Life is never fair. So why does Labour pretend it can be?

By Simon Heffer Published: 8:38PM GMT twenty-three February 2010

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Pol Pot cared about fairness, as well Photo: AP

The Prime Minister must, we assume, have reached that theatre in fatherhood when one of his sons protests: "It"s not fair!" As any primogenitor knows, there is usually one receptive answer to such a complaint; and there is no point in storing up difficulty for the destiny by not opening true out with it: "Life isn"t fair."

It isn"t. We all know it. Whatever we think should be the usually deserts, there will regularly be someone who gets them instead. So how can Mr Brown presumably clear the fatuous, meaningless, drivelling, recycled rubbish of a aphorism "A destiny satisfactory for all" on that he has motionless his celebration will quarrel the election? He knows, unless his misinterpretation reaches heights majority of us cannot imagine, that zero can be fair: and even if that were not the case, he contingency know that integrity could never be enforced by a government. For him or any of his henchpersons to indicate differently is an huge lie.

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This is not a criticism on government"s any government"s inability to do anything solely equates to trouble, insufficiency and serve bias on tip of that inexhaustible assisting already consecrated by time and chance. It is since the judgment of fairness, as this abominable administration department and the revolutionary didactic discourse appreciate it, is not about ensuring that each chairman gets what he or she deserves. It is about each chairman removing what the supervision thinks he or she deserves. This fundamentally equates to redistribution of resources: or, where redistribution is not feasible, the rebate of payoff between those who have warranted it to a turn usual with those who have warranted zero at all.

There is a contrast, too, fundamental in this ridiculous slogan, that is the import that alternative parties can usually suggest a destiny astray to all. We should be shocked by the audacity of this assumption, were it not for the actuality that we have already ignored as charlatans those who have avowed it. It is usually since of the laxity with the officious duplicity of Labour that we are not some-more upset. We are toughened to it. We couldn"t caring less.

It is a protected gamble that the squeezing of the Conservative Party"s lead in the polls down to 6 or 7 per cent now, and the cages starting to clap at Central Office has zero to do with this purported work of well read genius. No aphorism will win an election. Indeed, it is tough to hold that this one would convince any one who is not educationally inferior to switch his opinion to Labour. That such worldly minds as Lord Mandelson"s and Mr Brown"s should suppose anything else is incredible. In conceptualizing and similar to it they have usually left by the motions; they have finished the small approaching of them; they know that in an age of such surpassing disillusion with politicians and governing body as this, all that is compulsory to benefit value is to surpass their opponents in the humanities of vilification.

The supposed bullying outcry has been an intent doctrine in this. By yesterday Labour had managed, with a small success, to etch the villains of the square as being the Conservative Party and the anti-bullying helpline that was presumably contacted about fright and loathsome in 10 Downing Street. Lord Mandelson, who continues never to let a actuality mount in the approach of mendacity, had referred to that the Conservative Party had orchestrated the staining of Mr Brown by putting the hapless Mrs Pratt, the helpline"s founder, in hold with the media. In fact, as the BBC has publicly testified, Mrs Pratt put herself in hold with them prolonged prior to the Tory celebration woke up to it, literally late in the day last Sunday. Ah, if usually the Tories" media operation were as slick, sexy and on-the-ball as Lord Mandelson would have us believe.

But let us go at the back of to that slogan, and the watchword: fairness. It is a word that radiates cynicism. It imputes the lowest of motives to the aim audience: that is that they will wish to be governed not by a celebration that gives them a satisfactory crack of the whip, but by one that gives them a fairer crack than they indeed deserve. They will get this fairer crack at the responsibility of others who, in a mirror-image of their own experience, contingency have do with less, mostly majority less, than they deserve. What is satisfactory about that?

It is additionally a high-risk word for an obligatory celebration to use, generally one that has been in bureau for thirteen years. If it had the energy to make integrity (which, as we have already established, it hasn"t) afterwards one competence have thought there would be small equates to still to be earnest the appearance after thirteen years. Yet if the public, after Labour has minced the economy and the destiny mercantile prospects of this country, won"t show itself as being rebuilt to inflict a larger low mark on Labour than the party"s small six- or seven-point necessity in the polls suggests, what mistreat can an acknowledgment of a disaster to make integrity so far do?

For all the meaninglessness, or, if you prefer, the relief quality, integrity is a word that brings with it genuine danger. It is what Lenin, Mao and Pol Pot sought to impose. It is what Orwell satirised, in the majority lethal conform as we competence right afar put it, all electorate are equal, but a small are some-more next to than others. It was what Ayn Rand, in her anti-collectivist novel Atlas Shrugged, pounded underneath the name of the Fair Share Law: the equates to by that those who could not, or would not, attain by their own efforts longed for the state to concede them, by force, to live off the efforts of others. As such, integrity undermines the capitalism whose success we need not usually if we are to see the economy revive, but if we are to lift the revenues that will compensate for the things that politicians guarantee us, or suggest to cheat us with: the NHS, schools, winter heating allowances and so on.

I listened a Labour statesman observant prior to Christmas, in propinquity to Miss Harman"s insane Equality Bill, that integrity had to be taken to new levels. There had to be "work" finished on those family groups in that young kids do not have relatives committed to their gratification and tutorial progress, who safeguard task is finished and even addition it with the peculiar book or mind-improving outing. What dumbfounded me was this: that the thought seemed to be not that all young kids should have such parents, with larger opening to books and to trips to noble homes, museums or zoos, but that those young kids who had an astray value in this approach should in a small approach be penalised for it maybe by not removing in to the most appropriate internal propagandize at 11, or by being pushed down the reserve for university opening at 18.

We are not all equal. We cannot be done equal. All that is "fair" is that we all have an event to excel, and to go as far as the talents will lift us. That is not what Labour equates to by fairness: what it equates to is receiving afar from the haves and giving to the have-nots, and looking domestic capitulation for you do so. Some of us recollect how hold up was at the back of the Iron Curtain. It is not a model, however fatuously, that a supervision should find to foster as a reason for it to be re-elected.