Over in The First Post/The Week, Neil Clark writes:
"When we talk about your donations, the first thing we want to do is get you at the Cameron/Osborne dinners... If you are unhappy about something... we'll listen to you and put it into the policy committee at No 10." However much Conservative party apparatchiks, currently engaged in a desperate damage limitation exercise, try to portray the party's former Treasurer Peter Cruddas as a braggart and a bullshitter, the damage has surely been done. Peter Cruddas's words, captured on film in a Sunday Times sting, have exposed, for anyone who still had any doubts, the rottenness at the heart of British politics.
While the Conservatives are probably the worst culprits, it's not just the Tories who are cashing in on 'access' to the political elite. Labour has its Thousand Club, where, provided you donate a minimum of £1,200 per year, you can receive "complimentary invitations to summer and winter receptions". As for the holier-than-thou Lib Dems, the party held a 'business dinner' at their party conference last year where, at a cost of £5,000 per person for a 'premier table', guests could talk with "the people who matter".
Of course, the rich will always be more likely than ordinary people to rub shoulders with the political elite because, by and large, they frequent the same clubs, restaurants and Alpine ski resorts. But what we've got here is something far more serious than a company director having a quick chin-wag with a government minister in the car park after a parents' evening at Eton. Democracy in a multi-party parliamentary system is supposed to be about parties competing with one another to offer popular policies in an attempt to persuade the electorate to vote them into power. Instead we have something rather different: a form of plutocracy, where parties put the wishes of their wealthy donors before those of the general public.
In other words, the policies that we get are not those the public are clamouring for, but those the donors want - and which the politicians then try to sell as being 'good' for us. You don't have to look far for examples of such donor-friendly policies. At the last election, David Cameron expressly ruled out any "top-down reorganisation of the NHS". Yet on coming to power his government announced a Health Bill which did just that. The public didn't want the bill. Neither did doctors or nurses. But the private health care sector - the main beneficiaries of the reforms - most certainly did.
The Daily Mirror revealed in 2011 that private health care bosses had donated more than £750,000 to the Conservatives since David Cameron became leader, while in 2010 The Daily Telegraph disclosed that John Nash, private equity tycoon and then chair of Care UK plc, "a leading provider of health and social care", had bankrolled Andrew Lansley's personal office to the tune of £21,000 when Lansley was shadow health spokesperson. The paper noted that Nash managed "several other businesses providing services to the NHS and stands to be one of the biggest beneficiaries of Conservative policies to increase the use of private health providers".
Then there's the government's opposition to any meaningful reform of the financial services sector which brought the economy to the brink of collapse in 2008. While the public would like to see bankers and hedge fund traders strung up from the nearest lamp-post for the damage they have caused, the Conservatives have opposed EU moves to clamp down on 'predator capitalism' and have fought against the introduction of a financial transaction tax. Surprise, surprise - research by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism found that hedge funds, financiers and private equity firms contributed more than a quarter of all the Tories' private donations, with three of the City's hedge fund giants, Michael Farmer, Andrew Law and Lord Stanley Fink (now replacing Cruddas as principal party treasurer), together contributing £636,300.
How are we to stop the rot and once again have a form of politics in which parties offer policies that ordinary people - and not the wealthy plutocrats who fund them - want? Full state funding of political parties is most definitely not the answer. In a 2011 paper, Dr Michael Pinto-Duschinsky, an expert on party funding, quotes the work of Ingrid van Bieze and Petr Kopecky who warn that the increased direct state funding of parties in Europe has led to parties being "to a considerable degree" in control of the state and state resources. A better solution would be to introduce strict and extremely low caps on individual and corporate donations. Sir Christopher Kelly's Committee on Standards in Public Life recommended in its report last year a £10,000-a-year limit on annual donations. This, Kelly wrote in The Daily Telegraph this week, was "still a substantial sum. But we judged it low enough to convince most people that it was unlikely to secure favours in return".
The trouble is, Kelly wants the state to help make up the shortfall - to the tune of £23m. But why should a hard-working factory worker in the Midlands help finance the Liberal Democrats through his taxes if he thinks that Nick Clegg is a total wally? Instead, let the parties chase new members - and new, small-scale donors. Market forces, so beloved by our political elite when it doesn't affect their interests, need to be introduced to our political system. Parties which put forward genuinely popular policies will have nothing to worry about because they'll get public support; those which put forward unpopular policies will fail. We'd move away from a corrupt, oligopolistic political system where elite interests dominate, to one where majority concerns come top.
In short we'd be living in a real democracy, which will surely be better than what we have at present.
Tuesday, 27 March 2012
A Second Iraq
John Pontifex writes:
Almost the entire Christian population of the Syrian city of Homs has fled violence and persecution, according to Fides, the news agency of the Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples. The mass exodus of 50,000 or more people to villages and towns around the city comes amid reports that the homes of Christians in Homs have been attacked and seized by militants.
The Syrian Orthodox Church has told Fides that 90 per cent of Christians have been expelled amid what it fears is “an ongoing ethnic cleansing”. Until now, Homs has been home to one of Syria’s largest Christian populations, and Church sources have said the faithful have borne the brunt of the violence, escaping to villages in mountains 30 miles outside the city. Islamists have reportedly gone from house to house in the Homs’ neighbourhoods of Hamidiya and Bustan al-Diwan, forcing Christians to leave without giving them a chance to take their belongings. According to other reports, Christians have left their homes voluntarily, in effect making way for others to occupy them to shelter from the violence.
Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need today announced an urgent €80,000 aid package providing food and shelter. The assistance will provide each family with $60 each month for basic food and lodging, with the hope that by the summer they can return home. ACN is also helping families caught up in a car bomb explosion last Sunday which targeted the Christian quarter of Aleppo, close to the Franciscan-run Church of St Bonaventure.
Overseeing the aid programme, Bishop Antoine Audo SJ of Aleppo told Aid to the Church in Need: “The people we are helping are very afraid.” Speaking today from Aleppo, the bishop said: “The Christians don’t know what their future will hold. They are afraid they will not get their homes back. “It is very important that we do whatever we can to help the people.” In his application for ACN aid, the bishop stated: “Please speed up the implementation of the project because of the difficult circumstances that Christians face in Syria.” The bishop, who heads Aleppo’s Chaldean diocese, paid tribute to ACN benefactors, adding: “Thank you for helping us. Pray for us and let us work together to build peace in Syria.”
His comments come as fears grow of Syria becoming a “second Iraq”, following a similar pattern of church attacks and forced expulsion and kidnapping of Christians. If the attacks continue, Syria could suffer the same fate as Iraq where Christians have plummeted from 1.4 million in the late 1980s to perhaps less than 300,000 today. In both cases, the Church has been targeted for perceived close links with regimes under fire from opposition parties and rebel groups. The Homs crisis has prompted increased fears that Islamists are gaining influence in the region, filling the power vacuum left when decades-old regimes across the Middle East were overthrown at the start of the so-called Arab Spring.
Almost the entire Christian population of the Syrian city of Homs has fled violence and persecution, according to Fides, the news agency of the Congregation for the Evangelisation of Peoples. The mass exodus of 50,000 or more people to villages and towns around the city comes amid reports that the homes of Christians in Homs have been attacked and seized by militants.
The Syrian Orthodox Church has told Fides that 90 per cent of Christians have been expelled amid what it fears is “an ongoing ethnic cleansing”. Until now, Homs has been home to one of Syria’s largest Christian populations, and Church sources have said the faithful have borne the brunt of the violence, escaping to villages in mountains 30 miles outside the city. Islamists have reportedly gone from house to house in the Homs’ neighbourhoods of Hamidiya and Bustan al-Diwan, forcing Christians to leave without giving them a chance to take their belongings. According to other reports, Christians have left their homes voluntarily, in effect making way for others to occupy them to shelter from the violence.
Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need today announced an urgent €80,000 aid package providing food and shelter. The assistance will provide each family with $60 each month for basic food and lodging, with the hope that by the summer they can return home. ACN is also helping families caught up in a car bomb explosion last Sunday which targeted the Christian quarter of Aleppo, close to the Franciscan-run Church of St Bonaventure.
Overseeing the aid programme, Bishop Antoine Audo SJ of Aleppo told Aid to the Church in Need: “The people we are helping are very afraid.” Speaking today from Aleppo, the bishop said: “The Christians don’t know what their future will hold. They are afraid they will not get their homes back. “It is very important that we do whatever we can to help the people.” In his application for ACN aid, the bishop stated: “Please speed up the implementation of the project because of the difficult circumstances that Christians face in Syria.” The bishop, who heads Aleppo’s Chaldean diocese, paid tribute to ACN benefactors, adding: “Thank you for helping us. Pray for us and let us work together to build peace in Syria.”
His comments come as fears grow of Syria becoming a “second Iraq”, following a similar pattern of church attacks and forced expulsion and kidnapping of Christians. If the attacks continue, Syria could suffer the same fate as Iraq where Christians have plummeted from 1.4 million in the late 1980s to perhaps less than 300,000 today. In both cases, the Church has been targeted for perceived close links with regimes under fire from opposition parties and rebel groups. The Homs crisis has prompted increased fears that Islamists are gaining influence in the region, filling the power vacuum left when decades-old regimes across the Middle East were overthrown at the start of the so-called Arab Spring.
Monday, 26 March 2012
Sovereign Wealth
RBS. Not for sale to Abu Dhabi, true friends and allies of Britain though the Emiratis undeniably are. Like Bahrain and Oman, it is beyond me why the UAE is not in the Commonwealth, whereas Saudi Arabia, to which the Coalition is far too close, and Kuwait are America's regional allies rather than ours. But none on them should be welcome to buy the public stake in RBS, a stake which, not least because it is the safeguard of the Union that public ownership always is, ought not be for sale at all, ever.
And the Office of Mayor of London, the occupant of which should be determined by the voters of London, not by the (extremely anti-British) government or (homicidally anti-British) intelligence agency of Israel, speaking through hired help on Fleet Street. Hold your nose if you have to. I would have to. But Vote Ken. It is a question of this nation's sovereignty. In view of his cheerleaders and probable backers, a vote for Boris would be tantamount to treason, and an expression of dual, if any British, loyalty.
And the Office of Mayor of London, the occupant of which should be determined by the voters of London, not by the (extremely anti-British) government or (homicidally anti-British) intelligence agency of Israel, speaking through hired help on Fleet Street. Hold your nose if you have to. I would have to. But Vote Ken. It is a question of this nation's sovereignty. In view of his cheerleaders and probable backers, a vote for Boris would be tantamount to treason, and an expression of dual, if any British, loyalty.
The Generation Game
I have just caught sight of myself, and I am dressed like a member of Blur from back in the glory days. A bit of nice weather, and I am back in the long summer of 1995. It was hot. They were hot. I was hot. Only one of those things is still true. But which one, and why?
I am amending my forthcoming collection of book reviews, out by the end of the calendar year, to include Alwyn Turner's Things Can Only Get Bitter: The Lost Generation of 1992. He means people in their early thirties at that General Election, who opted out of politics in response to it and have never come back. The Conservative Party also has a Lost Generation of 1997, with the result that there is now an Economic Secretary to the Treasury who was a few days short of her fifteenth birthday at that Election, who was only just able to vote even in 2001, and who will not be 30 until May of this year.
The SNP is laden with the older schoolchildren whom it wishes to enfranchise, with undergraduates, and with recent graduates, all the sort who are used to winning academically, athletically and so forth, and all of the age when one thinks of one's own views as the Zeitgeist. Therefore, the coming No vote to Scottish independence could easily leave it with a Lost Generation of 2014, the members of which simply will not be there to be council candidates in 10 or 15 years time, or to stand for Holyrood, Westminster or Strasbourg in the years and decades after that. It happened to Labour, and it has happened to the Conservatives, in both cases enabling a certain clique to stage an unchallenged coup.
Unchallenged, that is, until now. I have been sent the Call For Papers relating to the book of responses to Confessions of an Old Labour High Tory. The rising freelance and activist who has splendidly taken it upon himself to compile that volume calls both my work and its author "generation-defining". I make no bones about my own debts to Maurice Glasman, Neil Clark, John Milbank, Phillip Blond, Stuart Reid, David Goodhart and others, and to the practical political milieu that formed me, especially in Lanchester and around the old Derwentside District Council. But those are all people older than I, in several cases, they will not mind my saying, really quite considerably older.
Oh, well, my lot is not going to be The Lost Generation of 2010. Not if I have anything to do with it. And the word on the street seems to be that I have.
I am amending my forthcoming collection of book reviews, out by the end of the calendar year, to include Alwyn Turner's Things Can Only Get Bitter: The Lost Generation of 1992. He means people in their early thirties at that General Election, who opted out of politics in response to it and have never come back. The Conservative Party also has a Lost Generation of 1997, with the result that there is now an Economic Secretary to the Treasury who was a few days short of her fifteenth birthday at that Election, who was only just able to vote even in 2001, and who will not be 30 until May of this year.
The SNP is laden with the older schoolchildren whom it wishes to enfranchise, with undergraduates, and with recent graduates, all the sort who are used to winning academically, athletically and so forth, and all of the age when one thinks of one's own views as the Zeitgeist. Therefore, the coming No vote to Scottish independence could easily leave it with a Lost Generation of 2014, the members of which simply will not be there to be council candidates in 10 or 15 years time, or to stand for Holyrood, Westminster or Strasbourg in the years and decades after that. It happened to Labour, and it has happened to the Conservatives, in both cases enabling a certain clique to stage an unchallenged coup.
Unchallenged, that is, until now. I have been sent the Call For Papers relating to the book of responses to Confessions of an Old Labour High Tory. The rising freelance and activist who has splendidly taken it upon himself to compile that volume calls both my work and its author "generation-defining". I make no bones about my own debts to Maurice Glasman, Neil Clark, John Milbank, Phillip Blond, Stuart Reid, David Goodhart and others, and to the practical political milieu that formed me, especially in Lanchester and around the old Derwentside District Council. But those are all people older than I, in several cases, they will not mind my saying, really quite considerably older.
Oh, well, my lot is not going to be The Lost Generation of 2010. Not if I have anything to do with it. And the word on the street seems to be that I have.
Stating The Obvious
The first, or even any, 20 minutes of The World at One given over to a political story? On a Martha Kearney day? Yes, it really is as grave as that.
State funding of anything must entail some degree of State control, which can often be necessary and beneficial. For political parties, however, it would be lethal. Only parties that met the organisational and political requirements of some committee would be able to afford to contest elections. Imagine who would be on that committee. Well, there you are, then.
Except that all of this is already the case. The Big Three, in actuality tiny organisations in the country at large, are already maintained at enormous public expense. The rest is made up by a small number of mind-bogglingly rich individuals with very specific political agenda economically, socially, culturally, constitutionally, and internationally, including militarily.
The only partial exception is the party reverting to funding by means of the trade unions' mere collection of two or three pounds per year from each of millions of ordinary working people, whose contributions are entirely voluntary unlike those of shareholders in the companies that bankroll the other two.
Needless to say, that mere collection of those tiny voluntary contributions is being presented as the biggest political scandal that it is possible to imagine by those who are determined to stop what is now the impending victory of the party thus funded over the other two at the 2015 General Election.
That several of those people, such as Dan Hodges, manage to retain Labour Party membership is nothing more than yet further demonstration that the London Labour Party is a complete and utter shambles. It needs Alex Watson, Mike Malone and Ossie Johnson to sort it out. And if you don't know...
State funding of anything must entail some degree of State control, which can often be necessary and beneficial. For political parties, however, it would be lethal. Only parties that met the organisational and political requirements of some committee would be able to afford to contest elections. Imagine who would be on that committee. Well, there you are, then.
Except that all of this is already the case. The Big Three, in actuality tiny organisations in the country at large, are already maintained at enormous public expense. The rest is made up by a small number of mind-bogglingly rich individuals with very specific political agenda economically, socially, culturally, constitutionally, and internationally, including militarily.
The only partial exception is the party reverting to funding by means of the trade unions' mere collection of two or three pounds per year from each of millions of ordinary working people, whose contributions are entirely voluntary unlike those of shareholders in the companies that bankroll the other two.
Needless to say, that mere collection of those tiny voluntary contributions is being presented as the biggest political scandal that it is possible to imagine by those who are determined to stop what is now the impending victory of the party thus funded over the other two at the 2015 General Election.
That several of those people, such as Dan Hodges, manage to retain Labour Party membership is nothing more than yet further demonstration that the London Labour Party is a complete and utter shambles. It needs Alex Watson, Mike Malone and Ossie Johnson to sort it out. And if you don't know...
Battle At The Pumps
Malcolm Clarke writes:
My sister and I have an in-joke between us where every time I discuss Politics, which given my job and interests outside of work is quite often, she says "Politics does not affect me". She says this to snap me out of whatever eloquent tangent I momentarily skewed into and bring me back to reality and, my sister hopes, less intense conversation.
One occasion where I recall Politics definitely affecting me was in the year 2000 when the truck drivers took strike action and blockaded the oil tankers leaving the depots to deliver fuel to the petrol stations. Petrol stations quickly ran dry as word got round and huge queues for fuel developed.
I was 19 and I remember that unless we found a petrol station with fuel available I was not going to return to University until things improved. I realised the power of collective action to deliver a strong message to government. My own story is that we fortunately we found a petrol station with fuel and amazingly, no queue so I was able to return to my student haze.
The strike ultimately fizzled out when hospitals began to run out of stitches for operations and the pressure on the emergency services turned the tide on the strike action organisers. The price of fuel in 2000 was 80p a litre, but it was the rate of the price increases that, like today, upset consumers. Ironically a return to 80p per litre now would see street parties and I'd be the first to pop a cork!
Look at this chart of fuel prices:
Month 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011
Jan 87.3p 104.0p 87.0p 111.4p 127.9p
Feb 86.7p 104.3p 90.2p 112.1p 128.7p
March 89.4p 106.4p 90.8p 115.6p 132.2p
April 92.6p 108.1p 94.8p 120.5p 134.7p
May 95.6p 112.5p 97.7p 121.0p 136.7p
June 96.9p 117.6p 102.2p 118.2p 135.7p
July 96.7p 118.7p 103.0p 117.3p 134.9p
August 96.0p 113.4p 103.9p 116.2p 135.5p
Sept 95.3p 112.0p 106.2p 115.3p 135.4p
Oct 97.7p 104.7p 105.7p 117.4p 134.6p
Nov 101.1p 94.9p 108.4p 118.9p 133.8p
Dec 102.8p 89.5p 108.2p 122.0p 132.5p
Chart from http://www.petrolprices.com/the-price-of-fuel.html
As I write today my local station is charging about 137.9p now. As a car user for ten years the steady increase in the petrol prices has always frustrated me as the cost of MOT, tax, insurance and the cars themselves never come down. Generally the rising price of fuel raises much tax revenue in the form of fuel duty for the public purse, but causes hauliers and those who transport food around the country to raise their prices which is then passed on to the cost of the food and goods themselves. As consumers we end up paying twice for the problem, then we have to pay the additional VAT on the inflated prices.
I can well understand why the truckers have balloted to strike, the prices of petrol are crazy now. It is not so much the price but the fear that these steady increases which are way over the rate of inflation will just go on and on. Soon we will be paying £1.50 per litre for petrol! Each increase can force more families out of owning a car. Public transport is not longer able to be subsidised by local government due to their massively reduced central government grants, which hits our rural communities hard. The oil companies make billions of pounds profit per year, much good this does the struggling family, single mother or disabled person who lives on a tight budget and relies on their car to get around.
I read in the newspapers today that in the event the strike action commences PM David Cameron plans to use Army wagon drivers but this is an out of touch reaction so typical of his government. Is he asking himself why these strikes are being discussed and the pressure working class families face because of the price increases? No, he simply deals with the unrest in a practical way instead of tackling the real issues. This is a government that gives tax breaks to the wealthiest in society as a way of saying to those who evade tax, "you win". Perhaps he really believes that those who evade tax at 50p in the pound tax will make honest self-assessment returns at 45p?
Strike action should always be a last resort and the time has come to discuss this issue in more detail.
My sister and I have an in-joke between us where every time I discuss Politics, which given my job and interests outside of work is quite often, she says "Politics does not affect me". She says this to snap me out of whatever eloquent tangent I momentarily skewed into and bring me back to reality and, my sister hopes, less intense conversation.
One occasion where I recall Politics definitely affecting me was in the year 2000 when the truck drivers took strike action and blockaded the oil tankers leaving the depots to deliver fuel to the petrol stations. Petrol stations quickly ran dry as word got round and huge queues for fuel developed.
I was 19 and I remember that unless we found a petrol station with fuel available I was not going to return to University until things improved. I realised the power of collective action to deliver a strong message to government. My own story is that we fortunately we found a petrol station with fuel and amazingly, no queue so I was able to return to my student haze.
The strike ultimately fizzled out when hospitals began to run out of stitches for operations and the pressure on the emergency services turned the tide on the strike action organisers. The price of fuel in 2000 was 80p a litre, but it was the rate of the price increases that, like today, upset consumers. Ironically a return to 80p per litre now would see street parties and I'd be the first to pop a cork!
Look at this chart of fuel prices:
Month 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011
Jan 87.3p 104.0p 87.0p 111.4p 127.9p
Feb 86.7p 104.3p 90.2p 112.1p 128.7p
March 89.4p 106.4p 90.8p 115.6p 132.2p
April 92.6p 108.1p 94.8p 120.5p 134.7p
May 95.6p 112.5p 97.7p 121.0p 136.7p
June 96.9p 117.6p 102.2p 118.2p 135.7p
July 96.7p 118.7p 103.0p 117.3p 134.9p
August 96.0p 113.4p 103.9p 116.2p 135.5p
Sept 95.3p 112.0p 106.2p 115.3p 135.4p
Oct 97.7p 104.7p 105.7p 117.4p 134.6p
Nov 101.1p 94.9p 108.4p 118.9p 133.8p
Dec 102.8p 89.5p 108.2p 122.0p 132.5p
Chart from http://www.petrolprices.com/the-price-of-fuel.html
As I write today my local station is charging about 137.9p now. As a car user for ten years the steady increase in the petrol prices has always frustrated me as the cost of MOT, tax, insurance and the cars themselves never come down. Generally the rising price of fuel raises much tax revenue in the form of fuel duty for the public purse, but causes hauliers and those who transport food around the country to raise their prices which is then passed on to the cost of the food and goods themselves. As consumers we end up paying twice for the problem, then we have to pay the additional VAT on the inflated prices.
I can well understand why the truckers have balloted to strike, the prices of petrol are crazy now. It is not so much the price but the fear that these steady increases which are way over the rate of inflation will just go on and on. Soon we will be paying £1.50 per litre for petrol! Each increase can force more families out of owning a car. Public transport is not longer able to be subsidised by local government due to their massively reduced central government grants, which hits our rural communities hard. The oil companies make billions of pounds profit per year, much good this does the struggling family, single mother or disabled person who lives on a tight budget and relies on their car to get around.
I read in the newspapers today that in the event the strike action commences PM David Cameron plans to use Army wagon drivers but this is an out of touch reaction so typical of his government. Is he asking himself why these strikes are being discussed and the pressure working class families face because of the price increases? No, he simply deals with the unrest in a practical way instead of tackling the real issues. This is a government that gives tax breaks to the wealthiest in society as a way of saying to those who evade tax, "you win". Perhaps he really believes that those who evade tax at 50p in the pound tax will make honest self-assessment returns at 45p?
Strike action should always be a last resort and the time has come to discuss this issue in more detail.
Sunday, 25 March 2012
Donorgate
Gosh, who'd have thought it? Especially of the Heirs to Blair.
But remember, the real scandal is trade union funding of the Labour Party. The party that now has the eight-point lead enjoyed by John Major when the votes were cast in 1992, and which is therefore on course for the 20-seat overall majority that he received.
Conservative support was underestimated because people were reluctant to own up to it. Yet, in the privacy of the polling booth, they still saw that party as the last line of defence, against a profoundly alien and hostile elite, of everything by which the majority culture defined itself.
Faced with the Blairite assault on the NHS, on national pay agreements, on the Post Office, on the road network, on the countryside, on the remaining specialness of Sunday, and on the institution of marriage, something very similar now obtains. Except that Labour's starting figure in the polls now is as high as the Conservatives' finishing figure at the polls then.
Blairism, including its banana republic method of governing, is going to be wiped off the electoral and political maps in 2015. If its enemies all hold their nerve and all vote, in many cases for the first time in their lives, for the only party capable of beating the Heir to Blair.
But remember, the real scandal is trade union funding of the Labour Party. The party that now has the eight-point lead enjoyed by John Major when the votes were cast in 1992, and which is therefore on course for the 20-seat overall majority that he received.
Conservative support was underestimated because people were reluctant to own up to it. Yet, in the privacy of the polling booth, they still saw that party as the last line of defence, against a profoundly alien and hostile elite, of everything by which the majority culture defined itself.
Faced with the Blairite assault on the NHS, on national pay agreements, on the Post Office, on the road network, on the countryside, on the remaining specialness of Sunday, and on the institution of marriage, something very similar now obtains. Except that Labour's starting figure in the polls now is as high as the Conservatives' finishing figure at the polls then.
Blairism, including its banana republic method of governing, is going to be wiped off the electoral and political maps in 2015. If its enemies all hold their nerve and all vote, in many cases for the first time in their lives, for the only party capable of beating the Heir to Blair.
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