And another thing…

“Labour Change” ? Well I suppose they can’t call themselves “Socialist Labour Party”

Thanks Tom.

And by “change direction” I’m guessing they mean nationalising everything and repealing everything else.

You mean you DON’T support that? I can see why the socialist side of Labour don’t like you, you seem to think sensibly and moderately.

Only sometimes mind. On civil liberties you’re still an arse.

Can we have Tony Blair back please? I genuinely miss him :**(

Well at least one wing of the Labour party is finalizing its election-losing policies, the Brown team just seem to jump from vote-costing to election-losing policies on a whim. It’s nice to have a stable set of silly policies.

If the Provisional Labour Party ever do materialize, at least the public will be able to rest easily knowing the election is in the Tories’ bag.

“And by “change direction” I’m guessing they mean nationalising everything and repealing everything else.”

You mean, like socialists ? And in the Labour Party to, who’d have thought it ?

It worked for Joanna Lumley, she certainly worked over Phil Woolas

Ah, but you meant somebody Labour, and she said how much she admired Brown, so she might not be the right candidate

I see your “new pal” B O B (view comments ‘0′) Piper is having a pop at you on his pitiful little blogette.

http://www.bobpiper.co.uk/2009/06/never_mind_the_politics.php

I warned you about him, Tom.

As the saying goes . . . “With friend like him etc”

Personally I think it must be ‘Blog-Envy’ – as he get’s so few comments by comparison to your own impressive organ. ;o)

If the Campaign Groupies have policies, they are doing better than the Tories.

Tom, sorry if this is a stupid question (it probably is…) but why are some Labour MPs down as Labour & Co-op and others are just plain old Labour?

Which one are you?

Incidentally, the Campaign Groupies should probably change their name to something like ‘Real Labour’ – it would be an accurate description.

I see Hazel’s in a bit of a panic and back-peddling so fast she’d beat Chris Hoy to a few golds even if he was cycling the right way round! Aw bless, her the locals are threatening to dump her.

Rory – Thw Co-op Party is affiliated but separate from Labour. If you’re a member of the Co-op Party as well as Labour and the Co-op want to sponsor your local (Labour) party, then you stand as a Labour and Co-op Party candidate. I’m a member of the Co-op but they don’t sponsor me so I’m just plain Labour.

Political parties used to be broad churches of opinion. It is sad that the central control (of all the parties) suppresses this. As far as I could see they were coming up with useful ideas like scrapping ID cards and cancelling Trident to save money. Apart from that though a tour of some of their website articles comes up with a lot of interesting and progressive ideas.

You lot are all so busy beating your chests about poor turnout and the disengagement with the public that you have missed what is so blindly obvious – a lot of the problem with the disengagement of political parties with the public is that there is so little to choose between the 3 mainstream parties that there is no real, meaningful debate anymore – just tribal bashing. It is boring…it really is.

At least the Campaign Group have something different to offer than the choice the leaders of the 3 main parties provide us with.

Anyway…why do Campaign need to launch it separately? I thought Gord was well into listening and taking on board ideas from the rest of the party these days!

To be fair, since Blair there has been a perpetual war in the Labour party, and I don’t see it ending any time soon.

Labour were traditionally a bunch of raving lefties. They were unelectable because people don’t want a socialist government. People may have right or left of centre leanings on the whole, but it’s only the minority that are the hardcore of each.

Under Blair Labour lurched to the right. they were then centrist, moderate, with left or right of centre leanings depending on the topic. People could unite behind that easily, and it’s been the key to Labour’s success over the last 10 years.

Why then, are Labour types so keen to turn their backs on it? Why are so many turning back to the pure left wing politics that didn’t command the same support?

Nationalisation and a left wing Labour party? Where can I sign up?

On the other, I don’t really understand the Socialist Campaign Group, since some of them patently aren’t socialists. I read somewhere that Diane Abbott sent her kids to private schools. Oh, you Marxist, Diane. Always leading the charge of the proletariat.

So yeah, I’m in favour of a left wing Labour party, but the SAG ain’t it.

It has never left Labour, they are split from top to bottom.This has stopped them from addressing the issues people want them to. so instead Labour just follow and pusue side issues so as not to have open splits. Again party before country and now of cousre now its the individual before party. what a mess. Labour cannot run anything but our private lives.

Morning Tom,

Just realised the full title of Lord Meddlesome. How appropriate for someone at the top of the party (allegedly) ) representing the worker.

Lord Mandelson of Foy in the county of Herefordshire and Hartlepool in the county of Durham, First Secretary of State, Lord President of the Council, Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills.

Not bad eh for a working lad eeh bah goom

Jo,

As for Hazel – well, a girl like her can only be off the front pages for so long. But it must be hard for her, no longer being the Minister For Telling The People What The People Want.

‘Not bad eh for a working lad eeh bah goom’

Working lad? Grandson of a cabinet minister?

Hmm.

The parties are more or less the same. So why not something radically different?

For instance, everyone takes the boring, old lift from the tenth floor but we’ll jump out of the window.

Jim,

My statement was laced with a dash of irony…

Sarge,

So was mine.

And there we have it. Irony again. It just doesn’t work in blog comments, you know. We’re all far too up ourselves, on a hair-trigger ready to take offence, bursting with all the wilful misunderstanding (catachresis) at our disposal. We can’t allow irony to get in the way of showing off the importance of our own opinions.

I tried being ironic with Tom the other week. Revenge, I thought, for the Wossy scam – we have very long memories us elephantine paranoiacs. I lack his subtlety though. I lack most people’s subtelty. Certainly I seemed to go too far because he didn’t take it that way.

So from now on I’m just going to be plain rude. (What does he mean, ‘from now on’?).

Yes, and then of course some of us have trouble distinguishing irony from other figures of speech. My own attempts at the fine art usually fall far short of any finery, rarely making it past particularly crass sarcasm: irony and sarcasm are not the same things, not the same things at all, as the more educated well know.

Sigh. Speaking of sigh, does anybody else mindo the days when folk used to say, ‘So ah sez to him, s’I', where ’s’I’ meant ’said/says I’?

You never hear that now. Now everyone is like, ‘So I was like’, and so the homogenisation of our idiosyncrasies continues.

In my view, the quicker that assorted ragtaggle of loony leftists leaves the Party the better.

They might pick up the odd Trotskyist and Respect vote, but out there on their own they’ll down Jaqui Smith’s plughole before you can say Bob Crow.

The Labour party still don’t get it. They are finished. They seem to think that Scotland is their fiefdom. No longer true thank God.