To witness the scene in parliament yesterday was not to feel pity for Brown and his appointees as some commentators appear to have done, it’s something that is the outcome of the stubborn stupidity that marks out the whole New Labour project.
Alright Labour was never anti-capitalist but its origins were to create a just and inclusive society. New Labour became infatuated with the false god money and forever become entangled with its impossible demands. You name it Northern Rock, privatization of public services, party funding – every project has fallen apart, gone rotten in their hands, and all this could have been avoided. There have been a few moments when I thought that Brown isn’t Blair – his stance on casinos for instance – but together they stand as authors of New Labour. Mandelson keeps popping up as a reminder of the early days which said loud and clear that what New Labour was about was not going to be sustainable. Problem is they never learn.
The other parties are also in league with the same god, so there’ going to be no relief there. The problem with New Labour after losing election after election was that it came to the conclusion ” if you can’t beat ’em. join ’em. This is the result. If you’re going to have a corrupt Tory government why not have the real thing?
The state of the Tories shows that even with the worst shambles going on round them they still have difficulty making their mark. As for Lib-Dems to see their true colours look at us here in Birmingham where they have brought the Tories into power. They are showing their ineptitude in their handling of the single status issue. That was never going to be easy, but they have pissed off the worked force as never before. One friend of mine is £8,000 a year worse off. The idea of Single Status I thought was to bring equity into play yet a woman loses that much – and there are worse examples than that.
But it is over-simplistic. Unless you think that Britain in the 1980s was a country that was in love with the bomb, ensshuiattically europhile, yearned for cuts in public services, adored privatisation and loathed workers in traditional industries. Now you and I were only young at the time, but I don’t think that was the country I grew up in.In fact polls show a much more complex picture, suggesting that Britain’s love affair with Thatcher was a much less clear-cut business.Yes, Labour recovered psephologically through the later 80s and 90s, but again I think it is simplistic (and complacent) to put that down to changes of policy, or of personality.There was a vicious campaign against the left from both within the party and outside (in the media) in the early 1980s. This was because parts of the establishment were frankly terrified by the prospect of a genuinely radical government of the left (many of the same parts of the establishment that contemplated a fascistic military coup against Wilson – these are no friends of the labour movement; after all some who had moved to the right, like Kinnock, didn’t escape the media assassination attempts).By 1992, Tony Benn was probably one of the most popular labour movement figures with the general public, from being painted as a democracy-hating demagogue in the early 80s. His views had changed very little (and any change was leftward). Conversely Thatcher had gone from being a popular war leader in ’83 to being an enormously unpopular figure. To put these seismic changes down to red roses, abandonment of unilateralism or Militant expulsions is nonsensical. Once the ‘threat’ of a democratic socialist government had been eradicated, by the campaigns against the left, against the miners and against the labour movement – left-wing personalities could once again be publically presented as amiable eccentrics. While they were dangerous they had to be painted as dishonest.Luke, there are many changes I would like to see in society, but I don’t stand waving some utopia and believing the people would love it if only they could shed their false consciousness, etc. In fact, if you take things policy by policy, large parts of this country appear to be with me on a hell of a lot of issues. There are other arguments where I’m in a minority, of course. That’s politics. That’s democracy. But I don’t believe Thatcher’s hegemonic control of common sense really changed people or their wishes so very much. I think most people want to live in a society that is fair, that works together to further the interests of those who would suffer alone, and not in the interests of the already powerful. I think most people want to live in a society that is honest and want a politics that is honest. That’s the society I want to live in too.