Last night, Andrew Neil suggested that the policies to which Diane Abbott subscribed had never won Labour a General Election. He did not specify whether he meant, for example, her sympathy for the 11-plus, for single-sex schools, for Oxbridge as academically elitist, for universities' flexible approach to entry grades if they see potential in the applicant, for the prevention of social rather than academic elitism by improving the schools attended by the poor, for raising poor pupils' aspirations so that they actually apply to the top universities, and for reinstating full grants so that they can afford to go.
Nor whether he had in mind her consistent opposition to European federalism, or her role as a voice of her ethnic community on immigration by people who cannot speak English or who come from countries with no historic ties to Britain, or her support for action against such things as not giving up seats to elderly people on public transport, or her opposition to the New Labour assault on civil liberties.
All in all, no wonder that she hated both Thatcherism and Blairism so much.
However, Neil did eventually mention "scrapping Trident" and "unilateral nuclear disarmament", which are not the same thing as each other. The first is now the position of, among other people, Michael Portillo, and has never been tested at the ballot box. Nor, for that matter, has the second. It did not become Labour Party policy until the year after the 1983 Election and, as much as anything else, two years after the secession of the SDP.
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No, mainly she's unelectable for being a racist two faced biatchi.
ReplyDeleteThankyou Andrew Neil, enjoyed it!
Every dog knows its own, obviously.
ReplyDelete"Two-faced" how, exactly?
No Labour candidate is unelectable after this Budget. They cannot lose.
ReplyDeleteActually deserving to win is, of course, a different matter. Within the field, Abbott's known views as set out here make her better than the rest. Indeed, having any known views whatever makes her better than the rest.
ReplyDelete"Two-faced" how, exactly?
ReplyDeleteAnonymous1 is probably referring to her double standards around education and constant playing of the race card. Her view is obviously that white people just cant understand blacks but that blacks understand, only too well, what whites are up to.
She constantly makes the "left-wingers" by now familiar, snide insinuations of "racism" or "xenophobia" against anyone questioning the wisdom of mass immigration,for example accusing Peter Hitchens ,(on the Politics Show a while back) of wanting to be "tough on blacks".
What "double standards around education"?
ReplyDeleteThere has never, ever been a Labour Party policy to abolish private schools. Harold Wilson used them as a parent while he was Prime Minister.
And even if there were such a policy, working to improve a system is not the same thing as already having succeeded in doing so at the point at which these decisions, which cannot be put off, have to be made.