Hazel Blears as the Stop Hatty candidate? No, bear with me on this one.
Blears may think of herself as New Labour, but she has no sectarian Left roots, she came up through local community activism via local government, she is a regular churchgoer, and she seems rather unlikely to be mistaken for a member of any Primrose Hill set.
This week, she will make a decidedly Old Labour speech at once defending the nurse who offered to pray for a patient and denouncing those councils which refuse to fly the Union Flag. How very John Smith.
Now we need to see some Smith-like proposals for social justice and for peace, and some specifics on the moral and social conservatism and on the patriotism with which Blears’s speech will identify her.
The ticket featuring any two of Frank Field, Kate Hoey and Jon Cruddas (who is keeping a close eye on Phillip Blond’s work) is not going to be on the ballot paper. Especially with the right running mate (Cruddas again?), could Blears be the best candidate on offer?
And not just because she is not Harriet Harman, who was presented as the only woman in the Labour Deputy Leadership Election by herself and her cheerleaders, notably Polly Toynbee, to whom all proles look the same much as all rats look the same.
Meanwhile, note that no one is even bothering to mention the Miliband-Cooper-Balls-Purnell-Burnham trash any more. It’s like Tony Blair never happened. Don’t let David Cameron make them all matter again.
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Blears is a Methodist who goes to Mass with her husband and Cruddas is a practising Catholic. Bring them on. The dream team indeed.
ReplyDeleteWhen you say "no one is mentioning Miliband-Cooper-Balls-Purnell-Burnham trash", are you excluding all the major newspapers, magazines and television news which has mentioned and continued to mention them?
ReplyDeleteNot for the Leadership, they don't.
ReplyDeleteWell, apart from the odd "They are so desperate that they are seriously considering Yvette Cooper ha ha". And even that seems to be fizzling out.
The disappearence of David Miliband from anyone's list of runners and riders is particularly striking.
The court dwarf's utterings should always be taken with the largest pinch of salt.
ReplyDeleteSooner her than Harman, the choice rapidly taking shape.
ReplyDeleteThere's no word on Blears opposing the sale of Royal Mail. And she was on Newsnight a few weeks back defending the privatisation of the last publicly-owned rail service, the Tyne and Wear Metro.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, she has spoken of the need for an expanded role for mutuals and cooperatives in the economy, which is very positive stuff.