Can you contain your anticipation at the impending Purple Book, in which people who must by definition be deep into late middle age will proclaim their Newness as they have already been doing for 20 years, and will profess themselves Blairites nearly that long after Blair emerged from previously total obscurity to be anointed and crowned as Leader of a Labour Party in any case guaranteed to win the then-forthcoming General Election?
Anointed and crowned, specifically, by the BBC and by one Rupert Murdoch, to whom Blair, a County Durham MP, once made pilgrimage and paid court rather than attend the Durham Miners' Gala.
No, nor can I contain my anticipation.
Projects that I do not propose to discuss here at this stage, but about which several regular readers are asking me today in the "light" of this "news", are and will be either entirely unaffected or positively assisted by this hilarious exercise in the vanity of advancing old age among the soixante-huitards.
What I don't get is that purple was the colour of New Labour. I can't remember that. Round here, purple is the colour of the Independent councillors who are the only serious opposition to Labour. Nationally it is the colour of Ukip.
ReplyDeleteAh, yes, those who co-operated with the sensible ruling element within the Labour Group on the late, lamented Derwentside District Council. Against the Far Left and those who fancied themselves as being. The latter organised by and around Kevan Jones MP.
ReplyDeleteI remember Alex telling them in Group that he had enough votes to keep the position of Leader of the Council with or without them. Purple politics, indeed. If the Greatest Hits of the Nineties want a fight over who embodies it, or ever did, then they are very welcome to one.
You will also remember the intakes of breath at that expulsionable utterance by one of your political godfathers. But you always did approve of that, in fact it shaped you, an Old Labour right wing clique protected from their own party by deals with the local trading name of the Tories. Readers should be aware that is where David Lindsay is coming from and that is where David Lindsay is going.
ReplyDeleteTessa Jowell, Liam Byrne Alan Milburn, persons called Liz Kendall and John Woodcock of whom nobody has ever heard. Possibly even David Miliband, oh, the thrill of it! It is all being paid for by Lord Sainsbury.
ReplyDeleteWhat, no Stephen Byers?
ReplyDeleteAnd would that be the same Lord Sainsbury who bankrolled the SDP before being made a Minister by Blair without the rate for the job?