New Labour Versus True Labour

A True Tory (Sir Peregrine Worsthorne) writes:

The only incontrovertible achievement - which nobody can plausibly deny - of Tony Blair's decade in office is that he himself has ended up as a very rich man. It was very different under old Labour.

One of my first jobs as a young journalist in the 1950s was to interview Herbert Morrison - who had been a leading light in two historic administrations, including Churchill's glorious wartime coalition - and to my amazement he was still occupying the humble semi from which he sprang.

Driven around in a small Austin by his wife, Clement Attlee's last years were equally modest. Say what you like about old Labour's failure to fill the public purse, as least it had the good grace not to fill its own pockets.

New Labour would claim of course to have done both. Disgracefully, however, little of that vast increase of wealth percolated down to the lower depths of the inner cities where the prevalence of crime and violence now casts a shadow over the whole nation.

Indeed the gap between very rich and very poor on Mr Blair's watch infamously increased: hardly a justification for an outgoing Labour PM to boast about ending his premiership among the ranks of the super-rich. True, there have been rich Tory ex-PMs. But in the case of Macmillan and Home, their money was inherited - not made as a result of high office.

Politics and avarice, in a nation, will always be a warning sign of decay and decline; when venality is added to that malodorous mix, as it is today, the end is nigh. Shame on you, Mr Blair, people may envy your millions, but they'll never love you, as they did and still do Attlee.