The Guardian newspaper endorses Labour

British newspaper ‘The Guardian’ have officially endorsed Ed Miliband’s Labour Party ahead of Thursday’ general election.

In a strong-worded editorial entitled “Britain needs a new direction, Britain needs Labour”, the Guardian criticised David Cameron for having become “an increasingly weak prime minister” and said that his coalition government “experiment” between the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats has “clearly run its course”.

“The government’s record is dominated by an initial decision to pursue a needless and disastrous fiscal rigidity,” the newspaper wrote. “That turned into a moral failure, by insisting on making the neediest and the least secure pay the highest price for an economic and financial crash that they did not cause. The evidence Is there in the one million annual visits to foodbanks, a shocking figure in what is still a wealthy country.”

They said that Cameron had promised change but instead, on issues such as Europe, the integrity of the United Kingdom, climate change, human rights, and the spread of the low-wage economy, has “been content to lead the Tories back towards their nastiest and most Thatcherite comfort zones”.

The paper attacked Cameron’s campaign for continuing to prioritise public-sector austerity and imposing £12 billion of largely unspecified welfare cuts, “while doing little to ensure the rich and comfortable pay a fair share”.

They warned that Cameron’s pledge for an in/out referendum on EU membership could put the United Kingdom at risk.

“If a 2017 referendum did result in a British exit from the EU, it could trigger a fresh and powerful demand for a Scottish exit from the UK,” the paper said. “Breaking apart is not the answer: not in Europe and not in the UK. We still believe that the union rests on something precious – the social and economic solidarity of four distinct nations – and that is to be nurtured and strengthened, not turned against itself.

“The Conservative campaign has been one of the tawdriest in decades. The overriding priority on 7 May is therefore, first, to stop the Conservatives from returning to government and, second, to put a viable alternative in their place.”

The paper praised Labour Miliband for having “grown” in leadership this election campaign.

“He may not have stardust or TV-ready charisma, but those are qualities that can be overvalued,” the paper wrote. “He has resilience and, above all, a strong sense of what is just. Mr Miliband understood early one of the central questions of the age: inequality. While most Tories shrug at that yawning gap between rich and poor, Labour will at least strive to slow and even reverse the three-decade march towards an obscenely unequal society.

“It is Labour that speaks with more urgency than its rivals on social justice, standing up to predatory capitalism, on investment for growth, on reforming and strengthening the public realm, Britain’s place in Europe and international development – and which has a record in government that it can be more proud of than it sometimes lets on.”

While they admitted that Labour could be bolder in each of these areas, they insisted that the contrast between them and the Tories is “sharp”.

“While Labour would repeal the bedroom tax, the Tories are set on those £12bn of cuts to social security, cuts that will have a concrete and painful impact on real lives,” the Guardian wrote. “Even if they don’t affect you, they will affect your disabled neighbour, reliant on a vital service that suddenly gets slashed, or the woman down the street, already working an exhausting double shift and still not able to feed her children without the help of benefits that are about to be squeezed yet further.

“For those people, and for many others, a Labour government can make a very big difference.

“On 7 May, as this country makes a profound decision about its future, we hope Britain turns to Labour.”