Labour Party R.I.P.

Yesterday's event in the so-called 'Labour conference' in Brighton shows more clearly than ever than there is no such thing as a grass-roots Labour party anymore. For an 82 year old man to be bundled out of a room for declaring opposition to a corrupt policy and an illegal war shows that Labour has died. There would have been no apology had the story not hit the papers: this merely makes visible the ugly process that has been going on for a long time in the party. New Labour is an interim period, a kind of purgatory, before final absolution to the place where all parties go to die: corrupt liberalism.

New Liberalism was the pre-WW1 experiment to keep the Liberals in power by reversing everything that was orthodox Liberalism. All the old laisser-faire doctrines were replaced by welfare statist policies. The whole thing was a sign that the movement had died: the balance of progressive ideas was drifting inexorably to Labour.

In our times Tony Blair will be remembered as the short-termist obsessive who stewarded the death of his party. Arguably the moment Clause Four was dropped the Labour party died. Yesterday was merely another nail in a coffin which is being slowly dropped into the earth. This endgame has been one where style (and bad style!) has completely dominated substance. Unfortunately none of us believe any of the hype anymore, and we're fighting the power!

There will always be a progressive force in British politics. It needs to keep re-inventing itself because once it gets too cosy it stops being progressive. Labour is now dead. The seeds of another party have been sown for a long time: that party will add the environment to the old needs of peace, bread, social justice, disarmament, nuclear disarmament, gender and racial equality.

Out of the darkness comes the light!

Peace, bread, land, liberty, environment

Mercurious Britannicus

 matthewdevereux@yahoo.co.uk