The Labour leadership question hasn’t been answered
David Blackburn 10:50am
Rabble-rouser and bruiser-in-chief Charles Clarke has taken a hatchet to the government’s highly political Pre-Budget Report. Writing on his blog, Clarke argues:
‘He (Brown) felt that the main purpose of this pre-election Pre-Budget Report was to recycle his old political dividing lines.
This weakness can only come from fear of discussion of our past failures and fear that it is too dangerous to set out our future plans.
The real danger for Labour is that this weakness will pave the way to political defeat in 2010.’
The Labour leadership crisis has retreated from the limelight recently, but the spectre of internecine war after a whipping at the polls has not. As Clarke notes, the government is incapable of admitting that it has made a mistake and therefore cannot provide a coherent narrative besides that which has gone before. Brown and his henchmen have gambled everything on politicising economic recovery – hostages to the chance that the public might take the bait. Ending the dictatorship of cheap politics over the national interest is a powerful slogan for Labour’s resurgent right wing. An alternative narrative is emerging: Clarke, the Labour’s Future group and Paul Richards are all making this point.
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Chris W
December 15th, 2009 11:06am Report this commentall very well, but as Clarkson says, no-one ever voted for a person with a beard, so his views can be discounted.
Vulture
December 15th, 2009 11:37am Report this commentClarke is a twisted, bitter, ugly trouble-maker with an unassuageable grudge against Bruin, and an itch to cause max trouble for Liebour.
What a great guy! More power to his elbow!
The Tories should put him on the payroll.
Tom Pride
December 15th, 2009 11:47am Report this commentInteresting. One of the most off-putting things I found about the Major government was the same failure to admit a mistake. In particular the fiasco of the ERM membership and ejection which accentuated the 1990s recession and devastated the Tory reputation for economic management. Consequently Major’s claims for ownership of the subsequent recovery were to be so hollow, for that recovery resulted from policy choices imposed on Major because the markets had destroyed his flawed preferred policy.
If Major had been prepared to admit fault (not so hard to do as his political opponents including one G Brown had been enthusiastic advocates of the ERM), apologise and then embark on new policies, he could then have reasonably taken full credit for the subsequent recovery. That might have reduced the scale of the 1997 defeat, the length of the time in the wilderness and the horrors of the Brown years.
Brown’s lesson, from the ERM ejection and his support for that failed policy, was extreme caution on joining the Euro. Perhaps it should have been that it is sometimes wise to admit fault and apologise – in full, unconditionally and on his own behalf without the normal weasel words.
Bob
December 15th, 2009 11:49am Report this commentDidn't realise that Clarke was Jewish. He certainly wears his yarmulke at a jaunty angle!
wrinkled weasel
December 15th, 2009 11:59am Report this commentYou don't have to read between too many lines to discern that Clarke is putting forward an Old Labour manifesto: lose Trident, taxation over savings, raising state benefits, etc. Like the child in us that craves the occasional Farley's Rusk and a cup of Ovaltine, Clarke has gone back in time and curled up in a comfort zone of neo-Marxism.
Labour has nowhere to go but backwards.
Danko
December 15th, 2009 12:11pm Report this commentOh I don't know Chris, Giggsy was showing a fair amount of stubble t'other night and he won.
Olliver Cromwell
December 15th, 2009 12:15pm Report this commentCharles Clarke is right. The self-sealing narratives that this government has constructed run in all directions. For example even the Audit Commission is compromised in its new CAA scheme. The organisations that are given green flags are those that are following government policy (personalised budgets, direct payments and using IT and broadband). On Michael Newbury's propoganda blogsite, they refuse to countenance any criticism that it is damaging service improvement. Independent? Huh I think not. The same old rot this government has been pushing out for the last decade.
The Laughing CAvalier
December 15th, 2009 12:21pm Report this commentConcerning the facial hair, I wish he would grow a proper beard or have a shave. As for the Brown Balls axis, this gruesome twosome is incapable of thinking in any manner approaching statesmanship. Narrow party and personal interest has defined both men to date; they can't change, they won't change.
Ed B
December 15th, 2009 1:07pm Report this commentChris, re bearded leaders: Abraham Lincoln.
David Lindsay
December 15th, 2009 1:20pm Report this comment"Labour’s resurgent right wing"? Embittered old Communists, fellow-travellers (such as Clarke) and Trotskyists. Most of them aren't even standing again. Their front man is heading for a war crimes trial. And his Heir is watching his poll lead disappear down the pan.
Danko
December 15th, 2009 2:02pm Report this commentEd B - yes but he also had a fantastic name, I mean that name just SCREAMS beard.
Our three bearded wonders also had amazing names -
Benjamin Disraeli (named after the seminal 1967 album by Cream), William Gladstone (much loved by hookers and tarts for his "bible lessons" - I've heard that one before), Robert Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (a truly great name, almost as good as Winston Churchill).
So in short, if you want to be successful in politics and also have a beard, you need a name of god like proportions.
Fergus Pickering
December 15th, 2009 5:36pm Report this commentSince when did Gladstone have a beard? You must be confusing him with W.G Grace.
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