Excellent speech by Brown

[Streathamite]

cruel....

 

[Streathamite]

Some reading for the orchestra. Might relieve the headache.

Excerpt from Gordon Brown's acceptance speech on becoming PM.
"I say honestly: I am a conviction politician. My conviction that everyone deserves a fair chance in life. My conviction that each of us has a responsibility to each other. And my conviction that when the strong help the weak, it makes us all stronger.
Call it the driving power of social conscience, call it 'the better angels of our nature', call it 'our moral sense', call it a belief in 'civic duty'. I joined this party as a teenager because I believed in these values. They guide my work, they are my moral compass. This is who I am. And because these are the values of our party too the party I lead must have more than a set of policies – we must have a soul."
full speech

which is not a million miles from thatcher's speeches in the 79 GE

 

[ViolentPanda]

i was under the impression that at least in theory polticitions were supposed to be representing the majority people of the country not a select few eleites...

Ah, I see you have old-fashioned ideas, like I do.

propping up the civil service is something which is a required evil and it pales into insignificance when compared to the propping up of say capita or balfour beaty or the like...

Back when I was a civil servant and my dad was having a moan about the incompetence of the Civil Service, my argument was "yeah, but at least we're honest incompetents, it's not like we're corrupt!"

what you are arguing for is in essence govermental social abdication of responsiblity....

And wouldn't they just love to do that, if they could get away with it. That'd gladden their neo-liberally inclined hearts no end.

 

[agricola]

Well, the following article about nails it for me. If Tebbit likes you, you must be doing something evil.

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/tory2007/story/0,,2177631,00.html

 

[Threshers_Flail]

Brown is acting far from a conviction politician. He is attempting to garner a hegemony over the pathetic british left--right spectrum. He will probably succeed, so heres to another 5ish years of authoritarian Labour tripe.

If labour further cements its position on the right, then you do have to start questioning the health of UK democracy. Here's to the revolution!

 

[CyberRose]

Brown is acting far from a conviction politician. He is attempting to garner a hegemony over the pathetic british left--right spectrum. He will probably succeed, so heres to another 5ish years of authoritarian Labour tripe.

If labour further cements its position on the right, then you do have to start questioning the health of UK democracy. Here's to the revolution!

But there's nothing on the left of Labour for anyone to vote for is there?

If there was (Respect doesn't count) a left-wing parliamentary challenge to Labour it wouldn't be able to shift to the right, as it is, there is no challenge so Labour is going the way all political parties go to make themselves as accessible to as many people as possible to win elections...

So who's fault is that? A parliamentary Labour party wanting to win elections or the pathetic remnants of the left who can't even manage to mount a parliamentary challenge (unlike their counterparts from the far right like UKIP and even the BNP)?

 

[urbanrevolt]

well it is of course partly down to us to try to build such alternatives and not only electorally.

There do seem to be some more open debtes now Respect is in semi disarray about how to co-operate on the left and this can only be a good thing

I'd suggest before mounting any electoral challenges having more co-operation between groups, rank and file cross union meetings, local trades councils, local activsts' meetigns to raise solidairty for e.g. strikes/ anti-privatisation campaigns anything going on.

May be coming out of this ther could be the possibility of mounting an electoral challenge too but the main arena is surely the class struggle

 

[Das Uberdog]

The game is up Newlabour. People know what you have done. You cannot flannel and lie your way out of it anymore.

I'm not sure I agree. I think lots of people are getting caught up in the process of watching the Tories dissolve from the political landscape entirely.

Though they'll never die; of course. There are too many richies willing to throw them money.