They are in any case going to be rewritten, though not abrogated, in other contexts soon enough. But one of my better-connected associates has today regaled me in detail with how there was almost nothing here or here from which Ed Miliband would dissent, and how he would easily have met the criterion laid down in the second one.
This was a variation on what is now the recurring theme in my dealings with the Labour Movement's great, good and almost: "Now that we are Blue Labour, why don't you come back?" Well, let's see the outcome of the AV referendum, and thereafter, in the unhappy event of a No vote, the outcome of Peter Hain's proposal for affiliated consultees, though at least ideally only if the other lot also adopted them.
They are in any case going to be rewritten, though not abrogated, in other contexts soon enough.
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Ed could have written the 2020 Vision stuff and you are right, there is not much of the BPA stuff that he would disagree with. I know you have a thing about being younger than his PPS and all, about how you were never given a seat above parish level in all those years of Labour activism, about how you have missed the boat for your generation. But you are an important voice and just setting up or running an "affiliated consultee" will never get you a seat. Not in the Commons.
ReplyDeleteSorry but not surprised that you are still not going back to Labour. The balance in the Lanchester ward is now different, giving you more chance of a school governorship or the Parish Council chair or whatever as a Labour-allied Independent than as a Labour party member. And FFS (pardon me), you should have been long past all that by now. They should have given you a district seat in 2003, you would have been an MP somewhere this time. You are closer to people like Lord Glasman than someone like Chuku Ummana, and Ed M wants to present them as his intellectual godfathers. Even before you left, never mind if you had stayed in up to now, you had far more of a record as a Labour activist than almost any first time MP last year, some of them are straight out of Oxford and a great many have never delivered a leaflet, barely attended a party meeting, definitely never done anything like school governor work. So it could have been you as PPS to the Leader at least. A Minister in a the next Labour government. You should have been. No wonder you refuse to go back to the troglodyte hobbits who held you back.
ReplyDeleteThere's also the point that your appeal is much wider than to Labour alone. You are a guru to a mass movement, the left-right alliance that Neil Clark so rightly proclaims.
ReplyDeleteLike the idea of something in the 2020 Vision/BPA mould as an affiliated consultee if they do go ahead with them. Be good to have at least one that isn't mumsnet or some other outlet for middle-class, largely female self-pity and bullying. But @15:20 is right, you should have had so much more.
ReplyDeleteNo surprise to me that your local party kept you down, that is what they do to protect their own pensions otherwise known as councillor's allowances. But you persist in defending "the municipal order". Why?
@15:39, if Labour really did want to re-engage with its own Catholics, social conservatives, royalists, Eurosceptics, Unionists, people in the countryside and so on, and through them with those wider worlds being offered nothing by the coalition, then David Lindsay would be Ed Miliband's man. The suggestion @15:20 that he could have been Miliband's PPS if he had not been "held back by troglodyte hobbits" is a truly tragic case of what might have been. We can only hope that he will be well enough known by 2015 to be brought in under some title or other so as to get on with this vitally important work.
ReplyDeleteYes, Anonymous 15:39, Neil certainly is ubiquitous. In marked contrast to his critics, who appear to have been run out of town. Quite right, too.
ReplyDeleteIt would still be better to see a new party under AV, always with a small number of MPs without whom Labour could never form a government. Would you do a Lloyd George, Mr Lindsay, and insist on being Prime Minister even though the other coalition party had far more MPs, because they needed you far more than you needed them?
ReplyDeletePerhaps they are in prison, they certainly belong there.
ReplyDelete"Neil certainly is ubiquitous." Alas, he has been lost to sports writing and lets the side down.
ReplyDelete"You are a guru to a mass movement, the left-right alliance that Neil Clark so rightly proclaims." No anonymous @15.39, its the other way around. Neil's philosophy is evident in his many writings, his 'Save Botley Library' and 'Campaign for Public Ownership' blogs have overflowing comment sections. Some rotten people might call them fronts, but the later is cross-party (Communist Party of Britain, Respect and the Socialist Labour Party) and you can't get more mainstream than that.
Neil Clark stabbed the BPA in the back. Be very careful of him.
ReplyDeleteHe did no such thing, as you will soon enough see. He is a very great man, as you will soon enough see.
ReplyDeleteAs for the links from the CPO website, while they wouldn't all be mine, merely having ties to them is not a sign of being outside the mainstream of the party of John Smith and Ed Miliband, the party that is universally expected to win the next General Election.
"He did no such thing, as you will soon enough see. He is a very great man, as you will soon enough see."
ReplyDeleteNeil Clark's magnum opus on Yugoslavia has found a publisher? Do reveal more, or persuade him to do so.
No, no, something else...
ReplyDeleteHe's become a regular contributor to The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph and The Times at last?
ReplyDeleteAlways has been. On the Guardian, especially, he is now practically staff.
ReplyDelete