It is immaterial who fronts Labour’s campaign

Fergus Pickering

It isn't a little knowledge that is a dangerous thing. It is a little learnng. Any fool can see the things are different. Knowledge is always good. A little is better than none at all. But a little learning means you may misunderstand what you have learned. How can I bring myself to take seriously anyone who misquotes in this manner, and therefore says something demonstrably untrue. For him words are just that, words, and he can give us those until the sawdust runs out of his boots. But if he truly KNEW anything...

Please can it all be over

How stupid do the people have to be to realise that as soon as the election is over, in the rare event labour survive, they will simply topple the leader and resort to internal warfare - this would be a disaster for the country unless they have a credible long term candidate they cannot be allowed to govern even in coalition. how can people vote for such uncertainty - the conservatives should now highlight that when you vote labour you will vote for a change within a year

Vulture

The Triumvirate running Liebour's election campaign -( or quartet since you don't mention Milipede minor, who's apparently writing the election manifesto)- are an ill-assorted trio.

Lord Mandelslime. The dark fraud won't mind who wins just so long as he pulls the strings.

Douglas Alexander, despite or because of being a sort of Bruin protege ( son of the manse; mentored by Bruin for years) is clearly out of love with the great man. Shafted with the blame for Bruin's bottled 2007 autumn election-that-wasn't, he is hardly likely to work hard for victory.

Hattie Hatpin wants to take over as Liebour's first woman leader. She won't be doing that if Bruin wins.

Given all this, it remains astonishing that some 30% of the electorate are STILL willing to vote for this poisonous shower.

David Ossitt

Vulture

"Given all this, it remains astonishing that some 30% of the electorate are STILL willing to vote for this poisonous shower"

Or say they are?

Nicholas

"Labour's present predicament...is that while things would have been worse without us"

Says who? The Labour party of course. In the words of Mandy Rice-Davies "Well, he would say that wouldn't he."

One of the problems that has beset this country is the Labour party's unshakeable belief in its own benevolence. Of course to an ordinary member of the public affected by their policies things can look very different.

PAUL GILBOY

I think your analysis is wrong it is very important who front the labour party because the man they have their at present has led them down a cul de sac. In the coming months Mr Brown will suffer terrible ad hominem attacks over his dithering and lack of spine. Labour will go into a fight with bully brown cowering under his sheets, The Tories will call him out in March and he’ll refuse, In April he will refuse, May he will refuse until he is dragged out in June.

This will play perfectly to Tory party strategy, as the electorate will be sick to death of him, whilst the nerves of his own supporters will be shredded to the point of First World War shell shock victims.

Many will say this is his deserved fate and, that’s primarily from the labour ranks.

Labour are damned if they do and damned if they don’t.

The labour party was founded on principles of representing their own communities and, as we can all see they have singularly failed in that. The BNP are biting into their constituencies whilst Mr Cameron has began to engage in the immigration debate, a debate that is the number one topic in pubs and clubs up and down the land. Labour has no credibility to even comment on this. Many Labour MPs and supporters will look at their leadership tonight and wonder how it could have gone so very wrong.

Dorothy Wilson

"What is there to run?" Well, apparently, it will be a campaign based on Labour being the party of aspiration. And, of course, if you do happen to succeed they will tax your earnings at 50% and then take another increased slug of them in the form of NI.

So what's the point of aspiring?

smog

Lemmings.

Nick

How can Douglas Alexander still be in Brown's election team. Alexander is the man who said of Brown:

"...we have spent ten years working with this guy, and we don't actually like him. We have always thought the longer the British public had to get to know him, the less they would like him as well."

Surely any credibility he has to promote Brown has been blown clear out of the water.

Beer Moth

‘Labour's present predicament...is that while things would have been worse without us,...'

Purnell explains here with a concision almost poetic, the massive disconnect and denial which is the root of Labour's demise.

How could it be worse than it is? What other party would have shown such malice toward its own people, as to plan and execute a scheme which was motivated by the desire to consign their culture and society to history; their way of life and their children to marginalisation?

Nothing of our dire predicament, is happenstance. All of this has been wilfully put in place through great effort.

In what way Mr Purnell, might we be in a worse state than this?

Grumpy Optimist

"while things would have been worse without us," so says James Purnell. Labour people are always saying this as something beyond discussion or debate.

My questions is this - what exactly would have been worse. Even more inequality, an even more damaged education system, a NHS bureaucracy even more expensive and incompetent, an armed service even more stretched, a political system in even more disrepair and disrepute, even more people on benefit, an even bigger public sector deficit .... etc. etc.

I really do think that we should be told.

brian kelly

'Labour's present predicament...is that while things would have been worse without us' An obligatory nod. Why would they have been worse without us? Things are infinitely worse with NuLabour. The list is endless. Everything they have touched is tainted by incompetence, venality, hubris and party politics. Even a supposedly serious labour politician cannot bring himself to look facts in the face - so what can we suppose goes on in Brown's mind - and all his acolytes and cringing 'supporters'. What a wasteland.

Anne Wotana Kaye 1

Nicholas: Liked your "Mandy Rice-Davies" comment: Lord Mandelson, I presume.

Any Colour but Brown

"Dorothy Wilson
"What is there to run?" Well, apparently, it will be a campaign based on Labour being the party of aspiration. And, of course, if you do happen to succeed they will tax your earnings at 50% and then take another increased slug of them in the form of NI.

So what's the point of aspiring?"

To aspire is the basis on which all Labour policy is formed. Labour aspires to all sorts of things. They are, however, institutionally unable to realise any of those goals.
Labour aspires, but never achieves.

Frank P

Are we now going to have another spell of promoting the wit, wisdom, perspicacity and interests of James Purnell, Old Queen Street's favourite Lefty (among many)? He made his bid and blew it! He's a Labour Party fink - useful to exploit, but dangerous to promote, don't let the tail wag the dog. Just be grateful for the crack in the melting iceberg that was once the Labour Party. We know their neo-Marxist controlling cabal is in disarray; but we want to be reassured that the Conservative Party is a worthy replacement of these back-stabbing remnants of the NuLab scam. And not just another "third way paradigm" with different faces but with the same Eurocentric
ambitions and eagerness to subvert (what's left of) Britain's sovereignty and culture in favour of a left-liberal multi-culti melange that will facilitate an even speedier submission to Islamic jihad, achieved not only through sporadic terrorism, but the more effective method of religious and cultural creep.

Austin Barry

Purnell asserts the " The words are managerial.." and then goes on to use such managerial nonsense words, "..the half-lessons of the third-way paradigm ..."

Purnell's as much a busted-flush as the other NuLaborites.

The Bellman

Young Purnell takes the government to task for its managerial language and technocratic vision - then, in this nasty little tour d'horizon of false distinctions and straw men, goes on to blether insipidly about 'root causes' and 'paradigms'. FFS.

As for his contention that 'things' would have been worse without a Labour govt, like Beer Moth et al, I fail to see how. Except, perhaps, for a few greedy politicos and those snuggled beneath the ever-expanding state duvet.

Still, he got one thing right: Labour is certainly not a liberal party in any sense of the word recognisable in the English language.

Beer Moth

Austin Barry.

Managementspeak indeed. A quick snort around in the google-returns on 'third-way paradigm'.

In short: communism collapses; the European left realise they are bringing home a sackful of pups instead of piglets. In desperation, they devise a scheme - a 'framework of proposals' - which will allow them to believe they haven't wasted their entire adulthood in a misguided project. It won't actually mean anything in practice, but it will sound plausible as a 'narrative'.

When Purnell goes on to bemoan Labour's 'lack of confidence in our traditions', I lose patience. He and his likes have spent the last decade, throttling the life out of any sense of tradition. Not only have they shat on their own doorstep; they've been careless enough to step backwards.

What consigns them to the political dustbin is the inability to hold up their hands and say 'sorry, we got it very wrong', and this inability stems from the staggering vanity of a whole generation of political careerists.

And all that. Great Northern's open. Terrah.

Marcher Baron

"... things would have been worse without us" I, too, am amazed at this, but when I constantly read the left-wing faithful spouting it in the pages of the Guardian's CiF, I fear that there really are some people deluded enough to believe it. Quite HOW things could be any worse, it's hard to imagine.