Red flag at half-mast

Rhoda Klapp

I find the phrase 'move on' to be a significant indicator not only of guilt, but of lack of contrition, and an unchanged mind. Do these weasels really think that by using Tony's favourite phrase they can 'draw a line under it'? Is anyone fooled except themselves?

Yam Yam

If Labour have 'learnt lessons' the way that social services departments are always insisting they have 'learnt lessons' then I doubt whether any lessons have actually been learned.

toco

Same old song and same old tribal bitterness.Outside of North Korea Labour must be the only political party in the world still clinging to the dark ages with The Red Flag.Perhaps it is a tribute to Kinnock's choice hair due.

James Sproule

As Alastair Campbell said, you have to repeat a message ad nausea to get it to enter the public conscience. After having ruined the economy, a quick apology and moving on simply will not do…

Austin Barry

Miliband brings to mind Churchill’s comment on Labour’s first PM, Ramsey McDonald:

“We know that he has, more than any other man, the gift of compressing the largest amount of words into the smallest amount of thought."

Hard Heartless Perry

I hope that the UK 'has learned lessons' - namely, never to trust Noo LieBore again , - it's Heirs or successors.

We not only have our skin full of patronising PC baloney, obtuse laws, social engineering and EUSSR tomfoolery, but a catastrophic debt mountain – or hole.

Chris lancashire

Ms Harman may believe that they are done with statements of contrition however I hope and believe the electorate have not swallowed any of it. This present generation and leadership clique are totally unfitted for government and, I trust, will never be allowed into power.

Rue de la Loi

"Time to move on"? The country will only be able to move on when the appalling overhang of debt created by Harman and her cronies has been cleared. Talk is cheap, interest on Labour's debt is not.

Russell

What a chronic finale, the porker couldn't even sing in tune.

As for "we’ve learnt lessons. But it’s time now to move on", the English taxpayers have learnt a very big lesson, never vote for labour again, and we don't care whether or not you smug incompetents want to move on, we won't.

Sally Chatterjee

Like others I find the phrase "move on" frustrating and insulting.

Labour might want to escape their dreadful record in office but many of us want answers.

Salisbury

The singing of the Red Flag, like the dominance of the trade unions in matters of its funding, is an important reminder of what the Labour Party is, and where it has come from. Conservatives should be the last people to criticise Labour for holding on to its heritage.

Indeed it is amazing that this conference tradition survived the Blair years. One could easily imagine the Red Flag being replaced with some meaningless advertising jingle full of bromide references to hope and happiness.

David L

Nice one Harriet. Perhaps the people who have lost their jobs as a result of Labour's fiscal incompetence should try telling their bank managers and mortgage companies that "it's time to move on".

Jon stack

Learnt lessons eh? I doubt it. If they examine the root cause they'll find basic incompetence and an inability to put the UK's interests before their own and those who featherbed their nest.

John Staples

Sadly Miliband and Harman have revealed themselves to be stunningly mediocre, incapable even of making a decent speech (a basic skill for a politician, surely). Our democracy deserves better than this.

barnacle bill

More's the pity we can't move some of these NuLaborites onto the Hague.

Russell

#Salisbury

I think you'll find the vast majority prefer to have the Red White and Blue flag flying here.
The communist flag can stay in communist countries, Labour are a disgrace as that dreadful performance over the last few days shows.

Alan Douglas

I swear I read "Harriet Harman declared in her closing speech that Labour" as "... losing speech".

One can but daydream.

Alan Douglas

Nicholas

Well said Russell.

And Salisbury, the Labour party should hang its head in shame for still revering the Red Flag, the symbol of so much oppression, persecution and murder. Labour are quick to call on others to apologise for the sins of the past but seem to have a blind eye for the sins of communism. They should distance themselves from that bloody flag and apologise for the crimes committed by its adherents. But of course they won't - because they haven't moved on, they only want us to believe that.

david1

Obviously knowedge of such things as the origins of the, 'Red Flag' are little limited on this site.

The lyrics of the song were written by Irishman Jim Connell in 1889. There are six stanzas, each followed by the chorus. It is normally sung to the tune of "Lauriger Horatius", better known as the German carol "O Tannenbaum", though Connell had wanted it sung to the tune of a pro-Jacobite Robert Burns anthem, "The White Cockade".

It has never had anything to do with the Soviet Union, or North Korea, (where it has probably never even been sung) it was in fact written by Connell whilst sitting on the train between Bromley and London Bridge.

p.s.

I though the Spectator might attract a superior sort of poster, obviously I was wrong.

Dimoto

david1: "superior" as in "assiduous reader of wikipedia" you mean ?

Nicholas

david1 dress it up however you like but we all know what the flag now symbolises.

And Irish Republican Fenian Connell was awarded the Red Star medal by Lenin in 1922. You missed that detail out.

You know what? I struggle to find any reference to the Soviet Union or North Korea in the posts above. The smug condemnation of other posters was unnecessary - but typical. Some of us are suspicious of socialists/communists and have good reason to be.

Scott

how can they expect us to move on when for the next few years we suffer stagnating pay and a drop in living standard. They should be made to pay for the pain they have made this country suffer. They don't deserve power for a generation. Their only hope is that we all have short term memory loss and elect them by completely forgetting the last 13 years i.e 2 wars, depression, over taxation, uncontrolled immigration etc etc. FORGET IT!!!!!!!!

Tom Pride

Salisbury
September 29th, 2011 2:45pm

“Indeed it is amazing that this conference tradition survived the Blair years.”

Blair did get it removed. It was sung in 1999 and not re-sung until October 2003 – presumably when the anti- Blairites felt it safe to begin flexing their muscles. They followed it with Jerusalem I believe.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2003/oct/02/labourconference.labour5 (“it's still hard to believe Mr Blair will be seen on camera singing the socialist anthem - an image which will go down like a plate of cold sick in his "middle England" constituency of the mind.”)

David1 – (“I though the Spectator might attract a superior sort of poster, obviously I was wrong.”) Did you not know this?

daniel maris

I agree with John Staples. It was a very lacklustre performance all round by Labour.
Looks like Labour might have saddled themselves with a Hague-Duncan Smith type. I wonder whether Miliband shouldn't abandon his advisors whoever they are because they are letting him down so far. One feels that Miliband is constraining himself, and that's not good for him or the Labour Party.

Noa.

The Red Flag?

Let them run it up the flagpole and see who salutes it.

Then shoot 'em.

toni

David1. If its superior postings you’re after try the evidence based Left Foot Forward (ranked no 2 in the 100 best blog category)
Alternatively Labour List (ranked no 3) where the discussions are invariably calm and intelligent; but if it’s journo gossip/speculation followed by splatterings of bile, ranting, and ad hominem attacks, then the Spekkie is the place to be (ranked 5 – second year no upward movement) but it serves it’s purpose in being good for an incredulous laugh.
Fraser Nelson called the Spekkie champagne for the brain, but I guess he wasn't referring to the blog.

George Laird

Dear All

Isn't it time that fake 'poorite' Rory Weal became leader?

How much worse could it get?

Yours sincerely

George Laird
The Campaign for Human Rights at Glasgow University

Boudicca

I think WE, the electorate, gets to decide when it is time to move on from the economic and social car-crash Labour inflicted on the country - not the perpetrators.

It wil be a cold day in Hell before I forgive them for the damage they inflicted.

Occasional Ostrich

"Labour are now done with statements of contrition"

It would improve their lot to be "done with" Mad Hattie.

Oh . . . maybe that's not what we want to happen?

Salisbury

@Nicholas

The fact that I regard the Red Flag as being part of the Labour Party's heritage should not be taken as approval of that heritage.

On the contrary, my point is that the more they hold to such traditions, the more it should remind us of where they truly come from. Which is another reason why Conservatives should argue for the maintenance of such a tradition.

Thanks to Tom Pride meanwhile for reminding me that under Blair the Red Flag was exiled for a while. Even so, it is still surprising that it made a comeback and survives in that sense.

Occasional Ostrich

@George Laird 6:45pm

Only when he's gone prematurely bald and is sporting a buzz cut.

Paddy

What was telling, is who was not at the conference. No Prescott, no Tony Blair, no Gordon Brown.....mainly union leaders. Perhaps the more mature labourites were enjoying the sunshine.

The conference was dire and Harriet Harman is as guilty as the rest of the shadow cabinet for allowing Brown to wreak havoc.

If they think they can move on they are even more deluded.

I haven't heard a proper apology yet. Balls may say he made some mistakes.....with a smile on his face.

They need to suffer for years.

Nicholas

"If its superior postings you’re after try the evidence based Left Foot Forward (ranked no 2 in the 100 best blog category)
Alternatively Labour List (ranked no 3) where the discussions are invariably calm and intelligent"

Well they would be wouldn't they. Any dissent is moderated out so that it's basically a bunch of lefties agreeing with each other. Lefties know well how to do censorship.

Nicholas

Salisbury thanks for the explanation - I had completely misunderstood your post.

David Lindsay

Ed Miliband must have learned all the words of The Red Flag from his Communist father? That is as ignorant as the media claim that "the Old Labour anthem, The Internationale" was sung at the funerals of Robin Cook and Donald Dewar.

The Internationale, being the anthem of the sectarian Left and the sometime National Anthem of the Soviet Union, was therefore the New Labour anthem, because that was where New Labour came from: the campus-based, sectarian Left.

The Old Labour anthem was, and is, The Red Flag, which the singers at the funerals of Robin Cook and Donald Dewar banned from being sung at the end of Labour Party Conferences. If their preferred Leader, the wrong Miliband, had been in place, then so would have been that ban.