After Labour? July 8, 2015
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Uncategorized.trackback
Hearing the news that another LP luminary has announced their retirement brings back a story I heard recently from a friend who met another leading light of the WP/DL/LP political journey in a non political setting. My friend had taken, shall we say, a different route but remained on – all things considered – friendly enough terms. But the leading light was very very curt, unusually so my friend thought.
And yet where is the surprise. The leading light had had a political trajectory that had led them to coalition (twice), the Cabinet (once) and a very particular public office. But to what point? Coalition in an unpopular government, imposition of policies that (nominally) they were opposed to across their political life, the effective political ruination of yet another party. What sort of a track record is this? The last, albeit minor key if telling, straw being their replacement mid term in the coalition.
Tommy Broughan – wasn’t it -called them extinct volcanoes but that is perhaps too charitable, for they seem to me to have been extinct long before arriving in the LP.
There’s a lesson there. Speaking of lessons, I was thinking too of coalition. I left DL just before that but I was adamantly opposed to the idea. Not so much on principle as from a sense it is futile in the main for small left parties to go into government as minor partners. I feel much the same re larger left parties going in as minor partners and have my doubts re majority left ‘led’ governments – though Syrizas example is interesting to consider.
Would a DL that eschewed coalition have done better? Unlikely, talking to people involved on various sides of the split that originated it there was a sense even from some who went all the way to LP but then subsequently left that there was a group whose destination from the off had been the LP.
Such ambition. Again, to what point?
I remember thinking something similar when Gordon Brown lost in 2010: what would the biographer of Maxton and editor of the Red Paper on Scotland have thought of Gordon Brown as PM?
LikeLike
The trajectory was about their career, seen as a managerial position in that whatever direction it took them, they followed, not led. They were guided by what was in it for them at the end of their tenure no matter who they had to step on.
So long as they did not lose overall they salved whatever conscience they had by blinkering themselves to all common sense, decency and honesty. Hidden by obstruction and direct lies.
The destruction they left in their path to the height of their chosen career has been devastating for the left, any left.
It has been an expierence that will make the left stronger over time. That saying comes to mind ” you can fool some of the people some of the all of the time and all of the people some of the time but you’ll never fool people all of the time ”
I hope that makes sense.
There is an opportunity coming soon, election time, to re-arrange the configuration in favour of the left. I for one hope it is not squandered, again, by elements who would claim to be of the left to further their own careers at the expense of the people who would put their trust in them.
Venceramos
LikeLike
Bhí díospóireacht anseo ar Oileán Thoraigh againn ar maidean. Bhí sampla an-mhaith againn de shean fhocail i ráiteaisí Emmet Stagg:
Ní féidir leis an ngobadán an dá thrá a fhreastail!
Tadhg an dá thaobh!
Má tá raiteas ar bith eile agat atá oiriúnach, chuir chugam é.
LikeLike
Entering coalition was a symptom of the abandonment of any remaining attachment to socialism or leftism of any kind by the DL TDs and the people around them, rather than the cause. They had no reason to avoid coalition because their views were now fundamentally compatible with those of the “mainstream”.
Ultimately, from the point of view of people who had surrendered to and were now embracing neoliberalism, what purpose was there to being in a smaller party with a lower profile rather than in the Labour Party which had moved in precisely the same direction? It didn’t suit their careers and even if you generously ascribe political principle to some of them, it didn’t suit the furtherance of their new beliefs. It’s odd to think of any of those sell out weasels in terms of principles, but there was nothing unprincipled about them going into coalition or merging into Labour. Those were logical things for socially liberal neoliberals to do.
LikeLike
FG/ Sinn Féin Coalition? Could it happen? http://wp.me/pKzXa-tz
Discussion: Composition of the Next Government
I have updated this document on my blog to take into account the Greek/Syriza experience
LikeLike