I’m trying to have a conversation here but I’m being drowned out by the clattering cacophony of hundreds of people not talking about the prospect of a leadership contest.
Quite early on in this blog’s history, I promised that I would not get sucked in to the hysterical media speculation about whether anyone would stand against Gordon, and if so, who. Last night I forced myself to sit through several turgid minutes of ‘Newsnight‘ as Michael Crick, a half-decent journalist who should know better, and lightweight presenter Jeremy Paxman, discussed at length the implications of a conversation someone had heard David Miliband having in a bar about trying not to have a Heseltine moment in his speech. BBC HAVE YOU GONE MAD? What the hell has happened to BBC journalism? I blame the Hutton report.
Anyway I realised today that this conversation I’m trying to have (admittedly with myself, since this is, after all, a blog, and is probably being read by less people than my diary) makes the question of who is leader a rather dull side issue. To ask ‘what is the point of the Labour Party?’ is to set up a far more interesting debate than “Ooh look, Jack Straw scratched his left earlobe when Gordon Brown said ‘global downturn’ What does it mean???”.
I re-joined the party a few weeks ago, partly because I like doing things that no-one else is doing – but also because I felt with a growth in membership and the smallest of pushes, Labour could become a truly vibrant and useful party. By marrying the best of the last 11 years with everything we’ve wanted to do but have been scared about in case it gives Labour’s enemies something to attack us with, we could become the party that Tony Blair never dared allow us to be.
So I’d like to start tomorrow by talking about party funding. In the process I shall hand myself over to the authorities for questioning…
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2 comments:
No matter how much we decry the tittle tattle personality led gossip reporting of politics we should remember that most of it is what politicians themselves are spinning. As no-one at least from the government are prepared to raise their head above the parapet and take an honest pot-shot at each other its left to politicians to spin the banalities to the media. For example, of course on one level you can read David Milliband’s summer Guardian piece as just another minister stating the obvious, but this week has proved beyond doubt (if we ever doubted it) that the subtext was “I’ll be a better PM than that moron Gordon any day”. Whether he would or not is neither her nor there right now. Now the Foreign secretary has been saying forever that it was just a harmless article, that the media should concentrate on the substance rather than the perceived in-fighting and jockeying for position. But, come on, we all know what’s really going on. That’s why his Heseltine comment was REAL news. It gave us a chink in that faux armour. On top of that, put it in context. For the second year running Milliband’s speech was… pants. If we‘re saying Brown is not charismatic enough like one former Cheshire-cat leader and that, actually being a good actor/inspirational leader is what we need to return to at least in part to counter Cameron, then his remarks were ground breaking news. It exposed his façade of not jockeying for position, honest guv, and was a defensive move to seemingly explain away his ineffectual rallying cry. Having just read Anthony Seldon’s excellent biography on Blair’s last term it turns out that, hey, the oft quoted tittle tattle centring on Blair and Brown’s tempestuous relationship was actually all true. In fact, it was a lot worse than was reported in diaries and gossip columns at the time. When Poker-faces are the only things on display the odd raised eyebrow speaks volumes.
Hi Rob (or Mary)
Welcome to the blog.
Yes of course I accept that the whole leaderhsip issue is big news. The reason is that people are scared to talk about anything else, for fear of looking like a dis-united party ie the Tories September 1992 - October 2007.
And I mean anything. The party still wants to keep its distance from the Unions, and the members, what's left of them (us) have no say in anything apart from a vote on who should be leader - assuming there's a contest in the first place.
In my next piece I'll try and articulate my approach. I'm a writer for God's sake, and if a writer can't make himself clear then I don't know who cjhfbn sofdmbv.
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