The trouble is that some – including contributers here – feel impelled to periodically chip in with claims of the like: Blair is the greatest and Brown was rubbish.

FWIW Blair was a disaster for the Labour Party in my judgement. I rate him as a first class political charlatan and opportunist who couldn’t and can’t be trusted on anything. There was no way I was going to vote Labour while he was Labour leader. Labour needs to apologise for having elected him as party leader, not because Blair ditched Clause IV as few Labour leaders after Attlee took that clause seriously anyway – Harold Wilson and Sunny Jim Callaghan certainly didn’t.

Look at in calm retrospection, the New Labour governments made a series of bad policy calls by commission and omission, notably the Iraq war, the failure to regulate the banks, the mountain of consumer debt and the house-price bubble, the over-dependence of the economy on financial services, the relaxed attitude to the decline of manufacturing, falling productivity in the NHS and so on.

Prescott’s involvement with his appointments secretary was a disgraceful episode, as was the need for Blunkett to resign twice as minister. Whatever happened to Brown’s proposal in the run-up to the 1997 election for an online University for Industry to address the skill shortages? Was it absolutely so necessary to allow net immigration to soar unchecked as that increased the pressures on the low-skill end of the job market?

The last labour leader was Brown.. Take it your natural home would editing ‘Criminal Immigrant Human Rights citing Welfare – Claimant Monthly ‘.Its a great read actually do dip ( ten top tips on fraud ! )
On the positioning of Ed you miss the point, his leftward drift allows Cameron to slither yet further to the centre creating more miserable disenfranchised Southern Conservatives obliged to vote for him anyway in sufficient numbers. He was doing this yesterday ugh.
New Labour may seem old but Gordon Brown`s odd little elf is worse and the manner of his election meant he had to show some courage early on. He has not and I see no way back. In fact I am not at all sure he is going to make it to the next election.

Paul: I don’t necessarily disagree with you. You notice I don’t really defend anything Miliband said in that speech.

My point is purely about the framing of the debate. “Labour can’t win unless it’s new Labour” is, according to all the polling, bollocks. New Labour are no more electable right now than the interations before that were.

I’m just arguing that this obsession with repeating the tricks of Tony Blair is… not only odd, it’s also a loser.

If you saw that recent “Despatches” programme on Channel 4, you can clearly see why Blair opposed raising the top rate of income tax.

He even had the nerve to tell Charles Kennedy on one occasion that it “wouldn’t be fair”!

I feel a bit bad about being so snarky now….. as a Conservative I know who I feared and nothing since has changed that view. I wouldn`t get hung up on the name New Labour naturally it gathers enemies on the other hand Old Labour and in particular the Balls Glasman Union cocktail could hardly be worse.
I think there was a way forward answering the question “What is the left for if it cannot tax , borrow and spend more”. It might be to deliver opportunity through properly functioning secondary education, a smaller but more re-distributive state, like Australia which is country formed every bit as much by its very British left as its right wing .
Labour sounds so backward looking to me at the moment

Paul: Don’t worry about being snarky, it’s the internet, it’s what it’s for. I am, if anything, disappointed not to have attracted more snark. Snark away.

I think there is a valid question about the left is for if the economy isn’t growing – Hopi Sen wrote a very good essay on this the other week – and Labour’s biggest problem is going to be finding an answer.

But re Blair… I think what you’re describing there are his personal qualities, rather than his political ones. Politicians like that are once a generation sort of a thing. Blair, Thatcher, before that, what, Wilson? There’s no one of that stature on either side of the house at the moment.

There would be no need to talk about Tony Blair if he would fade into obscurity with his vast heap of cash and take his clapped out has beens with him but he won’t. Maybe he secretly harbours delusions that a desperate nation will one day beg him to lead it from its tribulations. Unless a figurative (literal would be nicer) stake is driven through his heart and that of New Labour he risks being Labour’s Thatcher, a kind of Norma Desmond figure overshadowing its every move for a generation. Blair is remembered as a lying, greedy warmonger with a sticky-fingered wife, kept in power by an unsackable court of favourites, most of who are still trying to keep the rotting carcass of Blairism going. Unless Labour shows its changed it will be unelectable until the public become sick to death of Cameron

@5 – Like America, you mean. Or we could pick a functional society, like…oh…the Nordic Countries.

@7: Schimdt

Amen to that.

@5 – Like America, you mean. Or we could pick a functional society, like…oh…the Nordic Countries.

What you mean spend as much as 52% of GDP via the state . Good news, you are living in your paradise right now, like it ?