Study Leave

Rhoda Klapp

Rhoda too will not be posting until she has thought about the future of the left.....OK, finished!

In2minds

"I will be taking a sabbatical .......I will return for party conferences".

There's a true professional journalist, spots a freebie a mile away!

Anne Wotana Kaye 1

"the historical connections between Britain and the Islamic world."
==========================================
Being buggered as usual..................

lindenlea

I am really glad more intelligent and sensible people on the left are giving serious thought to these issues. The moderate majority need to hear views that address the realities they face and their concerns about the future.

lindenlea

Cuffleyburgers

Martin

I appreciate you're a well meaning chap and so I hope your cogitations lead you to the realization that while the Left may possibly have had a hand in making GB a more civilized place in the C19, it has precious little to offer nowadays.

The left wing of the labour party is a ridiculous place, nonsensical- how can anyone believe they will make anybody's life better? let alone letting anybody make their own life better.

The right wing of the labour party is even worse - idiots prating on about stuff they don't understand - they'd say anything to be elected.

The liberals - having ditched the scots idiot who was further to the left than Blair, are now in a more powerful position (nominally at least) than they have been for 70 years.

Big government has been shown to fail. Every single time. The challenge for the left if you like is how to shed the baggage of failed statism and come out in favour of localism, respect for the individual.

There is still room to outflank the tories on libertarianism.

But of course the Labour party would have to die first. Bring it on.

Linda Smith

The historical connections between Britain and the Islamic world? How about this observation by Winston Churchill for starters:

“How dreadful are the curses which Islam lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live.
A degraded sensualism deprives this life of its grace and refinement; the next of its dignity and sanctity. The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property‹either as a child, a wife, or a concubine must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men. Individual Muslims may show splendid qualities. Thousands become the brave and loyal soldiers of the Queen; all know how to die; but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it.
No stronger retrograde force exists in the world.
Far from being moribund, Islam is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science -the science against which it had vainly struggled -the civilisation of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilisation of ancient Rome.”

Noa

And so we trust that, having thought deeply on these matters during dreamy hot summer days, you will return to us older and wiser. We hope as a Tory of Gladstonian aptitude and leanings, as ready to hang a socialist as a jihadist from the same lamp post in the interest of stability, social justice and fiscal probity.

And if not, enjoy the cricket and a good hardback.

Beer Moth

I look forward to the fall, and to your tacked-together 'way forward'. And to those of countless other dhimmies who have not the courage within them to accept the fact that they have, in the shallowest name of liberty, helped dig the foundations of a gaol.

Andre

You don't need all summer to consider the future of the left - it doesn't have one.

Phil

Good luck you will be missed. The left needs people like you to try first and foremost to restore some integrity to what should be a movement based in idealism (even if i think that idealism is misplaced)

They ought to engage in constructive oppposition and need to wrestle with the fact that the techtonic plates of our politics have shifted.

Unfortunately the labour leadership campaign is not showing any candidate has that sort of vision.

David Bouvier

Martin

I fear that before you can consider the future for the left, you will have to find it. May take a while.

A few points:

1. Someone on the left needs to really deal with the fact that the command economy fails horribly, and the you need legal certainty and property rights at the local (individual, family, firm) level to generate liberty, wealth and happiness. So far Labour has just replaced awful nationalisation with less bad corporatism. Ministers need to lose the delusion that they are in charge of whole swathes of society.

2. Accept that the UK and European needs to earn its way in the world, where life and competition is a lot harder and tougher than we are used to. Long-term welfarism and complacency is hurting us more than the deficit, and it will have to hurt badly before enough people will accept that we cannot go on like this. The faster we accept this the less painful it will be.

On a personal note I don't mean to be insulting, but you are prone to a kind of smug self-regard that I think many here find a bit sad and rather hilarious. I mean all the Grand Plan To Save A Generation stuff based around forming more rock bands or something.

I fear that you will either come back with a fancy tidy up of current dogma or just join the liberal democrats.

Because frankly the organised left was a creature of the century of totalitarianism and has no were to go as a leading party of government - only as a minority party of ideology or victimhood.

David Bouvier

Or more briefly ... "I agree with cuffleyburgers"

SUSAN HILL

At least you have a decent reason for going silent on here and one you have decided on for yourself. I am sending this from an internet cafe 7 miles from home after 9 days without a server and if I were in a position to ask a question in the House it would be about the incompetence, complacency, rudeness, inefficiency and ineptitude of BT who, among other things, lost my last bill payment - made direct onto their website - and having found it, failed to inform me and having been asked by my bank to explain, informed them not me but without a word of either explanation or apology.
After spending 4 hours and talking to 9 different people last Thursday I wanted to speak to their equivalent of Hayward at BP. Needless to say, I did not succeed.
But re-your own silence... it is possible to blog AND think. And put on a load of washing at the same time.

Rhoda Klapp

Leaving aside the actual future of the left, not finished, it will be with us as long as envy exists, and resentment, which means forever save some change in human nature. And of course, a change in human nature is required before the left can deliver any effective solution to thwe problems it perceives. Anyway, leaving that aside, what about Martin?

I think his problem is what an economist would call sunk costs. The idea that you have spent so much money on a bad idea (or maybe so much blood on an ill-advised war) that you have to carry on or it is all wasted. Economists of course pour scorn on the carrying on. As soon as you know it's a bad idea, best to cut your losses. You'll never get the money (or the dead soldiers) back.

Well, Martin has invested much intellectual wherewithal in the idea of the left. In the noble aims, the struggle, the camaraderie. And that investemnt is gone now. No matter how much follows it, the romantic notion of the left ain't coming back, and I think Martin knows this, on some level or other. They still use the old shibboleths, fairness, social justice, disadvantaged people, whatever, you all know it as well as I do, but when you actually look at the people who comprise the leftist establishment now, those who dominate their press, blogging and politics, what do you see. A bunch of venal, bitter, envious,cynical cheats. A politics of 'don't do as I do, do as I say', slick-suited leadership candidates who never had a proper job, vote-slumming, focus-grouping scum. using the husk of a principled people's movement to enhance their place in the world and their nose in the trough.

Cut your losses, Martin. You do not have to move to the right like Johnson or Philips, but you really ought to see the left for what it is, not what your dreams would make it, and quit supporting the insupportable.

It's OK to reply, I know you are all that busy thinkng. As Susan says, any girl can think of more than one thing at a time.

Wily Trout

I expect you will conclude that everything was Margaret Thatcher's fault.

EC

SUSAN HILL,

"I am sending this from an internet cafe 7 miles from home ..."

I hope you didn't get a parking ticket. According to Jezza from Chipping Clarkson the traffic Stasi are pretty keen in the Lotswolds.

Sarah AB

I hope you have a pleasant and productive sabbatical - just coming to the end of mine so feeling rather wistful ...

Beer Moth

Rhoda Klapp

Your pretty comprehensive trashing of the Left is made puzzling by the glimpse, at the end of the third paragraph, which refers to 'a principled people's movement'.

This reads to me, as if in fact, you harbour at least a little respect for the motivations of the Left?

EC

This has proved to be one of Martin's most popular posts. Now that's what I call irony.

Rhoda Klapp

BM, I make a distinction between the tolpuddle martyrs working men's rights part of the left, for which I have some sympathy, and the champagne socialist do as I say bit, which I despise. Plainly capitalism unfettered by any rules would lead us to slavery and human organs for sale, as well as all manner of bad things. However I do not see collectivism as a solution to anything.

Having said that, many of the left now identify with the tolpuddle martyr meme, but cannot see that we don't actually live in the 19th century any more. They express themselves in terms of 'fairness', and 'social justice', whick makes them feel good. And that is the point of the modern left. Those things are good, therefore I am good if I espouse them, therefore those who disagree are not merely wrong, but evil too. Guardian smugness. (Kudos to Mel P who expressed the right/wrong/good/evil idea here a couple of years ago, or maybe when she had her own blog.)

Beer Moth

Rhoda Klapp

My outlook precisely. Very well put.

Sarah AB

Rhoda - interesting comment. I sometimes think that socialist novels from an earlier era - such as Ragged Trousered Philanthropists - could be coopted by the right because things seem to have progressed (at least in this country, I think) so far - in terms of health care, benefits etc.

denverthen

"Study leave" my backside. More like gardening leave. Bright's been fired.

Therefore I'm actually pretty impressed with his parting comment, consequently.

Terribly noble.

DZ

Who else said "I will return..."?

Rhoda Klapp

Beginning to miss you now. How's that ole lefty rethink thing goin' for ya?

Jack R

The only sensible course for the 'left' on this is to join 'Stop the Islamisation of Europe'; instead, the 'left' will follow the Organisation of the Islamic Conference.

In2minds

Schools go back in bit, are we all ready for, "What I did in the holidays"?

denverthen

Well, the Liberal conference is now over. Where's Martin? Perhaps he meant only the *Labour* conference. Riiight. To borrow a phrase, "I get it".

Either that or the dust all over this long-neglected 'blog' suggests it's well past that time when it needed wiping.