.
The Tree grew tall and bore fruit. Now from the rotten fallen trunk of 'New Labour' Next Labour green shoots are sprouting.
New Labour's good decisions are celebrated. Bad ones are buried. Tony Blair's plea that 'New Labour' is the secret magic dust that always guarantees victory is spurned as the self-serving nonsense that it is.
This is quality politics. Ed Miliband skilfully stroked the erogenous zone of the voters in the Labour Leadership election. Today he did the same for those who will vote in the 2015 General Election. The comrades in Manchester lapped it up.
It was about five years ago in a Parliamentary Labour Party meeting that I urged Tony Blair to purge his soul by confessing that taking the UK into Bush's Iraq was a mistake. Others in that debate said the idea was nonsensical and impossible from a PM who took Britain into war. There are no hints of remorse now in Blair's autobiography.
Even worse is his failure to explain the fatal decisions to stir up the hornets' nest of Helmand. Tony Blair skates over the decision in two superficial paragraphs. They are designed to defend Defence Secretary John Reid. Blair fails to mention his repeated hope that 'the soldiers would be out in three years without a shot being fired.' The Helmand commitment still does not disturb the man who authorised it.
'New Labour' is imprisoned by their past errors. Only a new leader can rebuild the party's self-belief and hope. The future is bright.
I imagine the original Pravda was as truthful as you are. It's amazing how fanatics like you get so wedded to their ideologies that they feel the need to lie and mislead, misinform and twist the truth to try to get the real world to match their imaginations.
There should be balance in all things, a little balance would do you some good.
Posted by: HuwOS | September 29, 2010 at 01:28 AM
"Honestly all the pathetic communist references like "Red Ed" and "pravda" you become more laughable by the minute."
What colour is someone who is more worried how much the rich get than what happens to everyone else? A Leveller?
And you should try reading the old Pravda. You'd like it. You might even notice that the breathless gushing fawning is rather similar to what we've just read from Paul.
Posted by: Kay Tie | September 29, 2010 at 12:22 AM
Paul at least opposed the Iraq war all the way through.
Staying with a right wing party while it committed it's crimes is something I don't approve of, but he seems to have genuinely believed that he had more chance of criticising it effectively from within rather than without as well as believing correctly that there were more supporters of the crimes on the Tory side than on the Labour side.
A pity KayTie, that your ability to at least attempt to appear rational is diminishing by the post.
Honestly all the pathetic communist references like "Red Ed" and "pravda" you become more laughable by the minute.
Posted by: HuwOS | September 28, 2010 at 11:35 PM
"Only brutal honesty will rebuild the Labour party"
Well that pretty much seals its fate then, doesn't it?
"Like a child turning 10 and thinking that whatever crime they committed the day before is purged now that "they are older"."
Or, to put it another way, "with one bound, they were free". Red Ed free of his sitting in government for THIRTEEN YEARS. Free of his responsibility for drawing up the dreadful manifesto. Free of cabinet responsibility for agreeing with all the policies of the government of which he was a member a matter of just a few weeks ago.
I'm afraid the "Ooo, there's the angel Gabriel, hallelujah, I've seen the light, I'm a convert, can I come in now?" just doesn't wash.
David Miliband had it right (courtesy of lip reading), admonishing the Hypocrite Harriet for voting for the war and her "defence" that she supports Ed and the Party. Pathetic. And Paul's conversion is even less sincere than Red Ed's. Does he think this Pravda approach is fooling anyone?
Posted by: Kay Tie | September 28, 2010 at 11:14 PM
"It was about five years ago in a Parliamentary Labour Party meeting that I urged Tony Blair to purge his soul by confessing that taking the UK into Bush's Iraq was a mistake"
Maybe the inveterate liar couldn't quite get to the biggest lie of all, pretending that it was a "mistake".
The seed won't have fallen far from the tree and there will be no redemption for the Labour party while the war crime is referred to and dismissed as a "mistake"
Only brutal honesty will rebuild the Labour party, if it is to be a Labour party and not just a party competing in Tory space for Tory votes.
It seems utterly childish to think a line can be drawn in the sand and a declaration that there need now be no more discussion or fallout from it.
Like a child turning 10 and thinking that whatever crime they committed the day before is purged now that "they are older".
Posted by: HuwOS | September 28, 2010 at 10:46 PM