For over a year now people have been gearing up for the potential horror of David the Replicant Cameron’s Tories taking power in May. In the face of this, not much attention has been paid to the many shite things promised by a potential incoming Labour government.

Yesterday Labour launched their manifesto, giving us a peek at their wonderful plans for us all to walk forward into a glorious dawn over a landscape of cartoon fields. Or that’s what the cover of ‘A Future Fairer for All,’ would have you think. Personally my first thought on seeing it was that it looked like a piece of socialist realism, but others have been comparing it to Labour election images from 1923 and 1945. The idea is to make you think you’re getting something pretty left wing, as they try desperately to make you feel like Labour is a decent alternative to the Tories.

When you take a look inside, the first thing that jumps out from the contents page is the fact that Labour obviously have no intention of standing up to the BNP line on immigration. Labour’s strategy for winning back support they’ve lost to the far right isn’t to actually offer support for the working class, but to help push racist ideas. The fact that there’s one section called ‘Crime and Immigration’ says it all.

Just now if you’ve been living in the UK for five years you can apply for citizenship, but Labour promise to break that link and make gaining citizenship based on what skills it’s been decided the British economy needs “making sure we have the amount of immigrants we need and no more.” This is because, Labour  say, “living in Britain is a right not a privilege.”

In other words, immigration is going to be determined based on the needs of employers, and pay no attention to people who have been living in Britain for years, and who’s whole life may be here. It’s going to make life a nightmare for thousands of people. Besides which, how do we define what Britain gains from immigration? I think we can all agree it would be a shit place to live without the contribution of different cultures to our boring society.

Labour are quite willing to along with the racist idea, pushed by the right wing press and unfortunately accepted by many people, that immigrants are all criminals who are out to cheat and steal. they proudly boast of how they’ve made immigrants subject to a high tech police regime of biometric controls enforced by thousands more personnel for the UK border agency, which has faced persistent allegations of racism in how it treats people.

They also promise to “stengthen” the ridiculous Britishness test, where immigrants are forced to prove their knowledge of things

supposedly integral to everyday life in Britain, despite the fact that most folk born in the UK probably couldn’t tell you half the answers. Do you know which of these courts uses a jury system: Magistrates’ Court, Crown Court, Youth Court or County Court? Or could you concisely sum up in an exam the Queen’s official role and all her ceremonial duties? More importantly, why would you need to know this stuff just to get on with living your life in the UK? How about if more children live in single parent families or step families?

The ‘All immigrants are sponging criminals’ section also is none to kind for youth, with a return to the ASBO agenda of scapegoating young people for the social collapse caused by neoliberal government policies. They promise to introduce a ‘Preventative element’ to ASBOs, though quite how this Minority Report style promise will be carried out isn’t made clear. They’re also promising to make fines higher for teenagers for those who’ve been caught for minor offences that aren’t worth taking them to court for.

There’s more scapegoating on offer for the unemployed, with the expansion of plans to make the unemployed work for their benefits, which Leftfield has already reported on. They villify the unemployed as “scarred by joblessness”. I suppose that working in a shite job for virtually no wages or rights or you lose your benefit would definitely be less scarring than just being able to get your dole when there are no actual jobs going.

There’s no commitment to any kind of spending to try and alleviate the poverty being faced by the working class that Labour policies helped create. Instead, like their election broadcast of a man trudging along a deserted road, we’re all apparently going to make tough choices. In fact, there’s a whole page of “tough choices”, the toughness seemingly going to be mainly falling on public sector workers who will see their wages capped.

To try and make it seem like they’re doing something leftish, there’s lots of talk about encouraging co-ops and and mutualising public services. In fact, what this is likely to lead to in practice will be more undemocratic bureaucracies like Glasgow Housing Association, and other supposedly “not for profit” provision of things the government or councils used to do, before they spent all their money on giving banks wads of cash. This couldn’t be more clear in their pledge to continue the creeping privatisation of the NHS by turning every hosptial into a foundation hospital.

To try and demonstrate a commitment to the NHS, the manifesto launch took place in a brand new hospital in Birmingham. What they didn’t tell you is that a hospital that should have cost £627 million is actually going to cost the taxpayer a whopping £2.6 billion because it was built under the insane PFI scheme where private companies end up owning public facilities.

At the launch itself, the show was introduced by one of those totally awful Labour student types who’ve got an eye on a cushy job as an MP in a couple of years. You can see Ellie Gellard’s speech here, which is mainly about how you need to make sure everyone you know watches Labour’s youtube videos. Unfortunately for Labour, journalists were quick to catch on that she hasn’t always been so keen on Gordon Brown, having previously blogged that he should quite as PM.

The sad fact is that both Labour and the Tories are equally committed to cutting the living standards of the working class in order to recoup the money they handed over to the banks. They’re also totally shameless about employing racist rhetoric and encouraging people to blame immigrants for problems which they in fact are responsible for. Peter Mandelson was right to describe the manifesto as ‘Blair Plus’, the plus being an added, pathetic and unconvincing, attempt to look left wing.

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