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Cameron Live From Crewe: "The End of New Labour"
Just watched Cameron live from Crewe reflecting on what he is calling "the end of New Labour here on the streets of Crewe and Nantwich".
Hopefully this by-election will be the death knell of silly stunts, not least from the Tories whose by-election effort in Ealing Southall so recently was of course chock full of silly divisive tricks and communalism.
If "New" Labour is finished too, so be it from my point of view. If triangulation is done for too, great.
Let's have Just Labour back instead. Then the country can be saved from Cam's phoney, rather slimy reach to those that need Labour to fight for their interests. Let's leave Class War to Ian Bone's anarcho-syndicalist Class War.
8 comments:
You're a card.
Here you have been the most loyal, uncritical and devout disciple of the NuLabour canon. Not so much rose-coloured spectacles as any bleedin' colour you want just as long as its Nulabour.
Seems today you've decided the game's up and you tell us you never believed any of it really.
I salute your retreat into the comforting purity of Old Labour. Anyone with a half-a-brain can see if you don't try and occupy the middle ground ie NuLabour, there is nowhere for you to go apart from yell on the sidelines.
But hey you're well practised at that.
I really don't know where you get this idea that I love New Labour from. I have been critical of the project throughout; even giving Blair a roasting over his swansong conference speech, which I found an appalling thing.
But New Labour preferable to Tories? Er yes. New Labour achieved a lot of things that Tories would never have countenanced. Er yes. And a class act in terms of effective election politics? Er yes. And able to coexist with different models e.g. Manchester Labour? Er yes.
Having said all that I think that there is nothing comforting about leftish purity at all. The left have been badly let down by disorganisation, unwillingness to be pragmatic, and a dire lack of realism on their own prospects and strategies.
And strangely enough they have been hoist by their own petard in terms of leadership selection yet some seem willing to go further along these lines, handing opportunities to their opponents.
Here you go:
Chris Paul is a New Labour stooge, Not
I keep waiting for Luke Akehurst to pop his head above the parapet with an ex cathedra statement about the state of the party.
But it seems he's so embarassed by the disintegration of The Project over the last couple of months that he's hiding behind the sofa and is not coming out until Chris Paul says something nice.
Let's see if Luke does a Paul and declares he was never much taken with the whole NuLabour deal.
Luke won't be doing that anon. But then he hasn't got the history to go with such a claim.
Luke does go quiet when the news isn't good. And no one can say it's that good just now.
Chris, I don't understand how you can talk about communalism on one hand in this post and praise the Labour campaign in Longsight in others. Pure hypocrisy.
There is no alternative.
It's an appeal to the centre or it's oblivion.
Anon 19:05
I have no idea what you are referring to in terms of Longsight. I was not there. I praised the result and don't know the details. But the way it looks from outside is that Liaquat Ali was a stunt who got five years of council cash for no return whatsoever for local people. He could not look after himself never mind helping anyone else.
And he was a stunt that had run out of steam. Labour selected a Deshi candidate whereas the largest group of communities by far in Longsight are Punjabi. The vote was decided on competence not community.
It was John Commons, who accompanied Liaquat on his very high profile return to Lahore (where he would be killed) once he had his leave to remain, standing outside the Town Hall, seeing myself and Afzal leaving who declared hilariously: "One less Punjabi".
What was his point? And what is your point? In the Ealing Southall election to which I refer the Tories used stunt after stunt - defecting hotheads, impersonation of Mcr Lib Dem councillors, phoney blog comments (!). And in Manchester they used Hizb_ut-Tahrir leaflets in their campaign.
What is your point?
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