The
Labour Party is currently hunting around for an identity which it can
sell to the British electorate on the supposition that the important
thing is to find a recipe to please the electorate rather than have a
manifesto which contains the substance of what the party stands for.
I suppose this is a perfect example of when a political party is run by a set of university taught intellectual professionals who's move through the ranks started in the university environment rather than the streets where their main crusade should be directed.
The old Labour Party parliamentarian (with the exception of a few) were not a career politicians. They were largely from Industry, or Local Government. Trade Union based they were naturally integrated with the people they chose to serve and their problems were their problems. They didn't have to define their ideology, their ideology defined them and they would find it corrupting that the Party they loved and cherished had morphed into New Labour.
New Labour was an experiment, the creation of Tony Blair with its missions to be elected at any cost. They would tailor their policies to flatter a specific section of the electorate, redefining the targeted electoral base to include people who were clearly of a more right wing Tory persuasion. In doing so the base of the old party were forgotten or at least assumed to be captured and their needs were allowed to wither on the vine.
If you want to know why affordable houses were not built, why the educational system has repeatedly failed the poor leaving them worse off after so many years of Labour rule, if you want to understand why the infrastructure and the skill base has deteriorated particularly for that section of the population which the Labour Party came into existence to protect, look no further than Tony Blair and his electioneering plan to shift the emphasis towards the Tory heartlands and the middle-class vote.
It seems to me a new party has to be created, a visionary party which would shake up the establishment and re-evaluate the direction from first principles, not as an accommodation to Conservative principles but radical policies not afraid to re-establish a proper redistribution of wealth through the Income Tax system.
All governments seem to have been blinded by the Friedman low tax/no tax scenario as if taxing people who earn massive amounts of money is a crime and that these entrepreneurial maestro if upset will leave in droves. Leave to go where ?
A person lives and arranges their lives within a country for a whole range of reasons and a fair properly constituted tax system would not be reason for ignoring all the benefits that living in this country brings.
If the Party creates a distinguishing "alternate voice" I believe there will be sufficient time for the brutality of the Tory plans to effect enough people for a majority to vote anti Tory at the next election. If not perhaps there is no hope for the English and a move to Scotland is on the cards !!
I suppose this is a perfect example of when a political party is run by a set of university taught intellectual professionals who's move through the ranks started in the university environment rather than the streets where their main crusade should be directed.
The old Labour Party parliamentarian (with the exception of a few) were not a career politicians. They were largely from Industry, or Local Government. Trade Union based they were naturally integrated with the people they chose to serve and their problems were their problems. They didn't have to define their ideology, their ideology defined them and they would find it corrupting that the Party they loved and cherished had morphed into New Labour.
New Labour was an experiment, the creation of Tony Blair with its missions to be elected at any cost. They would tailor their policies to flatter a specific section of the electorate, redefining the targeted electoral base to include people who were clearly of a more right wing Tory persuasion. In doing so the base of the old party were forgotten or at least assumed to be captured and their needs were allowed to wither on the vine.
If you want to know why affordable houses were not built, why the educational system has repeatedly failed the poor leaving them worse off after so many years of Labour rule, if you want to understand why the infrastructure and the skill base has deteriorated particularly for that section of the population which the Labour Party came into existence to protect, look no further than Tony Blair and his electioneering plan to shift the emphasis towards the Tory heartlands and the middle-class vote.
It seems to me a new party has to be created, a visionary party which would shake up the establishment and re-evaluate the direction from first principles, not as an accommodation to Conservative principles but radical policies not afraid to re-establish a proper redistribution of wealth through the Income Tax system.
All governments seem to have been blinded by the Friedman low tax/no tax scenario as if taxing people who earn massive amounts of money is a crime and that these entrepreneurial maestro if upset will leave in droves. Leave to go where ?
A person lives and arranges their lives within a country for a whole range of reasons and a fair properly constituted tax system would not be reason for ignoring all the benefits that living in this country brings.
If the Party creates a distinguishing "alternate voice" I believe there will be sufficient time for the brutality of the Tory plans to effect enough people for a majority to vote anti Tory at the next election. If not perhaps there is no hope for the English and a move to Scotland is on the cards !!
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