CHRISTMAS AND NEW YEAR MESSAGE FROM DAVID RENDEL MP

5.25.01pm UTC (GMT +0000) Fri 24th Dec 2004

The Christmas gift phenomenon in 2004 was the goat. 43,000 goats "given" to people by their friends and relatives were in fact sent to villages in Africa, where they will boost nutrition and local economies.

George Bernard Shaw once suggested that Christmas is forced on a reluctant nation by shopkeepers and the press. Perhaps the phenomenon of goat gifts is an indication that people instinctively share this concern. They want a less selfish and more just society. But they are being ill-served by our political process.

115 million children worldwide have no access to education. Providing for them would cost $5.6 billion dollars. This year many people have been asking whether education for children without schools would not have been a better use for the £3 billion spent on the Iraq war.

On the domestic front, the wealthiest 1% now own 23% of the nation's wealth. The bottom 50% of the population owns just 5%. This gap has widened under both John Major and Tony Blair - reversing a historical trend which saw inequality shrink throughout most of the twentieth century.

In 2005 we have the perfect opportunity to set ourselves on a different path. In May, we are likely to face a general election in which the choices will be stark - between civil liberties and the nanny state; between social justice and widening inequalities; and between a foreign policy subservient to President Bush and one focused on our wider international obligations as members of the United Nations Security Council and the European Union.

2004 was about the politics of fear. Let us hope that 2005 will be about the politics of hope.

ENDS