They're all centrists now: and we are but piggy-banks

Stephen Pollard's article in the Daily Mail is not the first to sound the death knell for the Labour Party—but it is one of the more scary ones for those of us who are libertarians.

One by one, Labour's leadership candidates are rapidly disowning every element of Miliband's manifesto, and pretending that they never really had anything to do with it. 

They realise – and you'd have to be spectacularly blinkered not to see it – that Labour's programme was comprehensively trounced on May 7.

True enough—and good news for those of us who despise socialism as a mechanism of destruction, powered by spite. But are the alternatives better?

It was, after all, the new deputy chairman of the Conservative Party, Robert Halfon, who suggested immediately after the Election that his party's name should be changed to the Workers' Party. The suggestion was entirely serious and shows Labour's fundamental problem. 

With the Queen's Speech promoting a series of measures designed to help people who work hard – such as removing tax for anyone working 30 hours a week on the minimum wage, and doubling childcare – and David Cameron talking all the time about working people and One Nation Conservatism, it's clear the Tories are fully focused on keeping control of that space. 

It's the Tories who speak for Mr and Ms Average Brit, who know what they want and offer it to them.

And what are these centrist parties offering? They are offering to increase the size of the state, to take more money from those people who are not part of their favoured cliques, and to continue the expansion of welfare for "hard-working families".

And what of those of us who are not "families"—merely hardworking? What of those of us who don't believe that the state is the answer to every question?

The answer is clear: we are to knuckle down, to submit, and to fucking well thank the centrist parties for the opportunity to fund their ambitions.

In other words, the Conservative Party has simply reinforced the idea that only those whom they favour—whether that be economically or socially—should be rewarded. Those of us who do not subscribe to their ideology should be ignored and brutalised—our dreams treated as nothing, our work nothing more than an income stream, and our aspirations to be harnessed to the ambitions of their voters.

Fuck me, but the Labour Party were a terrible bunch of bastards—but what are we now left with?

• Conservatives—believe in increasing state power by rewarding "better" behaviour;
• Labour—believe in increasing state power by rewarding "better" behaviour;
• LibDems—believe in increasing state power by rewarding "better" behaviour;
• UKIP—believe in increasing state power by rewarding "better" behaviour;
• Greens—believe in increasing state power by rewarding "better" behaviour.

Not one of these parties believes that people should be able to live their lives as they themselves wish; and not one of them really believes that people should have to stand by their own decisions.

This is why, for instance, small business-people are so turned off by their politics. Those of us who run businesses are responsible for our mistakes—because our mistakes might lead to penury for others.

Politicians have no such qualms—their mistakes punish people they don't know and, fundamentally, don't care about. If they need more money, they need only pass another law.

Truly, we are faced with a stark choice, my libertarian friends. We cannot now pretend that any mainstream party—despite the proliferation in recent years—might represent our views.

We are now nothing more than milch cows for our political and social masters. Despite, in many cases, being the brightest thinkers and the most profitable risk-takers in society, our voice does not matter anymore.

And libertarians? We are piggy-banks to pay for mistakes that are not our own.

The battle-lines are drawn: it is libertarians vs. everyone else. And I fear that we have lost even before we have begun.