So I’m there having a perusal of the Guardian website today and I click on a story about the 1997 Election triumph of the party. An absolute landslide that led to 13 years of Labour rule while the Tories sat in opposition and never got close to winning back power. I scroll down to the comments and the one with the moves up votes sums up everything:
No mention of the fact that Blair, Mandelson & Co. rendered Labour unelectable by moving so far away from Labour values, starting illegal foreign wars and stealing billions from ordinary people’s pensions?
So much that’s wrong now has its roots in that crowd – the refugee crisis and growth of ISIS? Blair and his mate Bush kicked that off. The growth of buy-to-let? That’s a response to the fact that we can’t trust the security of our pensions and needs some way to fund retirement.
And now Labour has a leader who actually represents Labour values and the Guardian can’t wait to destroy him. Yes Labour’s in trouble but a lot of the blame rests with the ‘nu-labor-lite’ Blairites and the Guardian.
Lets start at the beginning. On an article outlining how these men made the party very electable (indeed so electable they won three consecutive elections with huge majorities) a Labour supporters says they made the party unelectable. That is clearly not true.
As for moving so far away from Labour values, did they really? They inched towards the center ground but they weren’t a million miles away from old Labour. Also has old Labour values won any General Election in the past two generations? Not so much.
Clearly the growth of extreme Islamic terrorism has some roots in the Iraq conflict but it could easily be argued that Al-Qaeda’s attack on the United States in 2001 was the real catalyst for those tensions to rise on both sides.
As for the Guardian wanting to destroy Jeremy Corbyn. That is paranoia talking. This newspaper after their endorsement of Nick Clegg in 2010 has run so far to the left that Corbyn himself probably thinks they’ve gone too far. They have been extremely strong supporters of his and have only cooled in recent months as his support has clearly ebbed away and most impartial observers can see he is leading the Labour party down the wrong path.
You win in the UK from the centre-left or centre-right. This isn’t exactly rocket science. Whichever of the two natural parties of government is closer to the center will win an election. I know my lot went into coalition in 2010 and became a party of government but for most people, they are voting for one of the big two, whose leader will become PM.
Labour’s wild lurch to the left is very dangerous for many people who naturally want a party of government near the center because it allows the Conservative party to move to the right and still be closer to the center than Labour. If things were different and people saw the Lib Dems has a natural party of government, it would open up a huge chasm for the party to fill up. Sadly that big gap will pick up voters but not enough.
Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership is a god send to the right-wing branch of the Tory party. If Labour had a strong position on the EU and a leader who was electable to the electorate as a whole then they would be in a position to both a) win back power and b) would stop the Tories going too far to the right. If they had a young Tony Blair who wasn’t tainted by Iraq then they would likely be planning for another decade in power after a big win in 2020.
Yet some Labour members can’t abide with this and will blame everyone and everything on Labour’s woes bar the leadership. If it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck then it is probably a duck. If a leader has dire polling ratings and is 17 points behind the Tories when at the same time in the previous parliament, his predecessor was 11 points up then its probably because people don’t like him or his policies. It isn’t the fault of Tony Blair or the Guardian et al.
I hope you enjoyed this blog post. Please leave any comments or contact me directly via the E-Mail Me link on the Right Hand Nav. You can stay in touch with the blog following me on Twitter or by liking the blog on Facebook. Please share this content via the Social Media links below if you think anyone else would enjoy reading.
