Archive for the ‘Labour’ tag
May 12th, 2010 at 9:44 am
Labour finds itself agreed on one thing: It's all the Lib Dem's fault
As Labour disappear off into opposition ready to tear themselves apart, they’ve found themselves in agreement about one thing:
The Coalition isn’t the fault of all those people who voted Tory, giving them the 306 seats.
It’s not their own fault for running up a budget deficit of £175 billion and running a Government based on spin and celebrity, pandering to the The Sun and the Daily Mail on law and order and immigration, waging George Bush’s War on Terror here in the UK and, most unforgivably of all, treating Civil Liberties as something a ‘modern’ society doesn’t need. Nope, it’s not their own fault.
Who’s fault is the Coalition? That’s right: It’s the Liberal Democrats fault, you traitors! You liars! Obviously the Labour Party would never have compromised their principled objection to economic sanity by doing a deal with the Lib Dems, so that left the Lib Dems with the one option they were supposed to take: Don’t do the deal and help bring down the minority Tory Government within a few months. Then there’d be another election, Labour would be returned to power with a new leader and we’d all go back to living in a Progressive Paradise(tm)
You know, I’m looking at this narrative and wondering just how out of touch and crazy Labour really are likely to become. For all the trite talk of a “New Politics” this Coalition is exactly that. Partisan, tribal politics has been ditched in favour of compromise, negotiation and attempts at harmony.
Do Labour seriously think that the real people, the normal ordinary voters that don’t get quite so involved, will see more virtue in Labour’s principled objection to co-operation, or will they reward the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats for doing something no-one really believed possible?
The Lib Dems have played their hand extremely well. They’ve taken an opportunity to get a lot of their manifesto turned into real living Government policy, and in return they just had to avoid their instincts to become partisan bores about it.
I think history will show Labour to have been on the wrong side of this particular movement, no matter how confident they feel that others will share their tribalist dogma.
April 28th, 2010 at 12:36 pm
It's been an hour. Time for reflection and analysis.
As pointed out by Heresy Corner,
The problem isn’t that he called her a bigot; it’s that he assumed, on so little evidence, that she was.
It’s worse than that, of course. This is the same party with a ‘tough’ immigration policy and that famously stole the BNP’s “British Jobs for British Workers” slogan to pander to, well… bigots.
How are we supposed to react to this apparent world of difference between Gordon’s personal feelings, his willingness to be very nice and friendly in public with a woman he privately believes to be a bigot, and the policies he puts forward?
Is the real significance of this event that it’s exposed a bit of a liberal streak (in the ‘Liberal Conspiracy‘ sense of course) in Brown, one that he hides to create an image of himself as a hard nosed anti-immigration populist? Surely it’d have been worse if he’s said, “That was brilliant. She was anti-Immigration and she supports our policy”?
April 28th, 2010 at 11:44 am
How to grasp defeat from the jaws of defeat.
Sod Tebbit. There’s only one story that’s going to dominate the next few news cycles and that’s the footage of Brown chatting to a voter then getting into his limo with his microphone still on, creating an almost pure “The Thick Of It” moment. Transcript:
Brown: That was a disaster… should never have put me with that woman. Whose idea was that? It was Sue I think… just ridiculous (punches back of seat?). Another voice: What did she say? Brown: Och, everything, just some awful, bigoted woman. Used to be some Labour voter… (breaks up)
What effect will this have on the election? I think you can safely predict that the Gillian Duffy herself will have the entire media bearing down on her to give her reaction, and if the Tories and Lib Dems have any sense at all they’ll simply let this one play out without getting too involved.
Another consequence might be to reignite the stories about Brown’s temper and lacklustre social skills highlighted in Rawnsley’s book, “End of the Party”. Is this bad for Labour and Brown? Well, yes. It’s absolutely terrible and sensational at the same time. I’ll take my hat off to Brown though – he’ll have finally put Labour in top billing in the news for the first time this election.
UPDATE: I hadn’t finished typing this up when Brown had already gone on the radio to apologise. Gillian Duffy is apparently, “very upset”. Sky’s Adam Boulton says, “I’d be surprised if any of this turns out to be a vote winner.”
April 12th, 2010 at 11:43 am
The People's Party speaks!
The big words from Labour’s Manifesto? People! New! Manifesto! Labour! Support!
Truly I’m inspired. It starts with a beautiful image of a peasant family toiling in the fields taking a break to allow the vision of the Sun of Socialism to illuminate their poor, working class lives. Gone is the slick design of manifesto’s past – say hello to simplicity and crap hand drawn shit. This is the manifesto of a true people’s party, like the Holy Grail is actually the crappy wooden one at the end of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.
I’m going to steel myself and read this masterpiece and report back later.
November 23rd, 2009 at 2:40 pm
Sure, laugh at the Labourites who think they've got a chance of winning. It makes you look really big and clever.
Tory Bear pointed his twitter followers in the direction of this propaganda piece in the New Statesman that claims, without verification or corroboration that private polling inside Number 10 shows Labour will overtake the Conservatives in the polls by the end of the year. Cue much hilarity and mocking.
“Neil Kinnock wrote the first version of Windows and sold it to Microsoft to raise the money for their 1992 General Election campaign!”
But, let’s put the ‘outrageous whoppers’ meme aside. The New Statesman piece is more appropriate material for Valentines day than a hung-over Monday. It features a photograph of Gordon showing a bit of teeth, and features the decidedly on-message, head-office approved language of fighting. The author seems practically giddy with excitement. Labour! 4th Term! Win! Yes!
It all adds up: The fight-back has begun! Of course, cynics might point out that this is the same fight-back they’ve been trying to start since “Barnacle Brown” decided not to hold a General Election, and that the changes in the polling might have more to do with the the Tories being annoyingly certain about their impending victory in the media.
However – big however – as delusional as the New Statesman piece might be the simple fact remains that Labour can win the next general election. It’s possible.
As Tory Bear’s chums pile into the comments thread, they don’t realise that they’re actually helping Labour. The more attention they draw to it, the worse it’ll get. Assuming that Labour winning is impossible, that victory for the Tories is a dead certainty? That, above all else, is Labour’s one real chance of winning.
The biggest problem facing opponents of Labour remains 1001 things to criticise them for and a general inability to stick to one specific area and hammer it to death, and a general reluctance for anyone to spell out specifically what the alternatives might be. Too much public spending? Well the solution is mutter mutter mutter. Too much CCTV and control freakery? The solution is obviously mumble thingy wotsit, isn’t it? Taxes are too high? Well, obviously we need to mutter, mumble mumble waffle and blah.
Wait, what were those solutions again? Not one of the naughty, forbidden solutions that don’t involve more public spending, more regulation, more centralisation, more crimes, more punishments, more interference in people’s private lives and choices?
The response usually comes, “Well, let’s be clear about what we’re saying here: Mumble mumble mumble.”
If the campaign is going to be about pure personality and style over real policy, and if real policy debate is reduced to ‘we’re going to introduce the same policy but on a slightly different timescale with slightly different amounts of money with slightly different numbers of public sector workers” then you’d better have one seriously charming personality and be very stylish indeed.
So this General Election, rather than being a foregone conclusion, could well be building up into what counts as the mother of all fuck-ups for the Conservatives. Will they be able to reign in the triumphalism in time? Is it even possible to rein in the triumphalism of the Tory blogosphere?
So sorry, Tory Bear. I’m going to do you a favour and not join in the ‘lynch the New Statesman for being thick’ gang. I mean, they are thick and their post is pathetic, but that doesn’t mean Labour can’t beat you.
