An Important Election Intervention from the Left-Wing Intelligentsia

Beer Moth

These people are taking the piss, yes?

They look forward to the LibDem's progress and their offering "...a new, internationalist approach to foreign affairs and immigration..."

As in letting 600,000 illegal immigrants have legal citizenship and settlement rights; they can each bring one relative so now then, that's 1.2 million in the one swoop.

Nice one fellas. And it's just a one off, honestly. No, honestly.
So all you millions who hear about this and fancy doing the same, don't you think we'll let it happen ever again.

Yeah that should put a stop to the problem.

Left-wing intelligentsia? Bright as a 2 watt bulb.

DDD

Left-wing intelligentsia? A contradiction in terms.

Augustus

"...the decision to back the Liberal Democrats in this election is a difficult one."

"The agony and the Cleggstacy"!

Noa Zrk

Mr Bright

I wonder why you spare the time to write this infantile guff?
Let us imagine, for a moment, that 'progressive liberals; were asked to personally accommodate and support immigrants into their own houses, until such time as they decided to leave.

Would they? Would you?

If the answer is no, why would you ask anyone else in the UK to do it?
Because they are;
a) white and disenfranchised,
b) poor and life long Labour voters
c) live 200 miles away from you in the North?

Labour may have lost some intellectual firepower, but its not to that contradiction in terns, the "left wing intelligentsia".

Now, like the very naughty boy you are, go and stand in the naughty corner until Nnurse Rhoda is ready to deal with you.

John Edwards

I had already come to the same conclusion. A sufficient Lib Dem vote to ensure a hung parliament makes the long overdue Electoral Reform much more likely to actually happen, bringing with it opportunities for a revival of progressive politics outside the dead grip of New Labour.

Simon Mennie

"brave intervention..."

What on earth is brave about it? Hardly the stuff of samizdat manifestoes issued at risk of arrest by a ubiquitous state security apparatus followed by detention in a mental institution is it?

NuLab's erstwhile intellectual cheerleaders finally rush for the exits as the Dear Leader autodestructs collapsing what remains of the Big Tent.Outside the left leaning metropolitan political and media class does anyone give a **** what these people think? Clegg is welcome to his new fair weather friends

"A new internationalist approach to foreign affairs and immigration"...

Translated this reads

1) more poorly supported British service personnel to be placed in danger in pursuit of more dubious overseas adventures usually at variance with any discernable UK national interest

2)Further integration of UK into the EU state without popular mandate

3)Neather Mark II

Beer Moth@ 9:56pm Unfortunately they are not taking the piss;behind the almost self parodying portentiousness of this kind of Guardianista pronunciamento they do actually mean it;they just expect others to deal with the consequences.

Peter From Maidstone

Martin Bright: Some of us have already pinned our colours to the Liberal Democrat mast.

Have YOU? If so then why are you writing for the Spectator? Anyone who could even imagine voting for the LibDems is no conservative, and no friend of England. We don't need another million 'citizens'. We don't need more taxation. We don't need more 'progressive politics'.

AndyLeeds

If you think any of those who signed that letter believe in 'progressive politics' you are a fool. Lets not forget that they all backed Labour for the past 13 years.

Recently I was sat next to someone at lunch who knows many of those figures. He/she said they would be voting Tory because 'all the truely progressive and radical ideas are to be found with the Tories'. Quite so.

KB

"...the Labour Party has lost some significant intellectual firepower here." I'll send flowers.

Now perhaps the Labour Party can return from being the experimental division of the LSE sociology department to representing the British working class. Who knows: they may even be electable within a single generation.

Fergus Pickering

Progressive politics eh? Every day in every way I am getting better and better. How are you on 'Green Issues'? There's some REgreaaive politics if you like. Got your sandals and your lettuce? Gawd give me strength.

Andy Carpark

From the Bloomsberries to the New Statesman, there is no sector of humanity that surpasses the 'intellectual left' in sheer self-obsession, self dramatisation and self conceit. In common with all other attention-seeking professions, their entire mode of existence is one long, shrill, infantile scream for attention.

Blithe indifference. They don't like it up 'em.

Frank P

"Most readers of The Spectator won't much care about this, but the Labour Party has lost some significant intellectual firepower here."

Must pop over and re-read that paragraph in Pseuds Corner.

Frank P

Augustus

"The agony and the Cleggstasy".

Excellent!

Frank Sutton

What is this new thing I keep hearing about lately called "progressive politics"?
Does it consist of disgruntled Labourites who dare no longer speak the party's name?
And what is progressive about it?

myWord

I was disappointed to read this month's Prospect magazine giving all it's got to promote a LibLab pact. Don't they get it? England's had it up to here with the cack-handed ideology of Socialists (of all colours), for now at any rate. My prayers are for Leader Cameron to pull us through the next few years.

Alexander Pelling

Simon Mennie: quite right.

But you have to understand the Left Wing mindset. In my experience Lefties commonly think of themselves as being brave, but I've never understood why. Even more commonly, they think of themselves as being good. And I've never understood that, either.

Catesby

easy to dismiss such interventions as the actions of the usual suspects addicted to writing to the papers to remind themselves of their own sense of importance.

Yep. Very easy.

And dead on the money.

Hawkeye

"... the Labour Party has lost some significant intellectual firepower here."

Only if you believe the horse-a**ed theories that these fools come up with. I agree with KB (above). Losing the leaden weight of the "intelligentsia" might result in Labour coming up with something halfway sensible.

bertie van rental

So - defection of major left wing intellectuals from labour to the lib dems - must be the first time that both parties average IQ has risen as a result.

Raffles

What utter smug nonsense. If progressive is what the LibDums stand for put me down for Regressive toute suite. These self important nobodies would not know how a business works and are utterly irrelevant except in their own delusional fantasies. The Socialist Project has been comprehensively smashed to pieces over the last few decades and yet these imbeciles cling to the vacuous shell that is the LIBDUM party to keep their flag flying. Its almost funny were it not so nausea inducing.

David Lindsay

It will be a great shame if these people are able to present themselves as the Lib Dem commentators whom the media will now be seeking to employ, having left that party's subculture free of any scrutiny up to now.

Likewise, it was a great shame that these people are able to present themselves as the Labour commentators whom the media were then seeking to employ, having left that party's subculture free of any scrutiny up to then.

But other comments here are correct: they have at least cleared the way for Real Labourites, if the media have the faintest idea where to look for them. Shame about Real Liberals, but that's the big time for you. You have only hit it when these people get to pass themselves off as you.

merlinthepig

Why was my comment removed or don't I have a right to know?

Rhoda Klapp

I saw this one as I was going out for the day. No time to comment, but I thought I could rely on like-minded folk. I was right, but this is beginning to seem to me as if Martin is having a laugh. 'Left-wing intellectual' is likely to ring the bell that has us all slavering like Pavlov's best friends. Martin probably show the best comments to all his leftie mates. Probably in a phone box by now.

Admit it Martin, you're taking the piss.

Andy

One rather feels Stalin had the right idea when dealing with the 'left-wing intelligentsia' or 'intellectuals'. When he got fed up with them he had them Shot.

Nick cohen is a tory

I must admit Mr Bright you have been proven correct about Labour replacing Brown. Gordon has been a disaster.
After the election you and I will be worrying about 2 different elections.
I hoping that Cruddas or Johnston gets the leadership of the Labour party. You asnd Mr Cohen with large smiles on your faces about the results of the general election, hoping he can get your pal Boris to replace Dave for the next but one election.
Who is your mate Nick Cohen supporting , his last article at standpoint pointed towards the Tories. It wss a muddled article in which Mr Cohen swings like a drunken boxer.
Nothing about how he would solve the problems, You feel that he is more inclined towards the Tharcherite/Hannan model for solutions.
A little like yourself eh Comrade

Noa Zrk

Rhoda. Which dis-qualification disbars a great many of us.

Never mind though, the new generation of Labour leaders will almost certainly require Al Quaeda and Taleban antecedants.

hadrian

I long ago concluded the so called Left Wing Intelligentsia were as empty headed as the scarecrows they so often resemble. It happened when I met their one of their favourite mantras- 'Property is theft.' which of course must mean 'Theft is property'. Incoherent- and very dangerous - clapcrap.

Marcher Baron

This reminds me of a satirical song I heard when I was at school:

My father is a left-wing intellectual;
He supports the Co-op movement, do or die.
"We must nationalise," he cries,
"Down with private enterprise!"
But his divi comes from shares in ICI.

Judy

Mmm, yes, Martin. I'm particularly highly impressed by Jeanette Winterson having signed this letter. Her political acumen is in reverse quality to the best of her books. Susie Orbach, another political/feminist giant whose claim to political insight is????John Kampfner, the man behind the two stellar New Statesman issues on the "kosher conspiracy" and "Blair's bombs", Yasmin Alibhai Brown with her "zionists fund the Labour Party" and other richly insightful analyses of British politics, Richard Dawkins with his rich insights into his own ego and the faith communities of Britain....

Yes, the Labour Party has lost tremendous intellectual firepower with these characters defecting to the LibDems. Fortunately, Labour still have Gordon Brown for shooting themselves in their own foot. This particular branch of the self-important- self-righteous tendency will be very much at home amongst the LibDems.

Who they will impress apart from you, Martin, is quite another matter....

Noa Zrk

"...the peculiar circumstances of this election mean that people are making their decisions on a very local basis. I have a tribal loyalty to the Labour Party...".

Two interesting observations; curiously juxtaposed.

In my constituency my choice will be between UKIP and the Conservatives. The local election's Lib-Dem candidate, the only party representative to visit so far, has already informed me that he is voting conservative in the national election!

The horse whip remains ready for any Labour footman who darkens the portal. Their presence will confirm their bovine stupidity. How, basically for reasons of blind loyalty, can such people continue to support the economic and social policies of national destruction promulgated by their leadership?
Mrs Duffy has provided more of an inside into the labour tribe than the erstwhile intellectuals that presume to shape and guide what is really nothing more than an ideological hot air balloon held down only by the sandbags of debt it has created.
You have some credence with the Spectator's editorial staff, if not its readership, do you not consider it good politics as well as good sense, in these times of surplus Labour Intellectuals looking desperately for a new trough to maintain it?

Gilek Panka

Left-wing intelligentsia... hahahahaha

John Shields

'Progressive'. Why do people use this word? Even the BNP think that their policies are 'progressive'!