The Labour Party Pt 1: The Head Of The Snake
It will not have escaped even the slow members of the class that the current prime minister of our fair, binge-drinking, puke-stained isle is a fellow called Tony Blair. The astute reader will know that he is one of the most hated men in the entire world. Somewhere between lining up behind George Bush in Afghanistan and Iraq and...no, that's pretty much it, it has become abundantly clear that this man is a bit of a chode. The British and other interested parties will also have acknowledged that he rules in the name of Labour. You know, us. The workers. And also that he really, really, really hates us.
Now, the question on everybody's lips is - how? How did a large group of allegedly leftwing people somehow let this apocalyptic scumbag have the keys to the Jeep? I mean, you can hardly accuse the fellow of not giving fair warning. The rabid support for Neil Kinnock's purges, the business with clause 4...every chance he has been given, Tony has said in essence "I am right-wing, and I consider you, party comrades, to be the worst kind of belly-crawling insectoid shit. I will ignore you when I am not abusing you. And still you will bow to my will when the crunch comes, every time."
Of course, that's a little unfair on the party...sort of. Because, although you'd never know it from the sort of coverage the issue gets from Labourite and ex-Labourite lefties, it ain't just Blair. To start at the head of the snake, it's worth a look at the parliamentary party. There are 23 MPs in the "Socialist Campaign Group". These vary from Michael Portillo's platonic lovebird Diane Abbott to the genuinely leftist likes of John McDonnell. That leaves, ooh, 330 MPs unaccounted for. Take away a handful of tribunites, and we are left with 300, say, who are Blairite, Brownite or "soft left". For the most part, the soft lefts will toe the government line in their adorably spineless manner. In that sense, it makes it difficult to estimate exactly how many hardcore New Labourites sit on the benches. But it is not hard to see that they add up to a significant number. Just think of every cabinet minister Blair's ever had - all his own chaps or sops to Brown. Must be about 50-80 there alone. Add in the victims of the Guardian's old "Top Toadies" feature, and you have another 20. Nowadays, the blairite-to-brownite proportion is shrinking, but they're both, in their essentials, exactly the same. With a reliable buttress of 200 or so yellerbellies as cannon fodder, they're well-rooted, well-organised and well-entrenched. When Tony Benn tells his audiences that the Labour party has somehow fallen into the hands of these strange interlopers and it is enough to ditch a few choice scumbags, he deludes himself. Doesn't matter how the Party got here - it's still seriously, royally fucked.
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