Oh dear. I seem to have wound up the lefties on CommentIsFree. Always a joy. Must do it again soon.
PS Mamma Mia was a blast, since you asked. Campery on steroids. I shall leave a report of the evening's events to Nadine. Why do I get the feeling I might live to regret that?
Labour North is having kittens over the Crewe & Nantwich by-election, pulling people out of local election campaigning as far away as here in County Durham and actually moving them to Cheshire for the next month or more.
ReplyDeleteThey seem to be believing their own propaganda, otherwise known as the opinion polls. If the polls are right, then the Tories should win Crewe & Nantwich.
If they don't, then the polls are wrong, Cameron really isn't all that popular after all, the Tory electoral threat doesn't really exist, and there is therefore no remaining point to the Labour Party.
We shall see.
Meanwhile, only Peter Hitchens has noticed the political story of the year: http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2008/04/tory-leader-beg.html.
As Hitchens writes:
"No serious social, moral, political or economic conservative could wish for the success of such a strategy. If it does well at the next election (let alone wins it, which I still think highly unlikely), conservative principle will be almost completely squeezed out of parliament for the foreseeable future. And yet so many people think that the big political story at the moment is how Gordon Brown was upstaged by the Pope in New York, is in 'meltdown', scowls too much, isn't as twinkly as T.Blair, etc etc etc etc etc etc. Heaven help us, politics as soap opera. Do we get the leadership and the policies we deserve? Increasingly, I think so."
i wouldn't worry about it......
ReplyDeleteThe Guardian is another country and they do things differently there.
What a weird bunch of people read the Guardian! Almost as incoherent as the likes of Chris Paul who seem to pop up on your blog from time-to-time.
ReplyDeleteI used to read it in the '70s when I was also a member of CND. I changed but they obviously haven't.
When I Was much younger, my political awakening was via the New Statsman, which I read avidly until I suddenly realised I disagreed with every stance they took.
ReplyDeleteThen I found I could safely use it to save thinking - if they were for, I could simply be against, and vice versa.
Seems to Guardian and CommentIsStupid could fill that role now !
ALan Douglas
Does this mean you got your belongings back?
ReplyDeleteIts a great evening of Abba songs , saw it in Las Vegas!!!!
Iain, 'smug Tory Boys' are so unappealing. You're not helping your cause by pretending you're just a 'wind-up' to the 'lefties'. Grow up and get serious.
ReplyDeletePeople might hate Gordon Brown but they might hate the 'smug Tories' more...
Remember that at the next general election - especially if Labour have a new leader.
:)
I f***ed Comment Is Free off. If they commission worthless tat from people like Brendan O'Neill and Ruth Fowler, they don't deserve my readership.
ReplyDeleteAnd the moderators are incompetent t***s as well. Apparently, only people like MrPikeBishop are allowed to speak their minds, but anyone who questions their contributors must be censored.
Besides which, that site is full of right-wing trolls. At least I know what I'm getting here, a majority from the sherry-drinking, Hate Mail reading, things were better in my day brigade and a few progressives here and there. Over there I get pick of the t***s.
How I wish I could swear in these comments! :)
Iain
ReplyDeleteNicely put.
The unmistakeable fact is leftwingers dont do `we were wrong`
What they are good at is holding their nose and supporting the likes of Livingston despite his protestation he is an independent.
Shades of Blair viz Prescot-
"Well thats just John" or Tessa Jowell having the audacity to claim Boris does not have the experience to manage London.
This from a government minister who has considerable difficulty in simple arithmetic
JH
Labour's great achievement is to fuel the racist appeal of the BNP, allow Ukip to gain a foot on the electoral ladder and most impressive of all, let the nationalist parties in Scotland and Wales enter government. So whereas in 1995 all these parties collectively would have rated about 2% between them in the polls, nowadays they are in double figures. Well done Tony, well done Gordon.
ReplyDeleteExactly. Well put.
They hate being reminded of this not because it's false but because it's true.
They don't like it up 'em.
The Guardian(and Labour "rebels" - their hearts were obviously never in it - they've conceded their advantage for vague uncosted promises of something in the future which will do nothing to save their majorities or Labour from electoral meltdown next Thursday) ) should worry more about Gordon's Big Compensation Con. He may have fooled his rebels but they should look at the small print(what there is of it) and they'll soon realise that this latest ploy does very little to actually help the 5.3 million hit by the abolition of the 10p rate.
ReplyDeleteYou'd think after over a decade they'd have learnt that the "Supreme Leader" says one thing and does something totally different when you actually examine it.
I trust that Osborne et al will start to dissect this load of hype asap.
Oh Iain how provocative of you.
ReplyDeleteIs correcting Labour self delusion really a good thing Iain?
ReplyDeleteThe inability to realise that things are going pants is the first stage to Opposition.
If they commission worthless tat from people like Brendan O'Neill and Ruth Fowler, they don't deserve my readership.
ReplyDeleteI don't often find myself sharing views with Brendan, but as a libertarian, it is interesting that no-one hates libertarianism quite so much as the Lib Dems, and there is nothing they despise quite so much as a left-wing libertarian.
'progressive' must be the most misused word in the political vocabulary meaning, as it seems to do "stuck somewhere in 1978"
by moving to the center surely it is the Torys who are responsible for the growth of far right parties like the BNP and UKIP in the last decade. By moving to the right New Labour has increased support for traditonal tax-and-spend left wing parties ie. Lib Dems.
ReplyDeleteGood article, although I disagree with your last point that a couple of losses will/might spell the end for Brown. I think the Brown premiership has gone way past the point where there is any hope for Labour that he might recover credibility before the next election, but I disagree that any more setbacks will spell the end for Brown. That might have been the case in any rational party which had an objective view of its own situation, but Labour is so deeply mired in spin and self-delusion, I suspect that those oin power will have the resources to cling on.
ReplyDeleteWitness the "solution" to the 10p tax problem. Nobody has any clear idea how much compensation will be paid nor to whom - too much spin and very little detail.
Expect the same on 42 days, perhaps something like "we'll stick to 14 days, but some days can count triple if we want".
Iain, absolutely no apologies for the plug - but you and Nadine MUST go and see Mike Leigh's 'Happy Go Lucky', whether together or separately.
ReplyDeleteI've seen it twice already and I can guarantee you will not be disappointed - it is far too good to be left to the 'chick flick' night out - boys will love it as well.
If the events of this week have given you a bit of a knock, this will help pick you up, I'm sure - and if the 'flamenco' scene doesn't raise a smile 'check your pulse'..
asquith - fear not, being banned from CiF as a 'rite of passage'. I got my 'red card' for referring to Andrew 'F**k Gilligan' Campbell [minus asterix..] on a thread started by his long term partner Fiona Millar..
ReplyDeleteWell, okay, I suppose I was 'asking for it, guvnor..'
"Remember that at the next general election - especially if Labour have a new leader."
ReplyDeleteIndeed. Because NuLab is just packed to the gunnels with aspiring leadership-quality material.
There's...erm...*thinks*...Ed Miliband! Oooh, err, wait... Jack Straw!
No..?
NuLab lol: 'I can haz sensible candidate..?'
asquith said...
ReplyDelete"How I wish I could swear in these comments! :)"
How I wish we could do the same at your self-regarding twaddle.
Just been reding some of the comments on the Guardian site of your article Iain.
ReplyDeleteThe commentators seem to be living in a parallel universe, they are in denial. These people are not in touch with the real people, who have to struggle every day of the year to survive.
Roll on election day and NuLab are wiped out again in Scotland and Wales, and are given a bloody nose in England.
Do write more often in the Grauniad, its amusing to see the blinkered response's.
Anonymous Anonymous said...
ReplyDeleteasquith said...
"How I wish I could swear in these comments! :)"
How I wish we could do the same at your self-regarding twaddle.
April 24, 2008 11:16 AM
don't be mean; he's only 23, he's a social worker, he's a Liberal Democrat and he has to share a county with Gary Elsby.
Haha those comments were a joy to read! I haven't seen such a steaming great heap of defensive, delusional twaddle talked since I last visited labourhome.org.
ReplyDeleteKeep winding up the supporters of 2010s opposition party Iain - it makes my day!
It's like throwing a stink bomb into the middle of a Socialist Worker meeting. Great fun. They seem to be as out of touch with reality as their glorious leader.
ReplyDeleteI didn't actually get banned from CiF, I withdrew. I didn't comment much because it was such hard work having to wade through infinity's worth of troll comments all the time.
ReplyDeleteI enjoy working with the most disadvantaged people in society. I understand that all the widely held beliefs about them are false. I'd have a problem if I had to work alongside Daily Hell readers. Though I suppose they are deprived in a way: deprived of intelligence and burdened with stupidity.
I dislike libertarianism because it's unrealistic nonsense. I do agree with a market economy, who doesn't?
Gary Elsby lives in the same ward as my mum. I was visiting her one day, and his team put a leaflet through her door. I was going to post it, but I forgot and my housemate threw it away.
Were I to want to go to Crewe or Nantwich, it would only take half an hour in the car. But the former is an ex-industrial hellhole and the latter is the Daily Heil having assumed physical form as a town. The kind of place that thinks it's something special and wants to be down south, despite having no good shops.
Juliam, you shouldn't be too complacent - David Milliband and/or Alan Johnson would be formidable candidates. They would be far more of a threat to the Tories than Gordon Brown and Ed Balls (both are Labour losers).
ReplyDeleteDavid Cameron has to convince people that the Tories have changed. If you read some of the posts on this blog then you might be convinced that will never happen.
It would take a miracle to make me want to vote for the Conservative Party. But I do like David Cameron...
I like David Milliband and Alan Johnson too. I like Clegg enough to vote LibDem if it came to the crunch...
Anyone but Brown.