I've written the Diary in this week's New Statesman. You can read the whole thing HERE, but here's a taster.
It's not just the British economy that has been going back to the Seventies. For Christmas 2007 I was given a machine that lets you convert vinyl recordings into MP3 files. It sat in its box for a year because I feared I wouldn't be able to figure out how to make it work. Last week I finally plucked up the courage and linked it to my laptop. And what do you know? It's easy to operate and I have started putting all my 1,500 singles and 200 LPs on to my iPod. I have discovered records I had forgotten I possessed, and which I last played more than 20 years ago. I still can't find a record that the Liberal Party released for the 1964 election called "The Jo Grimond Song", though. Or a 12-inch acid-house track from 1991 called "Maggie's Last Party", with Lady Thatcher's dulcet tones dubbed over house music - an NS reader offer if ever there was one.
Those of us on the right who broke the habit of a lifetime, as well as our Republican tribal allegiances, and supported Barack Obama are now in a bit of a bind. We want him to prove us right, if only so we can salve our consciences, but we're also keen for the Republicans to find a moderate voice to challenge Obama in 2012. That can't happen while Sarah Palin remains the de facto leader of what is rapidly becoming a narrow right-wing sect rather than a big-tent political party. Like Tony Blair, Obama will go through his first term with no serious opposition. Let's hope he achieves more than Blair did.
8 comments:
..hope he achives more than Blair...
Which of phoney Tony's "achievemenyts" did you have in mind, I can't think of any.
wv: pherst (am I?)!
shows you what the Statesman has become under its new capitalist anti trade union owners having a Tory blogger as its diarist!
At least it kept Dolly Draper off the page!
"That can't happen while Sarah Palin remains the de facto leader of what is rapidly becoming a narrow right-wing sect rather than a big-tent political party"...have you been chatting to Sullivan again, Iain? After all the GOP did so well with that "reach across the aisle" guy didn't they - and I saw little evidence of the Dems being big tent, in fact they pandered to their base, got energised and won.....just look back to the last time the GOP swept the board - 1994 - it was called The Contract with America, it was very small tent and the Dems were crushed. Just ask yourself a simple question - if Palin is such a drag why is the liberal pro Dem MSM still doing all they can to destroy her.....
What the Aged P said. WV: yosod (What Dubya will say if he ever meets you, Iain?)
An observation from the hunting field.
When Iain writes for the New Statesman his effect is merely to lighten the leaden fare of the magazine.
When useful idiot and humourless Tim Montgomerie writes for the Guardian he is being used to bolster the caricature of the Tories that is portrayed in that paper.
John, I have read your comment three times now and can't decide if you were insulting me or complimenting me. Very clever!
Don't agree with you about Palin. That she is in favour of nulcear power & smaller government & has some (not enough) scepticism about catasrophic global warming isn't at least from my standpoint, particularly extreme
Indeed I strongly suspect that, after another 4 years of a more extreme version of Bush's big state borrow & spend combimed with an acceleration of the War on Fire her libertarian alternative will be extrmely popular. The problem with the UK Conservatives is that they hardly present an alternative to Labour on these subjects.
Everything else one hears against her seems to be media spin of an extremity that shows those in charge know how popular her alternative is.
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