Two pre-election announcements on the same day this week confirm that both major political parties in Britain are opposite sides of the same coin and that the best way to vote in the coming general election is for "none of the above".

First came the Tories, with their anti-immigration, anti-asylum seeker proposals. They were only able to make these because the New Labour regime has created a favourable climate to advocate racist, reactionary policies. Under New Labour, asylum seekers have been demonised, driven into poverty and, in many cases, on to the streets when they are denied social housing. Many have been dispersed away from friends and communities to towns where housing and other resources are scarce as a result of central government cuts.

Not allowed to work until their claims are dealt with, asylum seekers have become easy targets. New Labour has not missed an opportunity to appease the scaremongering right-wing press and politically-backward voters. A barely hidden contempt for Islam and Arab peoples undoubtedly played a role in their thinking over Iraq; it certainly helped British and US troops to justify their abuse and torture of prisoners.

Don't wait for New Labour to attack the Tories. The government's response is to outflank them. Home Secretary Charles Clarke, it is reported, is to publish harsh plans to speed up removals of failed asylum seekers and restrict the number of migrant dependants arriving in Britain.

As Michael Howard revealed details of the Tories' desperate bid to avoid humiliation at the election by playing the race card, New Labour was reinforcing the existing crisis over the supply of housing. John Prescott, the deputy prime minister, has presided over a rise in homeless households to more than 100,000 and the worst record in affordable housebuilding since records began. Ordinary working people, including refugees, have suffered as a result.

The slump in affordable rented housing has contributed to a soaring of house prices to a point where few new entrants can afford the size of mortgage needed to become an owner-occupier. Organisations like the Campaign for the Protection of Rural England have rejected plans to pave over large areas of the countryside with yet more owner-occupied estates. Instead, they called for a major expansion of government-subsidised homes for rent in urban areas. The result? Prescott announced a deal with private sector mortgage lenders to encourage lower-income families to buy their own housing association homes! Such a policy can only deepen the housing crisis - although it is bound to help hard-pressed banks finding it difficult to locate borrowers.

At the last election in 2001, the Movement for a Socialist Future campaigned against a vote for New Labour. Prescott's annoucement is yet another reason not to waste your vote on Blair's regime in 2005 and campaign instead for alternatives to existing mainstream politics and institutions.

Movement for a Socialist Future
25 January 2005