Labour is out of ideas

Tina

Newsnight played a great quote from Tony Blair, before he won power in 1997:

'Conference, the class war is over but the struggle for equality has only just begun.'

Classic, made me realise how much we are missing his fantastic rhetoric.

Tiberius

I wonder how Comrade Brown would reconcile weaing a cape and mortar board with his refusal to wear black tie to the Mansion House dinner? He does look completely bewildered in that photograph.

Janet

Labour have tested their ideas to destruction and the electorate are sick of it.

Brown or no Brown, the game's up for the lot of them.

John

Fantastic rhetoric? LMAO. That is typical empty demagoguery from the greatest charlatan of them all. Amazing that anyone can still regard him as anything else.

Mike, Brighton

With the economy heading south, what do Labour have left to campaign with? Nothing.
The emperor is naked, and the public see it. It's groundhog day for May 1997 again. Except this time Labour will be on the receiving end and it will be even worse.

Perry of England. Also British in the sense of formerly Great, and proud of what it once meant.

Shome mishtake shurley. Noo-Lie-Bore has been out of useful productive ideas for a very long while (in fact, have they ever had any good ones?). however, in the spirit of the question – discuss ‘What have the Noo-Lie-Bores ever done for us?

They certainly have bled us white – ‘the bastards’ (I quote). But equally certainly, not wine (they’ve gone prissy, ‘elfy, and taxy); ciggys and personal freedom – zilch; sanitation – very open question; new roads dunno, - except there’s plenty of blockages; peace – depends on how you understand it – and on who’s side (are we allowed to mention ‘terrorism?’ or is that politically incorrect?; health – wow, that’s a toughy, - but try the still filthy hospitals, crammed with tick-box bearing oppos and hungry often ill-faring patients; public baths – yeah, - well, when they’re open and not restricted to minority ethnic groups; education – oh, I can’t go on. [Thank the deity I hear people call].

salieri

Talking of emperors, let's just be grateful that this understudy for the Mikado isn't actually going to sing.

It may be utterly and grossly unfair of me, but I somehow have a hunch that Gordo is, on top of everything else, tone-deaf. Could someone, perhaps from the Kircaldy OK Chorale, put me right about this?

Dean

Labour's current predicament can, in my view, be traced back to the political fall out from the Iraq war. This encouraged many of the Left of the Party (always prone to self-delusion even at the best of times) to think that British public opinion had swung decisively to the left, and that consequently they could re-capture control of the policy agenda back from the Blairites. Growing public concern about global warming also made a lot of Labour politicians (not just the hard left) think they could resurrect 'Old' Labour redistributive taxation policies under the guise of an environmental agenda and get away with it. This deluded belief that the elecorate was somehow shifting to the left in the period 2004-2007 has proven to be a catastrophic blunder for Labour, as it caused them to overlook the rightward shift of public opinion (amongst 'core' Labour as well as floating voters) on other issues, especially rising crime, excessive taxation (direct and indirect), and the growth of the nanny state. In truth, opposition to the Iraq War, and concern about the environment, were never evidence of a leftward shift in public opinion. It was sheer self-delusion on the part of politicians like Ken Livingstone to think that it was - hence his complete failure to understand why his beloved 'progressive' coalition in the capital fell apart. Unfortunatley, Livingstone's self-delusion was also shared by large parts of the Labour Party, otherwise they would have grasped immediately last summer that Gordon Brown was never going to be a suitable successor to Tony Blair as PM. Leaving aside his personality flaws, he is too left wing for most voters. Labour should also have understood that the public would inevitably see 'green' taxes imposed on car use and refuse disposal for what they are i.e. punitive taxation rather than a genuine attempt to incentivise environmentally friendly behaviour. Without the current economic downturn, Labour might have just about got away with this total mis-reading of public opinion (or at least had time to correct it). But it is too late now, as the damage has been done. However, they could at least stop digging and acknowledge the huge strategic error they have made. This would require, at the very minimum, a change of leadership.

William Norton

As requested by Salieri, Gordon sings:

The -ah- people's flag is -ah- sustainably red,

It -ah- shrouded over the economic cycle -ah- our martyr'd dead

And ere their limbs grew stiff and cold -ah- owing to the failure of previous Tory givernments to provide a winter fu-u-el allowance as of right,

Their -ah- cardio-vascular system -ah- dyed substantially all of its ev'ry fold.

Then -ah- raise the scarlet basic standard high,

With due regard to applicable regulations for health and safe-tie,

Though donors flinch and colleagues squirm,

We will work towards implementing arrangements where we expect to keep most of the red flag flying here for the long term.

Prodicus

That's a unequivocal, Mafia-style kiss goodbye for Gordon from the NS, plus a primary school teacher's 'tsk' to the young triumvirate and an flirty come-hither to Milburn. Yup.

Bye, Gordon. We can't thank you for having us, although we were certainly had.

paul freeman

I think New Labour still has the same one idea it has always had, grab power in any way possible, and hang on to it by any means possible. They've just lost the knack. But then the salesman has gone off elsewhere, leaving the accountant to handle the red ink.

David Lindsay

Yes, New Labour is out of ideas. Which means that the carbon copy Mod Cons never had any to start with.

Oscar

The 'Mod Cons' are full of ideas David Lindsay. It's just that the hacks in general are so obsessed with gordon brown - first building him up and now tearing him down - that they never pay attention to the wealth of serious thinking that has gone into the modern Conservative party. I was hoping for that threatened 'serious scrutiny' of their policy we were promised after 1st May to raise general awareness of Conservatism. But clearly the media never intended to really do that. It would involve laying aside their prejudices and actually doing some serious analysis.

John

Quite so, Oscar. I see that Lindsay is still peddling his ignorant hatred of the Tories. But then, he probably gets all his news from the BBC, McBean's friends in the south.

steve

It comes to all governments in the end, they just run out of steam, ideas and ability. Its just the way thing happen. And then it's time for a change.

Alf Tupper

I suppose Martin Bright does nail it in a subtle way.

His article, informative as it is, amounts to little more than a roll-call of the intellectual talent which supports/stalks the Brown premiership, or rather, of their names. Nothing at all of what these names are busy with. Much less is there about what else besides huge intellects they might have to offer the country and its people.

It's as if the Labour Party has started up its own version of the Hollywood studio star system, grooming the profiles which will make us swoon tomorrow.

Martin Miller

Yes, New Labour is out of ideas. Which means that the carbon copy Mod Cons never had any to start with.

Edward

James, I think we would be making a mistake to concede that New Labour was ever the party of ideas. All the best ideas, now part of the Blairite 'legacy', were 1990s Tory ideas.

EVIDENTLY CHICKENTOWN BLOG

Not so fast James! Read this:

http://evidentlychickentown.wordpress.com/2008/05/23/can-i-speak-to-alan-please/