Saturday 11 June 2016

Shouldn't we be calling New Labour "Neo Labour"?

It's almost as though people, including MPs, aren't one-dimensional ciphers for memes and media campaigns. There are some spectacularly awful MPs on every side of the house, and some spectacularly good ones too. A good Tory is hard to find, in my opinion, but they DO exist. Easier to find them among the Greens and Labour... Jeremy Corbyn was on The Last Leg last night and wsa asked "How many of your MPs are at home watching right now hoping you'll cock this up?" - he reckoned about half. So to mind the glass is also half full.

But I'm thinking less and less about left vs right these days That old binary system of thought is well past its sell-by date, surely. To my mind it's more about the neoliberal wealth hoarders vs. humanity.

Jeremy Corbyn is almost uniquely unqualified to be a minister, bless him, and especially leader which is precisely why he should be, and why I and about half a million other members of the Labour Party support him.

Like Groucho Marx who wouldn't belong to any club that would have him as a member, and the old adage (was it really Douglas Adams coined this, bless him?) that anyone who seeks power is by definition unfit to hold office, Corbyn was reluctant to stand and only did so after John McDonnell, who had stood twice before, insisted "it was his turn".

Corbyn's was the last minute nomination of a truly Old Labour principled and uncompromising left winger, made so that the others - all New Labour Blairites through and through - could prove once and for all that Old Labour was finished and neoliberal New Labour was what everyone wanted.

Shouldn't we be calling them Neo Labour, really?

Because the result was abject failure. An almost total rejection of the warmongering, PFI wielding, NHS destroying, financial crash enabling privatisation-friendly clause 4 revoking neoliberal New Labour experiment. The experiment that said it was acceptable to get elected at any cost fell flat on its face because it turned out the cost was way more than anyone was willing to pay, even if it was the remnants of a previously successful administration demanding the payment.

2 comments:

  1. Excellent post. And yes, the "neo" rather than "new", as in Labour is fitting.

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    1. Thanks! I'm definitely keeping that one, it's far more meaningful than "Bitterites" (even though that one *is* quite funny).

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