Wednesday, 17 December 2008

Jim McGovern

He’d have been a lot more than a PPS if this really were a Labour Government.
Posted by at

24 comments:

  1. Anonymous17 December 2008 at 16:51

    It's a shame isn't a real labour party offering an alternative

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  2. David Lindsay17 December 2008 at 17:01

    Oh, but there is.

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  3. Anonymous17 December 2008 at 17:07

    Where? Come on, the SWP is a joke.

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  4. Anonymous17 December 2008 at 17:08

    Really? Where?

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  5. David Lindsay17 December 2008 at 17:10

    The SWP is in no sense a Labour Party, and wouldn't thank you for suggesting that it were.

    New Labour is also not a Labour Party, and for the same reason, differing only in age: the SWP is full of silly but nasty young Trots, and New Labour is full of silly but nasty old Trots.

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  6. David Lindsay17 December 2008 at 17:10

    Follow the link from this blog, George.

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  7. Anonymous17 December 2008 at 17:14

    Google News is a party?

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  8. David Lindsay17 December 2008 at 17:15

    It's more than a party, it's a ball.

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  9. Anonymous17 December 2008 at 17:31

    But seriously, where's this new party?

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  10. David Lindsay17 December 2008 at 17:34

    http://www.britishpeoplesalliance.org.uk

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  11. Anonymous17 December 2008 at 17:39

    Who are they? I've never heard of them before. Are they real, or just one of those tiny bunches of cranks that spring up from time to time? Who runs it?

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  12. David Lindsay17 December 2008 at 17:40

    Well, you must be very new to this site then!

    We will be contesting every seat for Strasbourg in June, though nothing before that. For what we are about, see the Identity and Aims page on the website.

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  13. Anonymous17 December 2008 at 17:44

    "We"? You mean you're involved? Who started it all? How have the other parties reacted.

    Yes, by the way, I am new to this site.

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  14. David Lindsay17 December 2008 at 17:50

    I suppose I "started it all", although there are other people around - you can't register a one-member party, it's against the law.

    We'll see how the other parties react when we make a very serious play for those Strasbourg seats in the middle of 2009.

    At least half of UKIP's voters last time were ordinarily either Labour or (especially in the West Country) Lib Dem voters.

    The huge numbers who never voted for Scottish or Welsh devolution (over half the eligible electorate in either Scotland or Wales) now have no one to vote for.

    Nor have (or ever have had) the very many left-leaning Unionists and pro-Union Catholics in Northern Ireland.

    Catholics elsewhere are no longer part of the Labour coalition at all, really.

    And so on, and on, and on.

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  15. Anonymous17 December 2008 at 17:53

    I'd expect the vast majority of those people to vote Labour. Or, maybe, UKIP. It takes a long time for a new party even to get noticed by the general public - I'd never heard of you until now. How are you going to get to people?

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  16. David Lindsay17 December 2008 at 17:58

    "I'd expect the vast majority of those people to vote Labour."

    Dream on! I nearly fell off my seat laughing when I read that. Dream on!

    "Or, maybe, UKIP."

    Runs the serious risk of not existing at all by June. Certainly, its star turn from last year hasn't been a member for years.

    At the end of the day, apart perhaps from him, it was a High Tory/Thatcherite alliance in search of Old Labour (always the most Eurosceptical) votes.

    And it got them.

    But it won't get them again.

    "It takes a long time for a new party even to get noticed by the general public."

    It took Farage's UKIP (i.e., not Sked's, so essentially a new party) less time than we have between now and June. And we share the views of our target voters. It basically didn't.

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  17. Anonymous17 December 2008 at 17:59

    They'll vote Labour! Are you being paid to write this, Anonymous?

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  18. Anonymous17 December 2008 at 18:00

    They were quite canny media operators, though, with allies in the press and a LOT of money.

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  19. David Lindsay17 December 2008 at 18:02

    Paid by whom any more?

    Only twenty-two per cent of eligible voters last time voted Labour, and a mere twenty per cent voted Tory.

    The lowest turnouts (in some cases as low as one in three) were in the traditional heartlands of pro-life, pro-family, pro-worker and anti-war economic social democracy, moral and social conservatism, and British and Commonwealth patriotism.

    So there are vast numbers of voters just waiting to be reached.

    After all, what else are they going to do? "Vote Labour"? I ask you!

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  20. David Lindsay17 December 2008 at 18:04

    On the Press, watch this space. And they were utterly scorned by the BBC, which literally refused to say their name, still calling them "Others" even after they had received more votes than the Lib Dems.

    On money, how much did they ever really have? And you don't really need all that much. If you have one or two other things...

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  21. Anonymous17 December 2008 at 18:08

    Is the BBC going to use your name, then?

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  22. David Lindsay17 December 2008 at 18:10

    Well, we'll see, won't we.

    But based on the Beeb's past form, it won't matter.

    Contrast its treatment of UKIP last time with the absurd "Pro-Euro Conservatives" the time before that, consistently featured as a serious party until the talking heads were left utterly baffled by their failure to win a single seat.

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  23. Anonymous17 December 2008 at 18:11

    Yes. We'll see. It will be funny.

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  24. David Lindsay17 December 2008 at 18:13

    It will be bordering on miraculous. The Beeb devoted six hundred hours to the last European Elections and never interviewed a single Eurosceptic from the Left.

    But then, the BBC had never mentioned the sixty-six Labour MPs (including National Executive Committee members, former Cabinet Ministers, and an MP who had resigned from the front bench for the purpose) who went into the division lobby night after night against Maastricht.

    Nor had the forty-four who then voted against the European Finance Bill troubled Auntie.

    Instead, she lavished attention on the much smaller number of Tory opponents of Maastricht, and then on the handful that merely abstained over European Finance.

    But, as both UKIP and the Pro-Euro Conservatives showed one way or another, it doesn't really make all that much difference.

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