New Labour: still not getting it.

I got this unsolicited text message the other day.

As you can probably imagine, it got my hackles up. 

Firstly, because it's spam. No doubt joining the Labour Party is taken as implicit acceptance of spam texts, but I don't remember opting into it. 

Secondly, because Neena is endorsed by David Miliband. I don't like him for two reasons: I've met him, and he was a minor cog in the Rendition machine. He is a war criminal, or would be in a world in which international law meant something. 

Thirdly, I object to someone claiming I should vote for them because someone else supports her. This is the worst of celebrity politics. I want to vote for a candidate based on what their policies are. What are Neena's policies? I have no idea. Her website is broken, and her Twitter/text publicity is (deliberately?) a policy free zone. Literally, not a single policy is visible. Although she doesn't like the BNP: laudable, but hardly distinctive. This isn't politics. It's sales.

Fourthly, I find the discourse oppressive. 'Thank you for your support' presumes my support: it's a Neuro-Linguistic Programming-style device to make dissent harder. The second text I got ends with 'Your Number 1 Choice for MEP'. Neena: I rather think that's for me to decide, and tired, bossy marketing techniques really don't endear you to me.

The whole problem is summed up – and Marshall McLuhan would agree with me here – by the medium as much as the message. Watch what happens when I hit reply:

Now it doesn't really matter whether or not you agree with my dislike for David Miliband or not. The point is that in a supposedly democratic organisation like the Labour Party, things should be decided through discussion, and exchange of ideas. But the New Labour structure is authoritarian and hierarchical. Members aren't important. Our opinions don't matter: we're voting fodder and piggy banks. So sending texts from a number which doesn't allow any reply perfectly encapsulates the way they treat us. This, I would argue, is where Labour went wrong. If Tony Blair and his circle had seen the members as the party's repository of experience, ideas and political nous, we wouldn't have ended up in a disastrous war, in an overheated economy, run by corrupt MPs, police officers and bankers.

I don't think this is entirely representative of the party: my local Labour MP candidates are responsive even when I'm slightly rude to them, and Ed Miliband's lot are a distinct improvement – but it's a definite characteristic of the clique which captured the party for so many years, ruined it, and won't shut up and go away.

Which is why I'm posting this: I can't simply reply to Neena Gill and her friends because she's not interested in my views, just my vote. I hope she reads this.

What a cultured life

Today's agenda: Shakespeare, then attending David Miliband's appearance, then seeing the Vanbrugh Quartet perform Beethoven, Pärt and more. If only I had the same dedication to writing as I do for pleasure.

I'll be live-blogging the Miliband experience, so feel free to leave a message via the comments or Twitter (@plashingvole) if you've a question or comment you'd like me to pass on. I'm filtering a range of questions: given that I think he's a genuine war criminal with no ideological integrity, I don't think he'll directly answer anything other than the softest of questions. But hopefully I'm wrong.

My major problem with David and Ed Miliband is that I genuinely don't know what they're for. Nor am I convinced that they know. They're Labour aristocracy (their father Ralph was a leading intellectual socialist who would be appalled by them), but - sadly unlike their evil Tory rivals, who have a very clear ideological position summarised as 'f•ck you' - they have no coherent ideology. Calling for 'fairness' is like voting for nice sunsets, while 'moral capitalism' makes me think of the mice deciding to bell the cat. They - and the Labour Party, of which I'm a member - have fallen for the belief that the Daily Mail and the Sun represent the Great British Public. Perhaps (the horror, the horror), they do: but I see absolutely no faith in Labour's upper reaches that the people are intelligent and unbigoted, hence New Labour's relentless pandering to the nastiest racist, hanging-and-flogging instincts they perceive Out There.

If the public is as awful as these papers and our political leaders believe, Labour's duty is to change that. It won't be easy, especially given the overwhelming bias of the media. Old Labour politicians know this: they used the language of the mass meeting and of the pulpit to espouse a moral crusade. New Labour is a follower, not a leader. From this, all its neoconservative and neoliberal policies flow. Extradite suspects to countries that torture? Yes: can't look weak. Privatise the universities and hospitals? Definitely: can't look charitable. Lynch the unemployed? Certainly: the Mail says they're all scroungers. Deregulate the banks? Of course - otherwise we look bitter and jealous.

The politics of fear leads to Labour ceding the public sphere to the Tories. Labour seems to assume that the population's default setting is Conservative, so they spend their time looking for managerialist and presentational differences - often manufactured - rather than making a clear and positive case for voting Labour. This is cowardice.

I actually think a lot of people like our public services, don't want people to be homeless and hungry, have quite an appetite for radical financial reform, and hanker for the days of Attlee. But we'll never know, because the imagined public is much more important to our politicians than the real one.

At the heart of New Labour

I'm at a talk on The Birth of New Labour, by Pat McFadden MP, formerly a very close aide of Tony Blair and John Smith. He was in at the start and stayed there for a long time. Despite despising New Labour, this promises to be fascinating. These are my rough notes, excuse the incoherence (anything in [ ] is my commentary - perhaps more intemperate than considered).

10 of us here, half female, half male. Mostly 18-21, ethnically mixed. Orange squash and chocolate fingers are provided.

1980s: public felt that Labour = strikes, high taxes, soft on defence, economic incompetence. Labour was reluctant to face up to why we lost.

Modernising faced problems internally - the general secretaries, NECs, other party bodies would bar reforms. Electorate saw Labour as big-hearted and soft-headed: ahead on caring subjects, weak on economic credibility, and so couldn't win an election.

Voters want more and different things every time. Choice and empowerment change expectation and Labour came across as hostile by talking about 'yuppies' and the middle classes rather than reaching out to these people. PM joined Labour after the 1983 election loss, Labour's lowest point (27% of the vote). Almost came third. Labour only had 1 majority government between 1951-1997: we were the natural party of opposition. The question was whether we could ever win again. Hobsbawm's 'The Forward March of Labour Politics' posited that the decline of the traditional working-class distributed most MPs to the Celtic fringes: perhaps Labour could never win again. On the right, Tim Bell and Co. felt the same way.

Kinnock started modernisation by 'dragging the party back towards electability'. We 'modernised' communications. The Tories have read up on what Labour did but misinterpreted New Labour as simply marketing, not substance.

The 1987 campaign was wonderful in communications terms: the Kinnock life-story film etc. But policies hadn't changed much, e.g. unilateral disarmament and tax-and-spend were still on the books but weren't credible with the public. Communications won't make you electable: policies will.

The problem is whether we're changing enough, not 'deserting your roots'. The 'real betrayal' is abandoning the electorate', which is what Labour did. Jim Murphy who wrote the 1983 election manifesto (not the shadow defence minister) says we were culpable for not changing enough. The different factions led by different politicians in Labour led Labour to disaster. Benn says 8 million voted for socialism in 1983: Dunwoody called it the longest suicide note in history. She was right. Concern over betraying the roots led to the wrong decisions and Tory governments.

New Labour solutions: 'compromised with the electorate'. We stressed economic credibility: Brown deserves enormous credit. He had to excise tax/spend programs popular with Labour but not with the electorate. [He's basically saying the public wanted worse public provision in return for lower taxes and Labour had to recognise this].

Blair replaced Clause 4: the statement of common ownership of the commanding heights of the economy dated from 1918, but nobody really believed it any more. The new clause 4 was 'hugely symbolic' because it was a definitive break.

[He keeps talking about 'consumers' of public service: what happened to citizens, clients, owners?] He stresses 'reciprocity' of rights and duties, tolerance and respect. [It seems to be a lot less tangible than serious economics and values. Much woolier].

We also stopped being 'hostile' to aspiration [no mention of how people made their money].
Public services: Labour had to support the 'consumer' of the services, rather than the providers. 'We tried to create a more consumerist approach to the public services'. We got rid of fear of being tough on crime and criminals, reaching into Tory territory.

Being New Labour meant 'relentlessly modernising' and being 'optimistic about the future'. Old Labour seemed to be all about the past. New Labour suited the electorate's aspirations.

New Labour was a struggle. Some of it worked through luck and timing. 4 defeats meant a willingness to accept Tony Blair's prescription (no mention of John Smith). The exceptionalism of the leader also helped. 'People-metering' of Blair was off the scale, and he spoke to Middle England, made them optimistic. We faced an exhausted Tory government, and their European struggles made them look weak. The Clinton election and the New Democrats  winning by appealing to the middle classes also gave Labour hope. Their victory gave us hope, organisational principles and communications models.

Policy examples: tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime. We'd always made excuses for crime in public perception. The Bulger case horrified the whole nation. Tony Blair made a speech which captured the moment: it was his defining moment as leader in waiting. Crime fell by 43% under Labour.

Health: everyone knew we were pro-NHS. We gave the public choice. Waiting times were a problem. Things like hip replacements could mean a 2-3 year wait. We put money and staff in, but the other thing we provided was choice. [I'm really suspicious here: he's massively skating over the rigged-market private sector stuff]. We brought in American companies to increase capacity [actually, they were promised minimum payments, whether operations happened or not - which was a HUGE waste of money]. One of NL's greatest achievements was reducing waiting times.

Schools: comprehensives produced low expectations, low results, low aspirations. We wouldn't accept selection by house prices. The left convinced themselves this was an equal system. Choice of school types was a triumph. Exam results in city academies have doubled. [Haven't people started moving house to get into them? This is a disgraceful evasion by McFadden].

Global reach: New Labour was ambitious [will he mention Iraq, kids?]. HIV, debt, trade and aid: Labour shifted the centre ground on this. Liberal interventionism: basically since the 17th century, the view was that internal repression was OK. We turned that on its head with Kosovo. That was a big controversial shift. People will have their own views, I'm just explaining why we took that shift. That policy has continued. Blair's 1999 Chicago speech explained all this. The UN was challenged to explain what a duty to protect people means. This was a New Labour philosophy on interventionism.

It didn't all go well, but on the whole it was a huge achievement. The culture of 'betrayal' on the left meant all modernisers were constantly accused of betrayal - see Philip Gould's book. Actually we were just trying to make the Party fit for the 20th century. We were overly obsessed with media management, especially in government. There wasn't a New Labour press, only hostile left and rightwing press. This explains why New Labour courted Murdoch. News International were capable of changing sides, unlike the Guardian/Independent/Mirror and the Mail/Express on the right. Clinton used to remark to Blair that it's amazing what you do without a natural press constituency.

We failed to continue modernising the party while in government. The division between Tony and Gordon became a huge problem later but I don't want to go over it all again. It was policy difference, not personality. At the time Gordon came in, he though success required distancing himself from New Labour: that was a mistake.

Results: most successful electoral run in Labour history. Highest ever NHS satisfaction. Education gap between poorest and richest was closing. Crime down 43%, 60,000 kids out of poverty. We've done too much apologising and not enough defence of our record.

Don't vacate the centre ground.
Don't fight the last war - including New Labour. 1997 policies won't be the right ones for today.
But the approach is still the right one. The means - e.g. comprehensives - are far less important than the ENDS. Labour constantly confused ends and means.
We've got to win seats in the South.

New questions:
How has the financial crisis changed the applicability of all this? The state had to intervene in market failure. But that doesn't mean we need more statism.
What are the boundaries of the state and market in leaner economic times? We should have had a better industrial policy. Tories paint us as a big state party, but we don't need to be.
What about globalisation's losers? There is a human cost, e.g. jobs in the Black Country. We didn't do enough to prepare people for that future. We can't be isolationist, but we can equip people better.
How does Labour renew? Policies may change but the lessons of the centre-ground, leading the party rather than accepting what they won't wear is still relevant.

Questions from the floor:
1. The left was forgotten in the chase for centre-right voters. What about the Thatcherite idea of self-regulating markets? Labour carried it on and people are suffering. New Labour didn't address this.
A: it was a global financial crisis. We shouldn't blame ourselves, though we should have done some things. It wasn't the UK government's fault.
[I ask if 13 years of deregulating the largest financial system in the world shouldn't attract some responsibility].
We've allowed the Tories to blame us. I don't believe more regulation would have stopped the crisis. Bankers have thrived causing the problems then blaming governments. I smell a Tory plot to blame the UK government. I believe in defending our record. Gordon deserves a lot of credit, e.g. for keeping us out of the Euro. Where's the global resolve now? What are governments doing? Gordon pulled things together, I don't see any effort by the Tories to do the same. Ed is right: there should be an urgent G20.

2. Ed Miliband: people don't see him as a leader, he lacks substance. (Some people agree with this point, others object). How will Labour strengthen his image?
A. I nominated David Miliband and voted for him. My side lost. Leadership is tough. I want to support what he's trying to do. He's had a specific problem: fighting a coalition. Policy arguments are had within the coalition first - we're not on the pitch. Human rights, health bill… coalition creates a different dynamic. He'll grow into the job. He takes a different view to me: he feels we can win from further on the left. I hope that's right.

3. John Smith: could he have won?
A. He'll be regarded as an interim leader, dying 2 years into the job. I don't know if he'd have won. Winning elections isn't automatic and there was a lot of work to do. Philip Gould is good on this. OMOV in party democracy was a huge thing to do: challenging the unions on this was huge and a close-run thing. We expected to lose and planned for that. We won by the skin of our teeth. I can't say he'd definitely have won. By the time he died, for all the TB/GB thing, I think TB was always a more likely successor. That's why I couldn't understand the difficulty in accepting Blair's victory.

4. (Me) Did the identical backgrounds of politicians divorce Labour from voters? What about Anthony Sampson's identification of a 'political class' in which all parties' representatives went to the same schools and colleges, then straight into politics?
A. Was there ever a golden age? [I mention Wilson being a don rather than being rude enough to cite Keir Hardie, Nye Bevan, John Major etc.] There may be a political class. I'm not in it. There is a language that can exclude people. Blair and Thatcher could both communicate with ordinary voters. You can put too much weight on the professional politician. I can't judge whether 20 years in other jobs helps: they're all lawyers and academics.

5. Why haven't we defended our record in the press?
A. We're in danger of learning the wrong lessons. We need to stay with the voters, stop apologising and defending our record. By not fighting back hard enough, we have the massive economic credibility problem.

Me: Press inform the public.
A. We have to deal with the press. It takes political leadership. We shifted the centre-ground to the left. We forced the Tories to remain committed to overseas aid. We've made them stick to the minimum wage: they couldn't abolish it. It isn't just following the press agenda. Leadership is about capturing the centre ground then moving it over time.

End of session. I have a few words afterwards - he's an affable guy who spots my Irish name and shows me his Donegal GAA keyring. How do I feel about him? I'm genuinely impressed by the coherence of his perspective, but that doesn't mean I'm convinced: his refusal to accept that 13 years of Labour government of the world's financial hub meant that they should have acted rather than proclaiming the joys of deregulation is a real problem for me, though I do concede that the taxes flowed in.

I'm not clear what 'political leadership' is if you repeat 'stay close to voters' as a mantra: an electorate which almost exclusively reads hysterically rightwing newspapers. Sure, voters aren't slavish followers of newspaper lines, but the commentators set the terms of the debate. I'd like a closer examination of the Labour/media relationship. McFadden sees the Guardian as leftwing - to me it's centre-liberal - and he saw the Murdoch press as changeable. I doubt it: News International picked winners. We need to persuade citizens about our policies, not dump policies which voters just don't fancy - McFadden would hugely disagree. I'm not sure there's an answer to this one. Other than banning the Mail.

I absolutely agree that Labour should fight back, and defend its record, though the sight of New Labour apparatchiks insisting on its infallibility while the country falls around our ears would be a little hard to take.

I am convinced of his good faith though: there wasn't a hint of cynicism or elitism about his purpose or goals, though some closer examination of methods would have been useful.
A stimulating and fascinating insight.

More pages rustled

Only two books in the post today: 'The Complete Edition' of Alastair Campbell's Diaries: Volume One; Prelude to Power and a free inspection copy of Suman Gupta's Globalization and Literature (or, as the cover has it, suman gupta's globalization and literature).

The complicated title of Campbell's memoir is because he lost power a few years before New Labour did. Needing a large injection of cash, he wrote a censored version so that he could profit without sticking the knife into his party comrades too hard. Like a fool, I bought it. Now that Labour's out of government, Campbell can spin away to his heart's content and not worry about turning the public away from the party. Still, now I have both, there's a comparative critical discourse analysis project waiting to happen. I would like my money back after buying the first version though.

The other book is, under the new regime I live-blogged last night, destined to be contraband because it considers literature within a social, cultural and political context. Going by what I heard yesterday, we're meant to be telling students that they are 'singularities' who shouldn't see themselves as part of ethnic, racial, political, gendered or sexual categories at all. Never mind that many of my students are only just discovering that there are real reasons for their social positions, rather than luck: they're now to be treated as floating points in time - existing in a world of Twitter feeds and status updates, in NOW - rather than as part of humanity.

Basically, a privileged white academic from an imperialist nation is going to tell my students that they need to get over being black/white/Islamic/atheist/Christian/poor/gay/straight because 'identity' turns you into a victim scared to experience new things. Which is utter, utter bollocks, isn't it children? I recommend Dyer's White as corrective reading.

As a colleague points out, Orwell spotted this as elitist manipulation a long time ago: the proles in 1984 are refused a past, a history and therefore an identity. Gupta's book looks like a really good primer in the ways that literary texts have dealt with globalization in its many forms. It also suggests that there are potentially rich rewards to be had from cross-fertilising globalization studies and literary studies. I look forward to getting to grips with it.

With friends like these

Banished for their unspeakable crimes against the universe, the Lords escape with the intention of destroying it for their own ends, aided by selfish humans and renegade time lords, but are thwarted by a plucky Scot whose only concern is for humanity. But that's enough laboured metaphors drawing on the last David Tennant Doctor Who episode.



I've a proud record of never supporting Labour's leaders. I didn't want Brown to become Prime Minister (a McDonnell/Skinner ticket would be my dream team). I hated Blair before he was even party leader. I thought John Smith and Kinnock were rightwing sellouts.

But. For all their incompetent and right-leaning faults, the current Labour leadership is better by far than the Tory government which I think is going to win the election in May or June. Come the Conservapocalypse, you'll realise that Cameron and his well-fed, privileged Friedmanites (the origin of 'greed is good') mean what they've been saying in recent months. They genuinely believe in 'small government', a term they picked up from the Reaganite (brilliantly cheesy site: needs sound) Republicans.

Like Reagan, they mean big government for bailing out their friends in the banking sector, and big government for the armed service and the weapons industry (proof on its own that socialist economics works), and small government for you: worse schools, worse hospitals, less social security, fewer universities with bigger class sizes and smaller subjects, lower or no minimum wage, lower taxes on the things they spend money on (i.e. big houses) and more taxes on the things the rest of us buy (food).

So you'd imagine, given the importance of this election, that the Labour Party would be united in desperation. Determined to pull together and put aside its differences in one last effort to save this country. You'd imagine wrongly. The only thing Labour any longer has in common with leftwing parties is its capacity to stab itself in the face. Today, failed Blairite non-entities Patricia Hewitt (great voting record, you koala-bothering git) and Geoff 'Buff' Hoon (aka Whoon, identical rightwing voting record) have stirred the pot by calling for a ballot of Labour MPs on the leadership.

I'm all for a new leader. A loud, dynamic, lefty. McDonnell, Skinner, Bob Marshall-Andrews, whoever. But not now. There are reasons to vote Labour (still). What undecided voter, however, will be attracted by yet more internecine warfare? The Tories don't do it like this. They're ruthless and decisive. They assassinate their leaders in the middle of the night. Labour prefers to act like an extended family opening up old feuds at a wedding reception - and for the last few years, it's been embittered Blairites like Charles Clarke, hooked on publicity and divorced from reality. The reality is that the Tories don't care about the working and lower-middle classes as anything other than voting fodder. Hewitt and Hoon have just done their bit to make the Rise of the Torymen inevitable.

Don't be evil. Don't vote Tory.

(Here's John McDonnell's reaction to a previous bit of New Labour spinning):

This is about the fourth or fifth, (I lost count some time ago), attempt by former New Labour apparatchiks to try and reinvent themselves. We have had former Blair/Brown insider advisers Neal Lawson and Jon Cruddas with Compass, Charles Clarke and Alan Milburn with 2020 Vision, and now James Purnell and Jon Cruddas with Demos's Open Left.

No matter how clever the project's title, how well its re-launch statements are drafted and how smart its website, none of them can escape from the objective history of the part they played in creating and supporting the reactionary, political deviation that was New Labour, a political project that has brought the Labour party to the edge of extinction.

Between them all they have either been the architects of, the advisers to, the parliamentary lobby fodder in support of or the ministerial implementers of policies which have left at least half a million innocent people dead in Iraq, doubled the number of homeless families in Britain, privatised more public sector jobs than Thatcher and Major put together, undermined long-cherished basic civil liberties and forced through so brutal an attack on the recipients of welfare benefits that even the Thatcher government refused to implement.

Quoting past Labour party theoreticians, intellectualising justifications for betrayal in the language of an A-level sociology paper, and speaking left while voting right will not wash off the blood of the murdered Iraqis or stem the tears of a single parent forced off benefits or help explain to the unemployed person how they can live on £65-a-week jobseeker's allowance.

Some among this crew realised sooner than others that the only hope for their future political careers was to jump ship from New Labour and to rebrand themselves on the left. They have been assisted by parts of the media that are implicated in delivering the Labour party and the country up to Blair, Brown and Mandelson, and who are also trying to distance themselves from the creature they helped create.

Paul Flynn MP, hero

This is Classic Labour MP Paul Flynn on one of the worst New Labour ministers (now departed to fat directorships), John Hutton:

On many occasions I have criticised former Minister John Hutton. I have never seen the point of him. Personality free, he is a blank page who always bears the imprint of the last lobbyist who sat on him. The answers he has given to all the questions I have asked him prove that he is stupid. Now there are allegations that he is greedy. Of course. That's in fashion now.

Read more here.

Treason doth never prosper

What's the reason? Why, if it prospers, none dare call it treason. (John Harington)

Well, I'm in the office for a few hours - need to write a module leader's report, if that excites you in any way. lair

Today is both glorious and tragic. Glorious in that I'm having a cup of tea with the Deer Friend, recently returned to these shores from a few weeks' grave-robbing in the pyramids. Weren't they a cheap rip-off of After Eights in the nineties?

Tragic in that bitter, twisted, selfish, self-important, deluded, reactionary no-mark Blairites are stabbing Gordon Brown in the back. As I said before, I've never rated him as much more than a capitalist stooge, but I like dour, eeyoreish monsters. Now I feel sorry for him - the unwanted dog in the pound, whipped, beaten and beneath contempt.

Who the fuck are these people? Does Blears think she'll be a rallying point for the Blairites? Does Purnell think his moment has come at last? Frankly, I wouldn't recognise him if he was alone in a room with his name on the door - and I'm a politics obsessive. They're not saving the party by knifing the prime minister. They're making it clear to the country that they'd rather get some headlines by treating Brown like a gimp than run the country or make Labour electable again. They're clearly neither socialists nor Labour supporters, because all they're doing is helping the Tories. How does guaranteeing a Tory government help the working people of this country? Blears, Purnell and Hutton are traitors, pure and simple. Watch as they pick up lucrative directorships and turn their backs on the people who (mistakenly) elected them.

The Guardian's live-blogging the shenanigans here.

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha bye bye Blears

Maybe this makes me sound bitter, but Hazel Blears' resignation is one of the happiest days of my life - like all my graduations rolled into one - because I'm a socialist and a Labour Party member (I know, these things are mutually exclusive, but I exist in a state of cognitive dissonance). I hope that my constant acid attacks on her has helped foster in her the sense that the people don't really like her - but I doubt it.

True to form, she's resigned in a way designed to make herself look good and Brown look useless. He is, of course, but she's a deserting rat keen to inflict as much damage as possible. He should have sacked her a long time ago: it would have been good for the government of this country, good for the party and good for his reputation: he'd have looked decisive.

She said that she wants to

"help the Labour party to reconnect with the British people, to remind them that our values are their values, that their hopes and dreams are ours too".

But the Guardian is, thankfully, less impressed by her low cunning:

In a move that seemed deliberately hostile, Blears confirmed her departure publicly 90 minutes before prime minister's questions.

Obviously she's talking total bollocks. She represents nobody except careerist rightwing political obsessive class traitors, despite her incessant whinging that she's working class (because her brother drives a bus). Let's hope she's consigned to the dustbin of history for ever, and that New Labour goes with her.

As to the leadership, I maintain my record of opposing every Labour leader since Clement Atlee (and he drifted sharply to the right). I hated Blair when he was Home Office shadow minister and saw Gordon as his capitalist fixer - and a man who betrayed his Maxtonite roots. I see no reason to re-evaluate that position. I'd like John McDonnell to take the leadership, out of romantic socialism. If not, Alan Johnson would appeal to the electorate but not to me. Perhaps Rhodri Morgan (or in English) should be invited in: he's the leader of Wales's 'Classic Labour', which has made that country a socialist paradise, he's a heavyweight intellectual and a populist speaker and organiser. Michael Foot's still alive too.

I almost forgot: meanwhile, Labour HQ has dumped Dr Ian Gibson, for selling his flat to his daughter. Ridiculous: most of the cabinet have behaved corruptly, whereas he hasn't. Of course, it couldn't be because he's a sane, rational, thoughtful and occasionally rebellious independent thinker. He's particularly good on science. The country will certainly miss his contribution to public life.

Everyday is like Sunday…

I've popped home to see the aged parents for a day or so - I've got a taste for greenery now, and I couldn't abide being in Wolves while it's packed with triumphalist Wanderer's fans. Though it was really sweet to hear my boss and a student discussing their signing potential and premiership plans as though it was a proper grown-up football team. Still, it means that the mighty Stoke is still assured of an easy 6 points from West Mids teams despite West Brom's sad demotion. 

Today the spot list includes a gloriously unconcerned fox and two ostriches. Yes, there are ostriches living in Wolverhampton - in the yard of a pet shop near the railway viaduct. I wouldn't have seen them if I'd taken the train, but because it's a holiday weekend, we were packed into a coach which gave me the perfect vantage point to see these poor animals. 

I see the Observer's front page story is 'Key Minister savages PM over 'lamentable' failures'. As it's journalism, you have to overlook the two inaccuracies in 7 words - Hazel Blears isn't a key minister (the headline is an attempt to con people into buying the paper) and she doesn't 'savage' Brown, rather notes that some strategies haven't worked. 

Most astonishing of all, however, is the sub headline: 'We must appear more human - Blears'. Now, I've met Hazel Blears twice. The first time, she exuded all the warmth of a komodo dragon. The second time, the only connection between organic life and her was the komodo-like poison dripping from her lips (I say this as a Party member). You could easily find more empathy in your average traffic light than from Hazel. It's hard to describe how inhuman her little black button eyes are. Perhaps the closest I can get to summarising her is to say that she's the only person I've ever met who seems more real on television than in the flesh. If she zipped her head open like that Dr. Who episode, I wouldn't be at all surprised. She's classic New Labour, so obsessed with purging the few remaining socialists in the party by promoting more and more rightwing ideas that she has no vision left at all - she's HAL, running forever with no discernible purpose other than to betray her comrades. The only human character she reminds me of is Dolores Umbridge from one of the Harry Potter books - a threatening sweet smile which only accentuates the horror. 

There, that feels better. 

Mae Hen Gwlad fy Nhadau

Paul Flynn points out very succinctly that despite London's New Labour sucking corporate organs of generation enthusiastically, it's very different in Wales, presumably because there isn't a social gulf between electorate and elected. He also relates this 'clear red water' to Welsh traditions of participatory democracy and radicalism (though there's also been a strong undercurrent of cultural and religious conservatism at times, which as a Catholic of Irish descent he presumably knows about, and some areas of Wales are as politically corrupt and lazy as a one-party state can be).

No university fees, no prescription fees, free school meals for all pupils etc. etc. etc. Truly, Wales is a socialist (he calls it 'Classic Labour') wonderland as well as being a beautiful and cultured nation. Except for Tredegar.

A grubby little morality tale

Cynical Ben is annoyed that Tessa Jowell has cast aspersions on the Italian justice system by restating her belief that husband David Mills is innocent of taking bribes from one S. Berlusconi for misleading a court. He's right, of course - imagine the fuss if a foreign government minister uttered similar comments about the Old Bailey. 

However - the Italian justice system is a wreck. Mills has two automatic rights to appeal, and there's a short expiry date on these trials - if he can delay or extend his appeals to 2010, the case ends and he gets away. Furthermore, the actual briber has changed the constitution to give himself immunity. There's little outcry because the Prime Minister controls the state TV and owns virtually all the private media (TV, radio, newspapers) left. 

I really want Mills to go down, and take Jowell and Co. with him. They're the epitome of all that's soulless and corrupt about the 'Labour' Party. They don't have any points of contact with the working or middle classes in this country. Mills is a solicitor specialising in tax avoidance. With the Tories, their openly expressed ideological position is that the state is bad and the interests of the individual must take precedence over all other rights. That authorises the kind of obscene greed, selfishness and contempt for others that they routinely manifest. Once you've adopted that position, criminality is simply innovation and entrepreneurship. 

Labour, however, was founded by the people to further the collective interests of the people. We're meant to see the state as the means by which to express and implement the public will. Our party has been captured (without a fight) by a cabal which explicitly rejects this vision. Once we have a cabinet of tax-evaders, directorship-seekers, bank-schmoozers, private-education supporters and above all NAKED CAPITALISTS, we have a party of hypocrites. These people don't have a sense of social justice or collective future. They openly and honestly believe in meritocracy: the concept that people successful in one field (always finance) must automatically have a superior vision of justice, education, morality, health, diplomacy and all the other branches of government. The result is a government advised and often run by unelected individualists who treat the ordinary citizen as a shameless, lazy benefit cheat while allowing the serious criminals to wreck the economy and export jobs. I didn't see many of them arguing for 'light-touch regulation' of the benefits system, but they certainly enforced it with regard to bank regulation - with brilliant results, as I'm sure you'll agree. 

People: New Labour are entryists. They spent the 80s throwing the Trots out of Labour for using the same tactic, but they are simply a gang of wreckers who took the empty shell of a broken party and rebuilt it on shifty money and Thatcherite ideology. 

Think on this: the Inland Revnue (HMRC) don't own their offices. They were sold to Mapeley Steps Limited and rented back (supposedly, and wrongly, to save money). Who are Mapeley Steps? They're an offshore company which doesn't pay any tax. So the body tasked with collecting tax to spend on our behalf saw nothing wrong with selling its own buildings to tax evaders. The government itself sees no problem with ripping itself of, with having no faith in the right and duty of government to fund its activities through fair and just taxation. Who benefits from this? Not the government. Not us. Mapeley Steps benefit. Who does government work for? Not us, but Mapeley Steps and all its colleagues. If even the government doesn't believe in government, what's going to happen to us all? Taxation pays for schools, health, pensions, clean air and decent housing. If they condone tax evasion, all these things will decline. 

They don't have our interests at heart, even now. The question is, for whom do we vote now? I just don't know. I do know that the sorry tale of Jowell, Mills and Co. is simply a tiny little moral tale about a clique that completely lost its way, lost its moral compass and was completely captured by the glitz of the City. I'm sorry to bang on like a 1920s Syndicalist, but this was inevitable. 

PS. For more on Mapeley Steps and several other equally disgraceful scandals, read Private Eye, which is more than just old jokes for buffers, and the Guardian's recent series on tax avoidance.