Labour's 'message' is clear: give us your money

Today's politicians have been exposed by new media as careerist vipers more concerned for their job prospects than any matter of principle

FIRST POSTED MAY 5, 2009

If there's any drawback to political schadenfreude I've yet to discover what it is, and while pessimism may not make you popular it sure as hell means you're likely to be right more often than those who, following Voltaire's Dr Pangloss, believe that all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds.

So, we come to Gordon Brown, who, for years in advance of his ascent to the highest office in the land, I was stigmatising as the Anthony Eden de nos jours.

It didn't need much historical acumen to grasp the parallel, for, like Eden, Brown had spent the best years of his career waiting for a golden apple to fall into his generous lap, while lacking either the courage to fight for it, the guile to swipe it, or certainly the principle needed to say, 'Sod this for a game of soldiers', and walk away, hopefully together with a sizeable chunk of his party.

Westminster has been revealed as a snake pit inhabited by vicious anoraks

Instead, he hung on in there for Buggins's turn and has reaped the whirlwind. Still, if you think Brown is something of a pygmy after him comes a positive deluge of Munchkins. We've already seen David helmet-hair Miliband take a tilt at the top spot, then retreat, licking his wounds; now up comes Hazel 'Blair', erstwhile Communities Secretary as well as a dead ringer for Rod Hull's Emu.

Blears, after deleting her own glove-puppet videos from YouTube, has now pecked at the PM's miserable gurning-for-da-yoof over MPs' expenses. She has written of the need for Labour to have a relationship with the voters based on shared instincts and emotions. And offered up a mea culpa that's also a stiletto between her leader's wide shoulders: Labour ministers have a collective responsibility for the Government's lamentable failure to get our message across.

I've no idea what Blears thought she was up to with this grandstanding - she speedily tried to limit any

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Pygmy? Perhaps. I've always thought she was a cross between a Chipmunk and Woody Woodpecker.

Posted by TomNightingale at 11:44am on May 6, 2009

The prospect of something worth the name in government isn't even the evil of two lessers. Cameroons, power without point or more of the scum left over from the erstwhile cream of the working class. As long as Proportional Representation is not on the agenda, the majority of the electorate will not get a look in. Thatcher NEVER had a majority of the vote (and won fewer votes each subsequent election - even Minor won more), let alone more than a quarter of the electorate.

Posted by allan kessing at 12:56pm on May 6, 2009

Another splendid article by Will Self. Why the Parliamentary Labour Party hasn't yet realised that it and future Labour Governments were doomed from the day it supported Blair's illegal war and slaughter in Iraq, it is difficult to understand. New Labour and its unprincipled self-seeking accolytes are well and truly and most deservedly down the pan, regardless of whatever additional useless and ill-considered schemes it spins around.

Posted by Lee Chadwick at 2:31pm on May 6, 2009

Allan - PR is dangerous in that it lets in Nazi scum. It is also a killer of democracy since we vote, not for the person (who therefore has a motive to be nice to us) but for the party (which doesn't.) I don't know if you have been following what Mr Cameron has been saying, or if you ever look at Conservative Home. If you ever get round to it, I think you will see that there are some really encouraging signs there.

Posted by prziloczek at 11:31am on May 7, 2009

Democracy is dangerous in that it allows people who don't understand their own best interests (as distinct from 'perceived' self interest - smoking, living on junk food or junk thinking,eg religion) to vote. PR is democracy. If nazis or tories or monarchists or unionists exist in the electorate they are entitled to representation in proportion to their numbers. If you don't like their views, do your best to dissuade them or, failing that, others from voting for them.

Posted by allan kessing at 1:57pm on May 7, 2009

PR isn't dangerous except to large political parties with the cash to spend conning the voters. Political parties are what's dangerous to democracy, as we have seen too often, they stifle individual thought with whips, and are ego trips for the leader, [seig heil]. I'm hoping enough voters will realise this, abandon belief that there is somehow a difference between the three main parties, and start voting in independents who are usually rooted in their community rather than metropolitan chatterati who get handed safe seats for brown nosing. Imagine a house of commons full of independents, the government elected from among them and removable immediately if they get too big for their boots. Would we ever wage illegal wars? Would we sell off our gold reserves at the lowest price ever? Would we hand over billions to banks and commit the electorate to decades of debt? To become an MP for a political party you first have to accept the party doctrine, which you may not agree totally with, accept the discipline, make friends and 'influence' people to select you, and tow the party line at all times, loyalty to the party is considered most important rather than loyalty to the voters and their concerns. Sound like democracy?

Posted by Peter Simmons at 11:41am on May 11, 2009