Old Labour was Welsh second only to being English. Neil Kinnock's two immediate predecessors were Englishmen, but they both sat for Welsh seats.
Whereas the Welsh were very conspicuously absent from New Labour. I often wondered why no one ever seemed to remark on that.
But with the very Welsh Glenys Kinnock now in the Cabinet, is Welsh influence back in the ascendant now that New Labour is becoming a thing of the past?
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"New Labour" is essentially a creature of Think Tanks and Islington.
ReplyDeleteAs they spread their influence it was obvious they would spread out from Islington thru England.
Thus we had Peter Mandelson in Hartlepool and David Miliband in South Shields and Yvette Cooper in West Yorkshire.
This happened of course thru pressure from Party HQ but it also happened because the local constituencies were so weak that they let it happen.
In 2005 it did not work in the Welsh Valleys where the Party Machine refused to let it happen.
Ive already stated that this was the turning point ......the high tide of New Labour has been ebbing since then.
Hutton, Flint, Blears, Miliband, Purnell etc are now on the retreat (taking different directions)but they have weakened the Party.
Well, that's only half the story. The Scottishnness of New Labour is also of the utmost importance. And see a post today about Northern Irish influence. Wales and provincial/working-class England were the big losers in the transition from Old Labour to New.
ReplyDeleteBut Wales is indeed a happy and even hallowed land. Seventy-four per cent of those who could have voted for devolution there declined to do so.
Ex-Labour Independents and small parties have lately captured many council seats, captured and retained the erstwhile Commons seat of Aneurin Bevan and Michael Foot, and captured and retained the corresponding seat at Cardiff, all on programmes as far from the economic sectarian Leftism that New Labour used to profess as from the social and cultural sectarian Leftism that New Labour now professes.
A lesson to us all.