A ‘new’ politics #4
A flurry of repressive Labour government Secondary Legislation passes unnoticed by the mainstream media and opposition politicians.
The old NuLabour trick of “burying the bad news” in a flurry of announcements which overwhelm the limited analytical resources of the mainstream media and the opposition political parties, is a practice which seems to be continuing under the supposedly “more accountable” style of government under the micro-meddling Prime Minister Gordon Brown.
Posted on August 3rd, 2007 at 10:35am under A 'new' politics, New Labour
Bah! Drawing attention to stories like this is just a transparent attempt to disguise your Labour apologism. You’re not fooling anyone Justin.
I heart Gordon.
There is one thing to be said in their favour, which is that the number of spivs and fuckers in the Cabinet has substantially reduced since Blair disappeared to become a war envoy in the Middle East.
That’s the one thing, I’ve said it, carry on.
It’s a fair point about the spivs and the fuckers, Justin, but I now worry about these machine politicians that have replaced them. Your Milibands, your Burnhams and your Murphys. They went straight from university to think tanks or the No 10 policy unit to Parliament to the Cabinet without breathing a sniff of real air.
I’m damn sure they grow them in vats.
I’d suppose that in Labour Party terms there would once have been a large proportion of people who would have started political life as shop stewards and apprentices: but there are fewer of those people about than there used to be and the Labour Party has much less attraction for them than it used to.
Indeed.
The real challenge would be to find a handful of Labour front benchers who’ve actually held down a job outside of the civil service or legal professions.
I mean Straw, Hoon, Darling, Browne, Hutton, Harman, Blears all took the legal route.
And Brown (3 years at STV), Hain, both Millibands, Alexander, Balls (stint at the Times), Benn, Kelly (brief stint at the Grauniad), Burnham, Denham (inc some charity work), Hughes, Cooper (brief stint at Indy) all took the political route
It only leaves Smith (teacher), Woodward (broadcasting) and Jowell (social worker) who actually appear to have had any experience outside the political/legal sphere and two of those were effectively civil service/local govt roles.
I guess it is an improvement on the aristocracy/landed gentry, but not by much.
and two of those were effectively civil service/local govt
Not sure why those wouldn’t count in some way.
And there’s Alan Johnson too, who made the seemless transition from former postman and Tesco shelf-stacker to Blairite knob.