Brown loses his Compass
James Forsyth 1:22am
Given the speed and nature of current events, there is a real danger that we in the press start to hyperventilate, declaring the Brown government doomed before breakfast every day. But the piece by Neal Lawson, the chair of Compass, in The Independent calling on Brown to return to the Treasury for the good of the movement does seem like a seismic moment. (Although, Compass has been critical of Brown recently this is the first time it has called on the leader to step down)
Compass cannot be dismissed as a fringe group. It is representative of the broad left—just look at the list of speakers it has lined up for its conference this year—and for its head to call for the Prime Minister to resign is significant. It also speaks to the speed of disillusionment with Brown on the soft left; less than a year ago Lawson was speculating that Brown could be the most successful Labour leader since Clement Attlee.
In some ways, you can dismiss Lawson: he represents a strain of the left that could never win a general election let alone successfully govern modern Britain. But Brown courted people like Lawson and groups like Compass—he spoke at its conference in 2004—hinting that he would allow the left to return to its comfort zone, ditching even the modest reforms that Blair had pioneered. It only serves him right that these self-same groups are now exacerbating his problems.
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Labourite
May 13th, 2008 8:18amThis seems to speak as much to Neal Lawson's midlife crisis as to the condition of the government.
Neal Lawson was a Blairite lobbyist, who trousered a fortune with LLM and played a bit part in Lobbygate. His main complaint is Labour's accomodation with capitalism, and it has become student megaphone politics, whereas Compass was meant to be a serious left-thought initiative in 2003, when Matthew Taylor, Michael Jacobs, Tom Bentley and others signed its founding statement.
He has said:
"There was a touch of naiveté in what I was doing because I thought I could be a left wing Tim Bell. As I rediscovered my politics and what drove me politically I started questioning what New Labour was doing, and about six months after the 1997 election I really started to feel uneasy ... However, the realisation came too late to save me from Greg Palast [the journalist that broke the ‘Lobbygate’ story]. After I helped ensure LLM would survive I eventually left in 2004".
http://www.publicaffairsnews.com/issues/articleview.asp?article_id=200
The laughing Cavalier
May 13th, 2008 9:42amBrown's time at the Treasury has been the cause of much of the muddle we find ourselves in. He shouldn't be allowed within a mile of the place.