Tag New Labour

Entries 11 Total

Too late Labour, you had your chance

Apr 21, ’10 8:41 AM

Nick Clegg and the Lib­eral Demo­crats are as much a part of the estab­lish­ment as the rest of them but they get my vote (my first in a UK elec­tion) for point­ing out the bleedin’ obvious:

Brown sys­tem­at­ic­ally blocked, and per­son­ally blocked, polit­ical reform. I think he is a des­per­ate politi­cian and I just do not believe him.

Brown and Labour, at heart, are author­it­ari­ans and deserve to be thrown on the dustheap. This is the best chance Bri­tain has had for elect­oral reform in a very long time.

Next time maybe Bri­tain will be able to vote in mod­ern demo­cracy under a mod­ern sys­tem of pro­por­tional rep­res­ent­a­tion (not the ruse that Brown was tout­ing, the altern­at­ive vote).

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A broken society, yes. But broken by Thatcher

Feb 1, ’10 12:49 PM

Richard Wilkin­son and Kate Pick­ett writ­ing for The Guard­ian:

The evid­ence shows that almost all the prob­lems that occur most often in the poorest neigh­bour­hoods — includ­ing those that make us a broken soci­ety — are sys­tem­at­ic­ally more com­mon in more unequal soci­et­ies. Rates are not just a little higher, but between two and eight times higher. Wider income gaps make soci­et­ies socially dys­func­tional across the board.

Last Octo­ber Cameron roun­ded on Labour, say­ing: “Who made inequal­ity greater? No, not the wicked Tor­ies. You, Labour. You’re the ones that did this to our soci­ety. So don’t you dare lec­ture us about poverty. You have failed and it falls to us, the mod­ern Con­ser­vat­ive party, to fight for the poorest who you have let down.”

But the truth is that we are suf­fer­ing the impact of the massive increases in income inequal­ity under Thatcher, which Blair and Brown have since failed to reverse. In the 1980s the gulf between the top and bot­tom 20% widened by a full 60% — much the most dra­matic widen­ing of income dif­fer­ences on record.

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New Labour’s cynical electoral reform

Dec 2, ’09 7:52 AM

No Right Turn on Labour’s elect­oral reform announcement:

After a dec­ade of broken prom­ises, the UK’s Labour gov­ern­ment is finally mov­ing on elect­oral reform, announ­cing that they will pass a law before the elec­tion requir­ing a vote on the elect­oral sys­tem within two years. Of course, New Labour being New Labour it is being done for all the wrong reas­ons…

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Chilcot Inquiry into Iraq War is a whitewash before it starts

Nov 23, ’09 9:06 AM

The Chil­cot Inquiry into the Iraq war is already run­ning a pro­pa­ganda cam­paign that it “won’t be a whitewash.”

But you only need to real­ise that its mem­bers were appoin­ted by Gor­don Brown — one of the per­pet­rat­ors — and read the terms of ref­er­ence to real­ise this is a white­wash before it even starts.

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Better late than never?

Nov 9, ’09 8:15 AM

Labour (UK) have had twelve years to do this:

A fierce debate within the gov­ern­ment on how to tackle entrenched wealth inequal­ity … is to be ignited by a report ordered by Har­riet Har­man, the Labour deputy leader and the min­is­ter respons­ible for equalities.

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God these people are loathsome

Jun 3, ’09 1:12 PM

In a dev­ast­at­ing inter­view with George Mon­biot Hazel Blears pulls this lovely com­ment out of the bag, regard­ing the decision to invade Iraq:

Des­pite the fact that hun­dreds of thou­sands of people have died — and that is a tragedy — I still believe that it was the right thing to do.

If there was a hell Hazel Blears would surely burn in it.

The whole inter­view is worth watch­ing. She’s a good example of the kind of spine­less per­son who makes their way into the major polit­ical parties simply to be in power.

Her state­ment on Iraq reminds me of Madeleine Albright, who in 1996, then the U.S. Sec­ret­ary of State, was asked by Leslie Stahl on 60 Minutes what she felt about the fact that half a mil­lion Iraqi chil­dren had died as a res­ult of U.S.-led eco­nomic sanc­tions. Albright replied, “I think this is a very hard choice, but the price — we think the price is worth it.”

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The evil legacy of Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and New Labour

May 9, ’09 10:51 AM

Two things stand out as New Labour’s leg­acy: war of aggres­sion (the “supreme” war crime) and the worst inequal­ity of incomes since records began (another supreme crime con­sid­er­ing the dam­age it inflicts on every­body).

Tony Blair, Gor­don Brown and their con­spir­at­ors are little more than wolves in sheep’s cloth­ing and they’ve had much of the Labour Party and its sup­port­ers hood­winked for all these years.

Polly Toyn­bee — one of the hood­winked—may stamp her feet now but all she ends up doing is lay­ing bare how dys­func­tional Britain’s quasi-democracy is.

Because the UK is still stuck in the dark ages of plur­al­ity vot­ing (and New Labour broke its mani­festo pledge of elect­oral reform) con­trol of Bri­tain will simply pass from one wolf to another.

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Nobody does money like New Labour

Apr 25, ’09 4:01 PM

Mar­ina Hyde on New Labour’s rela­tion­ship with money:

It is dif­fi­cult to think of a more per­fect test­a­ment to New Labour’s intel­lec­tual shal­lows. On the eve of the most deadly ser­i­ous budget in dec­ades, Gor­don Brown posts a You­Tube video in which he announces he has sched­uled some inquiry — pre-empting debate about MPs’ ­expenses. It might as well have been cap­tioned “I can haz bathplug?”.

MPs’ expenses are a cross-party blight, of course. But when his­tor­i­ans come to assess this edi­fy­ing period for our demo­cracy, they may well remark upon what a pity it was that cer­tain mem­bers who were so fas­ti­di­ous about their per­sonal out­go­ings were so prof­lig­ate and laissez-faire with the pub­lic purse. Olympic over­spends, a couple of wars – they waved through the lot while per­us­ing the John Lewis elec­tric­als catalogue.

New Labour just looked like … well, small-time crooks is the expres­sion … And in the end, it’s the small­ness of these people that you can’t get away from.

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What next now that Damian Green has been cleared?

Apr 17, ’09 8:40 AM

New Zealand’s No Right Turn has some thoughts:

Now that Green has been cleared, atten­tion must focus on those respons­ible: the Speaker of the House, who allowed police to search a Par­lia­ment­ary office without a war­rant, the Home Sec­ret­ary, whose com­plaints led to the raid, and the Cab­inet Office, which inflated the import­ance and sens­it­iv­ity of the inform­a­tion in order to force a police response. These people have all either delib­er­ately attemp­ted to under­mine the UK’s demo­cracy, or (in the Speaker’s case) failed to do their duty to defend it. And they should be held accountable.

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Do you feel safe yet?

Apr 15, ’09 8:06 AM

The new UK reg­u­la­tions that man­date the track­ing of all your tele­phone calls and email.

It cer­tainly makes me feel safe to have a party of war crim­in­als and their police force track­ing every citizen’s com­mu­nic­a­tions (includ­ing whistle-blowers and journalists).

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