Alastair Campbell does his bit for the cause

I do enjoy reading Alastair Campbell’s blog – he’s a snappy writer and, whatever his mistakes during the Blair years, he generally offers a thought-provoking leftist slant on the issues of the day.  But this passage in his latest effort is pretty low stuff:

“American politics can be brutal, and as I remember Bill Clinton once saying, the right are far more brutal and aggressive in their arguments than the left, basically because progressives tend to be nicer people.”

He’s attempting the same trick that Peter Mandelson used in his response to George Osborne’s “progressive politics” speech earlier in the week: blindly equating “progressive” ends with Labour means, as though no-one on the right could possibly want – or, what’s more, deliver – good outcomes.  This is largely why I thought Mandelson’s attack failed; its tribalism and viciousness came across as a lack of real answers.  

They’d both do well to look at Graeme Cooke’s response