|
Some of you may realise that I am a Brit and may wonder why I have been inserting myself into this debate. The truth is, as always, a mixture. some of it is because politics is the best blood sport there is BUT most is because I see a party in turmoil because of two excellent candidates. To explain this I will have to offer some biography, please read the whole thing.
I have been a left winger for nearly all my life and voted either Liberal or Labour with one exception (which I regretted, 1982). For most of that time I watched as the Labour movement destroyed itself with internecine struggles whilst the Conservative Party gained more and more power. Then, in the early 1990's, a new Labour leader was elected; not Tony Blair but John Smith. It was he who pulled the unraveling threads together, he who defused the old, unrepentant communists and he who prepared the ground for further reforms that would see the Labour Party again electable. Then on 12th May 1994 I turned on the radio and heard of his death.
The shock was total. Here was a man who had lead me to hope that we might, again, have a government that did more than pay lip service to the idea of community, caring and equality, and he had died two or three years before he could achieve the prize. In addition to the sorrow was anger and fear; always closely linked; that the party he lead would again dissolve into factionalism. Instead Tony Blair came along.
Anthony Charles Lynton Blair was in many ways the complete antithesis of John Smith; cosmopolitan, debonair, charming and facile as opposed to beguiling, traditional, direct and hardnosed. Blair maneuvered himself into leadership with diplomacy and a barely hidden assassins knife. He was not my choice, Gordon Brown was my favourite, but when they formed an alliance I began to see the advantages.
It will not be apparent to most Americans how effective the years before 9/11 the Blair/Brown partnership was:
1) they saved the National Health Service, not in a way I thought ideal but tolerable;
2) they brought the UK budget under control;
3) they gave us strength within Europe
and most importantly
4) began the Northern Ireland peace process and made it successful by enlisting Bill Clinton and the US Congressional help.
Things seemed great; yes, there were a few scandals a few million going this way and that a few dubious lords, but nothing compared to historical levels. Then there was Bush and 9/11 and that changed everything.
Suddenly Blair became a war maker not a peacemaker. I firmly believe that part of it was quid pro quo for the US help with Northern Ireland but there are persistent voices in my head saying that Blair's urgency to support the US invasion of Afghanistan was because someone whispered how easy it would be to start supporting the Provisional IRA again. Afghanistan was fine but then the drumbeat for war in Iraq began with Tony Blair not reluctant but positively urging this ridiculous adventure. It is at this point that I think I begin to feel the pain of the Hillary Clinton supporters.
Tony Blair stopped being a hero. He stopped doing things for the country, more and more he seemed to be tied into a corrupt and stifling system. His ability to seem a modernist Labour leader reacting positively to events transmuted into defensiveness, panicked reaction and smear. More and more he relied on advisors and less and less upon his party and now you begin to see why I might feel some of the pain of Hillary's supporters.
Now let me offer some hope.
I began this, my 1000th post by referring to John Smith. When he challenged for the Labour leadership the party was barely holding together under Neil Kinnock, a much maligned man but he had stopped the fragmentation - in the same way glue repairs a broken plate, the cracks were still there and one day they would open again. John Smith came along and the old guard hated him; newer members were worried that the fragile old party would fall apart without the old glue meister. John had one huge advantage Neil had repeatedly shown himself to be unelectable, he had even lost an election to that joke Conservative John Major. It is true that Neil was tried and tempered against the terrible Conservative attack machine but he remained vulnerable to it and without broad support. Luckily enough people saw this and defied fear to appoint John as party leader and that broken old plate, the Labour Party began to heal.
Then on the 12th of May 1994 the UK lost the best leader it never had and eventually we ended up with Tone the Poodle. Hillary is your Neil, competent effective but not inspiring, Barrack is your John. Your John Smith is still alive, please do not take your party down the path of destruction for, if you loose him now, you will open yourselves to a more destructive politics.
|
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
