Rod Liddle, Paleo-Labour's Mel Bradford

Two years on from the failure to secure the appointment of Rod Liddle as Editor of The Independent, and that incident strikes me as a key moment in the emergence, already on course to be very apparent indeed during 2012, of the paleo-Labour fightback against neo-Labour.

Just as Ronald Reagan's withdrawal of the nomination of Mel Bradford for Chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities, in favour of Podhoretz's and the Kristols' William Bennett (although Bennett went on to campaign alongside the late, great C Dolores Tucker), was a key moment in the emergence of the paleoconservative fightback against neoconservatism. Bradford had expressed views on Abraham Lincoln that were tame compared to those now broadcast by the BBC out of the mouths of black scholars. But of that, another time.

Does the Fourth Estate honour by word and deed the equal citizenship of the many millions who knowingly or unknowingly identify with the alliance of the traditional Right and the traditional Left against the neoconservative war agenda and its assaults on liberty at home, including against any new Cold War with Russia, China, Iran, or anywhere else?

Does the Fourth Estate honour by word and deed the equal citizenship of the many millions who knowingly or unknowingly identify with the socially and culturally conservative, strongly patriotic tendencies within the British Left's traditional electoral base?

Does the Fourth Estate honour by word and deed the equal citizenship of the many millions who do or would recognise that we cannot deliver the welfare provisions and the other public services that our people have rightly come to expect unless we know how many people there are in this country, unless we control immigration properly, and unless we insist that everyone use spoken and written English to the necessary level?

Does the Fourth Estate honour by word and deed the equal citizenship of the many millions who do or would refuse to allow climate change to be used as an excuse to destroy or prevent secure employment, to drive down wages or working conditions, to arrest economic development around the world, to forbid the working classes and non-white people from having children, to inflate the fuel prices that always hit the poor hardest, or to restrict either travel opportunities or a full diet to the rich?

Does the Fourth Estate give any sort of voice to the North of England, considerably more populous than Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland put together? Never mind to as many different corners of the country as possible: County Durham as well as Newcastle, the Marches as well Birmingham, Dorset as well as Bristol, and so on, including the less fashionable parts of London?

Does the Fourth Estate give us any sort of perspective from as many different countries as possible other than America, not out of anti-Americanism, but only for the sake of a more balanced view?

And where is the political party which does, where are even the individual politicians who do, any of these vitally necessary things? But then, for such is the inversion of the proper relationship, what, if any, hearing could any such party or politician expect?

But in the last two years, we have seen the emergence of Blue Labour, the defeat of David Miliband, and the rallying of the electorate to what it thought was a post-Blairite Labour Party. In the last two days, we have seen the patience of the well-upholstered trade unions reach breaking point with the neoliberal, neoconservative, neo-Labour oligarchy. The treatment of Rod was an important step towards where we are today. And towards where we shall be tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow, and the day after that.