The New Class War

James argues, quite correctly in my view, that it is now clear that Gordon Brown is preparing to run a campaign arguing that, as Brother Forsyth puts it, “a Cameron government will be a government of the rich, by the rich, for the rich.” Ben Brogan makes the same point in his column today: 

In a fight to the death, there is no longer any point pretending to govern in the national interest. As it was in the beginning for Labour, so shall it be in the end: class war, plain and simple. Soak the rich, crow about it, and damn the consequences.

It’s true that this is red meat for the Labour base – precisely the constituency Brown must rally first – and it’s also true that it dovetails with a classic Shrumian narrative of “the people against the powerful” and “the many, not the few”. These are familiar tunes and it is, in some respects, a mark of some desperation and of how much Labour has retreated from the New Labour “project”.