism for which there is no adequate political expression. The lefty activists who had done the legwork for Yes were muttering, come Friday morning, about a new party. But it would have to be something far broader than Tommy Sheridan’s old Scottish socialist formation to be attractive to this generation.
So while there is no political vacuum in the posh suburbs of Edinburgh, or among the elderly, there is a pretty clear one among Scotland’s youth. The same political vacuum exists in English and Welsh cities, and is very clear across southern Europe. It is born not just of economic hardship but the absence of any coherent narrative, or alternative, to the narrow range of possibilities on offer.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/21/what-now-scotland-young-yes-generation