The Test of Whether the Left Should Challenge for the Future of Labour will be if Warwick and the Party Conference Delivers Radical Policy Change
There is something nauseating in watching all those MPs and Cabinet Members now turning on Gordon Brown when only 12 months ago they so grovellingly nominated him in such large numbers that they blocked an election for Leader of the Labour Party.
The issue is not whether Gordon Brown is a personal liability or whether he is capable of getting Labour's message across to the electorate.
The reason people have turned away from Labour is the message not the messenger. Shooting the messenger and replacing him with yet another New Labour MP who has supported the politics that have nearly destroyed the Party would be absolutely futile.
The electorate aren't stupid. They would see through this stunt within weeks.
If Labour is to survive in Government and even as a party we need a new politics and a new policy programme. All of those mentioned in the fashionable media jockeying for the leadership contender position from Miliband, Johnson, Harman, Purnell and Cruddas have voted for and supported virtually every New Labour policy laid before them from the disaster of the war in Iraq to the 42 days latest assault on civil liberties.
If Labour is to survive we need a radical break with this type of opportunist politics.
Labour has a last chance to demonstrate political change through the policy programme that comes out of Warwick this weekend and is agreed by Labour Party conference in September.
If that opportunnity for radical change is not taken, it will be then that the Left will need to take the decision to challenge for the future direction of our party. Our challenge would be based upon political principle and not the career planning and plotting of politicians.
The issue is not whether Gordon Brown is a personal liability or whether he is capable of getting Labour's message across to the electorate.
The reason people have turned away from Labour is the message not the messenger. Shooting the messenger and replacing him with yet another New Labour MP who has supported the politics that have nearly destroyed the Party would be absolutely futile.
The electorate aren't stupid. They would see through this stunt within weeks.
If Labour is to survive in Government and even as a party we need a new politics and a new policy programme. All of those mentioned in the fashionable media jockeying for the leadership contender position from Miliband, Johnson, Harman, Purnell and Cruddas have voted for and supported virtually every New Labour policy laid before them from the disaster of the war in Iraq to the 42 days latest assault on civil liberties.
If Labour is to survive we need a radical break with this type of opportunist politics.
Labour has a last chance to demonstrate political change through the policy programme that comes out of Warwick this weekend and is agreed by Labour Party conference in September.
If that opportunnity for radical change is not taken, it will be then that the Left will need to take the decision to challenge for the future direction of our party. Our challenge would be based upon political principle and not the career planning and plotting of politicians.
posted by John at 9:44 AM
9 Comments:
Hi John
If we dont get the radical change we and our voters we need to be posing this question our our trade unions. They have the clout to shake the party up and I believe a majority of CLP members will follow suit.
What we must be wary of is edging towards a position that would put us apart from the Trade Unions and the decent CLP members, for example setting up a new party out of nothing. There are too many wrecks outside the Labour Party and we could become part of them with any rash decision.
The question is HOW do we challenge for the future direction of our party? Is there a strategy that could be ennacted apart from what we are doing now as the LRC?
Solidarity
Ian
Looking at the news coming out of the policy forum, I would say it's perfectly clear that there are not going to be any real changes of direction, and the Labour backing unions continue to hang onto the coat-tails of NuLab for fear of losing the (in reality, extremely small amount of) influence they have left. Their members didn't share that enthusiasm at the picket lines and rallies I attended a couple of weeks ago (my own part of PCS wasn't on strike but I did the rounds of Unison/Unite pickets) and are starting to wake up more than ever to the need for something new.
John does a fantastic job representing PCS and (I believe) RMT in Parliament, and I really hope he takes notice of their increasing calls for a political alternative when thinking of his next steps, and involves himself with a party who he can actually support on current policy rather than the long forgotten principles of the Labour party.
The need for an alternative has become more urgent.
Solidarity
The Scottish Stoner
The idea that there can be an electoral alternative to the Labour Party a a vehicle for socialist politics at the present time is (I regret) wrong.
The idea that we can get the Labour Party to put forward a social democratic policy agenda (never mind socialist!) is (I regret even more) equally misguided.
What we need our socialist MPs to do is to organise a campaign for socialist (and social democratic) policies, mobilising such forces as are there to be mobilised.
Now more than ever we need an alliance of the rank and file in the trade unions, the CLPs and the PLP - we will not achieve great victories in the near future but our struggle to transform society is the task of generations and we have no choice but to continue.
Keep up the good work John. These are testing times but the LRC can pass these tests and carry forward the struggle for socialism.
I do not think it is the time to change yet. Look at the millions of pounds of aid the PM gave to africa how many lives has that saved. Thta is left wing.
I think we should get rid of nuclear energy, increase taxes on the rich, but I also support strong laws on crime and terror.
I hope if there is leadership election the left are allowed to stand. I would vote for a left wing candidate. But we should be tough on terror and crime.
I hope the left are preparing. But I dissagree that being left wing means you have to let terrorists off the hook.
The Labour Party was sabotaged first by Gaitskell, then by the Gang of Four and finally by Blair and Brown. What do all these have in common? They are Atlanticists who are more committed to the Anglo-American business fraternities than to the interests of their own people or, indeed, the Labour Party.
Is it simply a coincidence that the Labour Party has never been so unpopular since the days of Ramsay MacDonald as after Blair and Brown took it over?
If Thatcher destroyed the Labour movement and the social fabric of Britain then Blair gave her work his finishing touches.
Personally I look upon Blair and Brown as traitors to both the Labour movement and the Labour Party. So how is it possible that a movement and a Party will tolerate traitors? Because the corrosion and the corruption of that treachery goes far, far deeper into the apparat, that's why.
The problem with Gordon is only the very tip of the iceberg...
Did the policy forum really pass Purnell's "welfare" policies. I knew the Labour Party was morally and politically bankrupt but what were the Unions doing ? With every turn it gets worse.
I think a change is needed; but I've got the feeling nothing will really change until "New" Labour are voted out.
But what saddens me isn't that we will end up back in the Tory years. It's that we've had no change from Tory policy for more than 20 years.
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