We don’t need a new New Labour

I couldn’t argue with many of the things in Simon Jenkins’ article in the Guardian yesterday….This gaping hole calls for a new party. Let’s call it Labour. But I do object to being lectured to on the subject by those very same Guardianistas who spent a decade grovelling at Tony Blair’s feet and telling the world just exactly how ‘New’ New Labour was in breaking the mould of British politics.
Jenkins is right to criticise New Labour for its neo-Thatcherite tendencies, its pro-privatisation, and its sucking up to the bankers and the wealthy. But I can find no article in The Guardian from Patrick Jenkin calling for support for John McDonnell’s leadership campaign which argued for just this agenda. In fact, a quick trawl through Jenkins’ back catalogue reveals a man who never understood why his Uncle Tony was leaving him in the first place. It shows us a man who thinks that revitalising democracy, rather than empowering people, is actually better served by Blairite-Mayors, concentrating power in the hands of a single person. A man who thinks the only thing Brown got right about the Iraq Inquiry… was holding it in bloody secret!
So, when the likes of Jenkins, Toynbee, Bright and the others start arguing for a new Party, it is important to understand that they are not arguing for a left agenda, but from the right. What they actually want, is a New New Labour.

This entry was posted in Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink.

4 Responses to We don’t need a new New Labour

Letters From A Tory says:

June 24, 2009 at 10:00 am

I’m not sure Toynbee is desperate for New New Labour. The abandonment of the Left has presumably created a lot of disillusioned Labour voters, none of whom want to see ‘another Blair’.

Brian Hughes says:

June 24, 2009 at 10:49 am

Simon Jenkins is a traditionalist. He’s chairman of the National Trust, a body dedicated to the preservation of those monuments to inequality, the stately homes of England.
No doubt he wants to return Britain to the “tradition” of Tory government interrupted occasionally by Labour ones that can’t survive for more than six years.
Then Lord Snooty and his chums can reveert to having a ready supply of forelock tugging minions who they can pay at sub-minimum wage levels and who won’t have access to health and education services funded at record levels.
Note carefully Bob, he wants only that Labour changes to become a better opposition…

jethro tulls says:

June 24, 2009 at 11:21 am

The Guardianistas have got far more political voice and media coverage than sense.
Frankly, John McDonell want’s to renationalize the energy companies and railways, which doesn’t seem pragmatic given the huge failures of this in the past.
He’s right on the need to build millions of affordable homes. A mixture of social housing, mixed tenure housing and entirely private housing is a thing in need of doing.
More affordable housing and tax cuts for the lowest paid would win a lot of votes.

Carl says:

June 25, 2009 at 6:58 pm

Its hard to form a pattern as to what Toynbee wants in a Labour leader, other than, I suppose, one that is different from the present one. At first she was wooed by Blair, then she wanted Brown, then Miliband, then Johnson. To suggest that she wants a New New Labour, is erroneously to suggest that she wants anything ideological at all, sensu strictissimo.
She often speaks a lot of sense, but its hard to stay focused. Would rebellious orthodoxy be the right words to use.
Spot on as usual, though, Bob.

We don’t need a new New Labour

4 Responses to We don’t need a new New Labour

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

On the Side of the Angels

The Dark Side

The Media

Recent Posts

Archives

Meta