It is true that “Len McCluskey does not speak for the Labour Party” as Ed Miliband’s spokesperson put it last night. Nor (anymore) do Tony Blair, Peter Mandelson, Alan Milburn, David Blunkett, John Reid, or Tessa Jowell, who have between them been subjecting Ed to persistent attacks, without regard to the impending local elections. But the unnamed shadow […]
Posts Tagged ‘Blairites’
Ed needs to work out where disunity comes from, and let the party decide its direction
Apr 25th, 2013 by Jon Lansman.
On Progress and the parliamentary candidate selection process
Mar 11th, 2013 by Paul Cotterill.Richard Angell, Deputy Head of Progress party-within-the-party, has written an interesting column on how Labour parliamentary candidates are selected and new rules to increase working-class representation. This might sound dull as ditchwater, but the process is actually a pretty key variable when it comes to what kind of person we end up getting to represent us in […]
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Ed’s speech and the elephant in the audience
Feb 14th, 2013 by Jon Lansman.Ed Miliband’s speech today is absolutely right to place the emphasis on living standards. The economy is central both to Britain’s recovery and Labour’s political strategy, and it is in their living standards that our people are feeling the impact of the failures of neoliberalism and austerity. The restoration of the 10p tax rate and imposition of […]
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Don’t be derailed by Progress confrontation
Feb 6th, 2013 by Ben Folley and Calum Sherwood.This week, former General Secretary of the CWU Alan Johnson has issued an unabashed attack on trade union influence within the Labour Party in an interview with Progress, part of an increasingly confrontational and destructive approach to dictating Labour Party policy from the Blairite wing. Jacqui Smith’s now regular articles, including hers on Osborne’s welfare trap before the […]
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Progress: “democracy” at work
Sep 27th, 2012 by Jon Lansman.Rejoice! The first exercise in the internal democracy of party-within-a-party Progress is now complete. The new strategy board they’ve introduced to answer the pressure for openness, democracy and transparency has been elected. Considering its powers are very limited, a 30% turnout in the members section (there are also sections for parliamentarians and councillors) is not bad. And […]
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Ed Miliband: the impossibility of reinventing revisionism
Sep 16th, 2012 by David Osler.Listening to Labour leaders espouse whatever intellectual fad is currently doing the rounds on the other side of the Atlantic is nothing new for those of us who follow these things. The odds are that Ed Miliband’s advocacy of predistribution will be no longer lasting than Blair’s embrace of communitarianism or Brown’s support for progressive […]
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Movement for…Blairite continuity?
Sep 2nd, 2012 by Ruairi Lynch.In the last few years so called “community organising” has become the latest trend in the Labour Party. Advocates of this approach among the Labour Party seem to base it on American-style Democrat political campaigning and use Saul Alinskey’s “Rules for Radicals” as their bible. The big organisation to first bring this type of campaigning […]
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Progress members seem to want internal democracy after all
Aug 24th, 2012 by Jon Lansman.When we publicised (and supported) the call for an investigation into Progress as a party-within-a-party, a frequent response was that there was no call for any internal democracy. Wes Streeting, leading Progress supporter, councillor and former NUS President argued that he “did not see the need to vote”. He later added that “if people don’t […]
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Blair still in state of denial
Jun 28th, 2012 by Michael Meacher.For some reason the Evening Standard made Blair guest editor yesterday — perhaps only a Russian oligarch-owned paper that attacked Ken Livingstone at every opportunity would offer Blair extensive publicity to broadcast his desire that he wants to re-enter British public life. Perhaps that indicates that they perceive Blair more as New Tory than New […]
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Progress are an obstacle to a Labour victory
Jun 17th, 2012 by Andy Newman.I have certainly had a busy week at GMB Congress in Brighton, with not only the usual hectic conference schedule, but also a series of meetings with activists and officials within the union to plan the next steps in our industrial action against Carillion. In addition, on Monday I moved a motion from Southern Region committing GMB […]
