Tagged with Peter Mandelson

Why the Blairites are wrong about Ed’s energy freeze

mandelsonThe great thing about Peter Mandelson is that he constantly gives one confidence in one’s own views when one finds he’s on the other side. This is scarcely surprising when his philosophy (‘New Labour is studiously relaxed about people becoming filthy rich’) and his methods (briefing dirt and lies to the press about anyone he disapproved of in the party) are now so passé.

He’s still in denial about the financial crash of 2008-9, which destroyed New Labour’s market fundamentalism. And still, in the face of all the evidence, he staunchly defends its fundamental tenets – unfettered markets, deregulated finance, unrestrained corporate power, and as far as possible trade unions bound hand and foot. Continue reading →

The Blairites: strong, arrogant and oblivious to the wishes of Labour members

kim blair ilThere is no doubt that the Blairites have had a rough few years.

As they see it, Brown, the Pretender who hated the Great Leader, undermined him and forced him out. No sooner had the usurper stolen the Great Leader’s job, than he demonstrated that he wasn’t capable of doing it himself, didn’t really believe in ‘reforming’ public services, and was against modernisation. Then he very nearly managed to hang on in government when he deserved not only to lose but to be humiliated, in preparation for the great revival.

The Brown years never dented the Blairites’ sense of entitlement to run the Labour Party as the Great Leader would wish. They never doubted that the Great Successor would win the leadership, seeing off the treacherous brother who had learnt his perfidious ways in the court of the Pretender. Continue reading →

The Blairite plot to discredit unions in general and Len McCluskey in particular

Targetting Len McCluskeyThe contents of the secret report into what happened in Falkirk have now been revealed. Seumas Milne in the Guardian comments that “given the thin gruel offered up by way of evidence” it’s not hard to see why it hasn’t been published. Nevertheless, the report does find that Unite is not directly responsible for what took place, which makes the direct attack by Ed Miliband on Len McCluskey even harder to understand (“Len McCluskey should be facing up to his responsibilities. He should not be defending the machine politics involving bad practice and malpractice that went on there, he should be facing up to it“). And the paucity of evidence of “serious wrongdoing” makes it even harder to understand now why the matter was reported to the Police than when we previously commented, unless it was a deliberate attempt to escalate the conflict still further to justify a fundamental reform of the party-union relationship.  Continue reading →

The Wilderness Years

If you haven’t seen The Wilderness Years, a BBC series of four hour-long documentaries broadcast in 1995,  it’s well worth watching – and you can by following the links below. Documenting the period of Labour’s history from losing the 1979 election to the election of Blair as Labour’s Leader, it relies entirely on archive footage alongside in-depth interviews with those most closely involved in the events, a format which really does allow the viewer to draw their own conclusions. Continue reading →

Mandelson – Wanker (the sequel)

Hannah Rothschild’s first screenplay was entitled Wanker, which was the story of a student sperm donor whose progeny tried to find their father — the rights were bought by Ridley Scott. As a director, her latest documentary is Mandelson: The Real PM? If you missed it when it was broadcast last November on the BBC, you might want to know that it will shortly be available to buy.

It was really rather good — “hideously compelling” as the Sunday Times rather accurately put it. We don’t often agree with Jerry Hayes, but this time he put it pretty well: Continue reading →