Everything’s going the Tories way at the moment but that hides their awful problem. They don’t have an alternative.
All the charm the public schools can supply. All the populist answers every party promises but none deliver on: less crime, less waste, less government, more happiness per acre.
A nice new Blair as leader and a pretty competent front bench.
But no alternative because the only alternative to New Labour is Labour.
They’re praying for a seismic shift like 1979’s and there’s certainly one building but its not going the Tory way. The problem is that l979’s was the shift to Markets, monetarism, lower taxes and privatisation. Call it Thatcherism though we carried it on (with a friendlier face)right up to today. When its not only run its course but led to disaster.
The seismic shift therefore is:-
*From deregulation to re regulation. Especially banking and financial services. They got us into this mess in the first place and if we’re going to have to rescue them we have the right to regulate the bastards
*From the market which has choked in a credit crisis to the state to invest, prime the pump and do what the private sector now wont particularly in housing or cant in better public services
*Rebalancing the economy from finance which has failed to production which has been excessively squeezed. Penalise credit which goes t asset inflation. Subsidise that which goes to investment in the productive economy.
*Managing interest rates for public purposes instead of letting the Bank do it in the interest of the banks
*Shifting the emphasis from the problem of the seventies and eighties, inflation, to that of the post was period: growth
*Putting equality back on the agenda after the excesses of wealth have produced this mess and imposed all the sacrifices on the poor
*End the power of the market. Government should manage it for growth with Keynesian interventions in spending, investing and boosting demand
All of this is anathema to the Tories who believe that government is the problem not the solution. Their rank and file, if not the leaders want to regress back to Thatcher.
It’s even going to be difficult for us to revive our own faith in government after maligning, weakening and carving bits out for so long. Time to talk straight to the people. Tell them we’ve managed the economy for ten years with New Labour policies. They’ve worked. We’re all better off. But now things have changed. The world’s more difficult. Forces beyond our control have changed everything. So we’re changing the policies. New times demand new measures to protect the people and reverse recession. We are the only party which can weather the storm. And we’ll do it together. Indeed new policies are our only prospect of success and continuing as a better Labour government.
Which points to a road block. If Labour doesn’t do it no one will. The pressures to social democracy will still be strong but a hung Parliament can only stumble not lead to it.
I’ve seen the future and it’s Labour. Have a look at it Gordon. You’ve got the summer to change track.
* * * * *
We await the verdict of Glasgow East which may be in a language no one can understand but elsewhere he signs are that Labour’s Electile Dysfunction will ease because hysterical anti Gordonism has run its course and built its antibodies.
The commentariat which worked itself into a hysterical state in which Gordon could do nothing right-where from June to December last year he could do nothing wrong-has discredited itself by its own excesses
Cameron’s debting technique which is a simple one of chucking a rotten egg, an insult, a piece of shit, a sneer, a lie then a half truth without allowing any time to reply to any one is beginning to look like what it is, shallow shit raking by a shallow shit head.
People who know that something’s gone wrong want an alternative but the Tories have nothing much to offer except the return of the mummy. If Gordon produces new policies and corrective medicine in the autumn financial statement then he can seize the moment and the mood.
* * * * * *
Gordon’s going on holiday to Aldborough. Not an inspired choice. He can’t have got my letter offering my house in Grimsby. David Cameron’s going to Cornwall though he should have gone to the western Isles as the furthest point from Europe. But now that Tony Blair’s life is one long holiday where does he go for his holidays?
* * * * *
Why should we feel so guilty about withdrawing troops from Iraq that we have to promise to shunt them into Afghanistan? They shouldn’t be in either, but particularly not in an unwinnable and unnecessary war in Afghanistan.
Do we really want PM’s QT to be prefaced every week by a tribute to half a daub British servicemen who died, so we’re always told defending democracy? Our two little wars have cost £22 billion so far and rising every week. In the US Obama has fallen into the same trap which makes me mistrust his judgement too.
