Power in the wrong hands

Clearly I am naive. As for I listen to the Labour Party blaming its electoral defeat on not being enough like the Tories. Its a capitulation, a climb down, caving in on the principle and the belief of what is right and what is wrong. Disavowing what 'society', not only the individual, is about and how we can work towards proclaiming a balanced, humain, political discussion which voters would find attractive.

As the MPs line up to decry Ed Miliband and his so called, left leaning project to provide a clear alternative to the Conservatives, acknowledging that there are increasing numbers of people who are being hurt by the Tory insistence on austerity (a defined austerity where the people asked to dig deep come from the lower orders) whilst the gap widens between the wealthy and the poor.
Politics has become about winning at all costs, aligning ones-self where the power lies, the marginal swing voters of the Middle class, and ensuring the 'pork' gets delivered.
The principles that brought a party into existence where not academic principles they lay at the heart of a philosophical belief. Equality was not an artificial construct not just an economic target but an ethical construct at which lay the root of socialism.
The party which professed to be socialist, the Labour Party was destroyed by Tony Blair and became New Labour a machine designed to win and gain power.
Of course common sense also acknowledges that without power your hands are tied and any attempt to alleviate the gaps in the economic prosperity within society at large are bound to fail.
The reasoning that if you have a population of say 65 million of which say half are boarder line 'disadvantaged' in some way, if your manifesto describes these people and offers them a hearing then one would assume your party would be a shoe in for the bulk of those votes.
But no, the "First Past the Post" system of choosing the winner skews the result by corralling huge sections of the populous, living in the various cities, who just happen to be, many of them poor, these citizens are represented by one politician and therefore have only one representative in parliament. The leafy villages in the Cotswold or Surrey also have one politician but you can count the voters on one hand !!
No wonder we have such disparity such power in the hands of the few and it was the Blair project to appeal to these people that made him sound like "son of Mrs Thatcher".
Of course the demographics have changed and the industrial landscape is now filled with SMEs
(Small Medium Enterprises) one man bands selling what they can. They feel independent, with their small workforce vigorously opposed to any sort of collective bargaining, they are the very grocer stock which Mrs Thatcher presumed to know, her father being the owner of a store in Grantham. This was the sort of voter that Blair won over and Miliband did not, but there were other far more complex reasons for Labours demise.
The rise of the SNP in Scotland who now provide the most vocal opposition in Parliament and are taking on the Conservatives whilst the Labour parliamentarians barely bother to turn up.
The rise of UKIP in England who became the natural allies of the wage earning worker by decrying the high immigration from Europe. The rise of the Greens amongst who's ranks the anti nuclear lobby, once the provenance of Labour are becoming the alternative 'establishment' party which the Liberals lost when they cozied up to the Tories as a member of the last government. Even Plied Cymru in Wales absorbed the Labour vote as the 'Nationalist' wave in Scotland infected the Welsh, admittedly to a lesser degree.
Is winning by 'contrivance' worth it or should one have a platform on which your principles are clear and you wait until the bloated, credit card swilling society wakes up, under the debt of "Quantitative Easing" and realises that power in the wrong hands.