Some fascinating opinion pieces in today’s papers.
In the Guardian, David Edgar, a former member of the editorial board of Marxism Today laments the failure of New Labour to help the working class. In the article, he writes that:
“Since 1997, however, New Labour has cracked that alliance apart. It has presided over a growing economic divide between its two constituencies, abandoning its working-class supporters… It has done nothing to reverse – indeed, it has continued to encourage – the emasculation of those institutions that working people built and through which they created a political alliance that created the welfare state.”
The full article is worth reading. Although his definition of progressivism is a pretty cliched and, dare I say it, unprogressive one.
David Aarnovitch is in typically top notch form in The Times today, pointing out the absurdity of the ‘compassionate’ release of al-Mehagri. He points out the completely lack of repentance coming from the Lockerbie bomber and that the Scottish justice Minister would probably not extend his reasoning to allow the early release of other mass murderers.
The full article can be found here and is well worth a read:
No related posts.
The communists may be a deeply misguided lot, but they have never lost sight of the situation of people on the margins of society, which I suspect is why Conservatives occasionally find a qualified common ground with them.
Gordon Brown put it another way by referring, in his biography of James Maxton, the hard-left ILP MP, to his subject’s socialist faith and at one point described him as being “in direct line of succession to Kier Hardy”. So, to carry on the theme, I suppose Blair is Labour’s Arius, with no Athanasius in sight.
(I love your site – found it through Iain Dale’s Diary!)