‘But there is now a constituency for an economic alternative that puts more weight on the needs of workers, the unemployed, students, the elderly and the disabled than on keeping Diamond and the City Boys in the superyacht bracket.’

There’s always been that constituency – there just isn’t anyone representing it. There hasn’t been for decades.

‘Luckily enough for Labour, this is one case where self-interest and political principle absolutely coincide.’

Luckily enough for Labour, some voters will settle for the symbolic gesture of voting for the least worse option.

“But there is now a constituency for an economic alternative that puts more weight on the needs of workers, the unemployed, students, the elderly and the disabled than on keeping Diamond and the City Boys in the superyacht bracket.”

You reckon?. Where’s that then?

If you really think the “residual Blairites” (I prefer the term “Continuity New Labour” ) have have given up the ghost, that’s good news; I still want to see the body first however, preferably still bleeding from the stake through its black heart.

Until I do, I’m still likely to assume that Newer Labour is simply a pale imitation, and that Miliband Minor is trying that thing people without principles do; burying Caeser AND praising him.

Galen why do you always say you want to be sure New Labour is dead when you know for a fact that there is no difference between New Labour and Labour: they are one and the same. It was just branding. If you really want to hump the corpse of Old Labour, go ahead and do so: stop trying to play “hard to get” because Labour no longer cares about the opinions of po-faced lefties, it just wants your vote at the next election so it can get back in and carry on where they left off.

3

Let’s be clear – I didn’t support or trust Old Labour either. Neither however do accept that Old and New Labour were the same animal, or simply differences in degree. My issue with “Newer” Labour is that I’m not sure it is (or will ever become) a party worthy of my trust or vote. I am willing to be persuaded, but the early signs aren’t good, because I do think it simply isn’t prepared to park its tanks on the lawns of progressive radical politics.

There are plenty of people like me, disillusioned with the LD’s…. the question is where do we go?

Who says you need to be in a party at all? I know that you know, deep down, Labour will only ever betray you and every leftie who puts their trust in it. The fact the Ed Miliband appointed Phil Woolas to be a shadow minister for immigration, despite all the nasty things Woolas has said on the topic in the past and the fact that he was in the dock AT THE TIME (FFS) says it all about Newer Labour: it’s the same as New Labour. Is that because it genuinely agrees with it, or because it has no ideas left?

Blair was the logical extension of Labour’s past, not an aberration. He was of a centrist Labour tradition that went back to the likes of Dalton and Gaitskell. Also never forget that the unions traditionally made up Labour’s right wing. Since the left wing of Labour failed miserably in the 1980s to dislodge Thatcher, the only way forward was to embrace Blairism and right wing ideology. The left of Labour were discredited in the 80s, the right discredited in the 2000s. People who now claim “they’ve got their party back” are in cloud cuckoo land. Nothing’s changed. And even if there were the facade of change, how can Labour erase the moral stain of Iraq? Or introducing tuition fees? Or their racist policies on immigration? There are no ideas or even ideology left in Labour, and I think most honest lefties know it.

I’m not saying run off to the Greens or the SWP but Labour is a dinosaur on the verge of extinction: the Greens took 37 years to get 1 MP so imagine how long it will take them to get anywhere near power (probably after we’re all dead from climate change), and the SWP…. well.

5

Again, I’m not saying I’m a “joiner” as such… how many people actually join parties anyway.. 2% maybe if you’re lucky?

I am tempted to vote Green..irrespective of my worries about the bearded, sandal wearing knit-your-own-yoghurt-pot types; in the meantime I just feel such a sense of betrayal and hopelessness about the prospects for change.

I hate that feeling. I hate our system and the feckless, self serving mediocrities leading it

People get the politicians they deserve.

@5

Since the left wing of Labour failed miserably in the 1980s to dislodge Thatcher

Actually, there’s a good chance they might have beaten her handily in 1983, such was the backlash against the Thatcherite agenda at that point, were it not for the fact that she got the country engaged in that skirmish in the South Atlantic – and in doing so managed to fire the tabloid press into a frenzy with the jingoistic claptrap they love so much.

@5

“I’m not saying run off to the Greens or the SWP but Labour is a dinosaur on the verge of extinction: the Greens took 37 years to get 1 MP so imagine how long it will take them to get anywhere near power (probably after we’re all dead from climate change), and the SWP…. well.”

I think you really are a lost soul because there doesn’t appear any way back for the Lib Dems from where they are now? So you either shout from the sideline, which acieves what exactly? Or do something that makes a difference? I fear I shall be hearing more of the shouting some how!

9 skooter

Perhaps you would regard me as a “lost soul” too? However, unless Newer Labour de-toxifies itself, where exactly do you think disillusioned left of centre voters who will no longer vote LD will go? Carping about shouting from the sidelines isn’t likely to encourage them to help Labour is it?

It may make little difference in many areas without electoral reform of course (any non-Tory vote where I live is effectively wasted, as all the non-tory parties added together only polled 45% of the vote). If electoral reform IS achieved, then it may be more important.

If the O&E result has shown anything, it is that a large section of the LD’s former support (including me) has abandoned them. Their “core” support is unlikely to recover anytime soon, and if you subtract the tactical Tory vote at the bye-election they are unlikely to achieve much more than single figures.

Who knows, perhaps there’s a case for a renewed Social Democratic Party ?

Thos citing Labour’s supposed failures in the 80s seem to be conveniently forgetting about Shirley Williams, Roy Jenkins, that twat Rogers and Dr David Owen’s little vanity project, the SDP, that effectively split the opposition. Had they remained within Labout I doubt Thatch would have had a second term.

‘has there been any widespread demand for anything more radical’?
If voters are not offered more radical policies they cannot vote for them.
Perhaps the five million or so voters which nu-lab lost while in power and the recent mass protests about tuition fees, indicates that there could be a demand for something more radical,

11 cherub

Well, it’s one way of interpreting history… but not necessarily correct. Who knows where the Labour party would have ended up if the SDP hadn’t formed? It might just as well have been defeated by Thatcher after the Falklands had the Gang of Four stayed inside the party and tried to reform it from the inside.

Trying to dismiss it as a vanity project is not only inaccurate, it’s politically ignorant.

@10

Would it not be a bad idea for all those dissolutioned Lib Dems to take Ed M up on his offer to join the Labour party and help form a more progressive left of centre party That could accommodate them and help shape future policy? Thus helping To detoxify the brand?

“Well, it’s one way of interpreting history… but not necessarily correct. Who knows where the Labour party would have ended up if the SDP hadn’t formed? It might just as well have been defeated by Thatcher after the Falklands had the Gang of Four stayed inside the party and tried to reform it from the inside.”

How could a faction that was opposed to any attempt to reform the party – and which actually left it because of opposition to reforms – have attempted to reform it from the inside?

“Trying to dismiss it as a vanity project is not only inaccurate, it’s politically ignorant.”

It’s certainly an exaggeration. But not entirely untrue, at least in the case of certain leading members (Jenkins especially).

@14 skooter

I don’t think you’ll find many centre-left voters who formerly voted for the LD’s and now find themselves essentially “rootless”, will see “Newer” Labour as a party worth supporting, let alone joining, at present. I’ve certainly seen little as yet to convince me that they really want to change, or that they are progressive or radical.

If I thought they were radical, progressive, pro civil liberties, pro electoral reform, more committed to tackling climate change and environmental issues, and more inclined to promote a more equal society, I might support them.

At present, I don’t think they are that party, nor am I very hopeful they will ever become that party.

15 Alun

I meant that if the Gang of Four hadn’t left the party when it did, the Labour Party would probably have splintered at some other time; it would have probably still stayed on the left (or drifted further left in the hands of Benn, Scargill, Militant and their mates) and been hammered at the polls just the same.

People forget how close the SDP came to fracturing the system. There may have been a vanity aspect to it for some people, but don’t forget that many Labour members and MP’s who left did so because they felt the Labour party was unelectable and had committed electoral suicide. Also, many SDP members (around 60-65% from memory) had never been members of other parties.

They came close to bringing about a re-ordering of the UK party system 25 years ago…. as far as many of us are concerned, it’s a pity they didn’t succeed then!

@16

Galen they all admiral policies and worthy of promoting but unless you’re in a party that actually has a chance of implementing them they will forever remain ideals? I think there is a real opportunity here for Lib Dems to push the Labour party down that road nut in order to do do they will have to come in from the cold?

‘I meant that if the Gang of Four hadn’t left the party when it did, the Labour Party would probably have splintered at some other time;’

Why? Alright, people like Jenkins might have left even if the Left hadn’t been so successful internally in 1979 and 1980, but most of the Labour people who joined the SDP weren’t much like him. The SDP was not the inevitable result of unresolvable tension but the product of very specific circumstances.

‘it would have probably still stayed on the left (or drifted further left in the hands of Benn, Scargill, Militant and their mates) and been hammered at the polls just the same.’

I’m not one to play down the severity of Labour’s problems in the 1980s, but there’s no way that a Labour Party that didn’t see a large section of it’s right-wing throw a hissy fit and leave would have drifted further to the left than the Party did in real life. None whatsoever.

‘People forget how close the SDP came to fracturing the system.’

How can a party that was fundamentally a product of the system ever fracture it? The SDP just stood for what its members thought that Labour had stood for before all those lefties started taking over CLPs and council groups. The SDP were the only party in the 1980s to want things to stay the same as they had ‘always’ been.

Moving aside from that (important!) issue, it is absolutely not true to assert that if the SDP-Liberal alliance managed to win more votes than Labour the system would have collapsed. Labour would have won considerably more seats than the Alliance and would have formed the official opposition, much as in real life. The entire Alliance project was doomed from the start by their incompetent electoral strategy.

‘There may have been a vanity aspect to it for some people, but don’t forget that many Labour members and MP’s who left did so because they felt the Labour party was unelectable and had committed electoral suicide.’

Or because they’d been deselected.

Also, many SDP members (around 60-65% from memory) had never been members of other parties.

That is true, though.

They came close to bringing about a re-ordering of the UK party system 25 years ago…. as far as many of us are concerned, it’s a pity they didn’t succeed then!

Really? Why? What, exactly, is the difference between a Phil Woolas and a George Cunningham?