On coming to power, Brown made some effort to distance himself from Blair. This came at the same time as howls of fear from the right that he was a closet socialist. Reading reports of Labour’s Spring conference, I’ve no idea how anyone could give that view a moment’s consideration. The man is New Labour, through and through.

Let us look first at image. Brown gave the speech under a deep blue screen bearing the slogan, “New Labour, Your Britain.” How is that anything but a cheap rehash of Blair’s slogan in 1997 - fused with New Labour’s rhetoric about public choice? Ironically, neither are particularly new for Labour.

And, really, would an barely closetted Old-Labour man consent to anything but a red banner? Not unless he was trying to destroy that image - which, if he was such a committed socialist, he wouldn’t try to.

Now let’s look at what he said. I’ll quote a few, key passages:

“This is the New Labour promise of opportunity and security not just for some but for all.”

“Neighbourhood policing for every family in every community, three million more homes and a safer environment, managed migration with a new points system, an NHS with better access to your GP, clean hospitals and the right to check-ups and screening.”

“Personalised public services tailored to your needs, excellent education for all and economic stability on the road to full employment.”

“When people ask me why they should vote for New Labour, I ask them to think of the dreams they have for their kids and then join us in daring to believe that a better future for them and for us all is ours to make.”

“My pledge to the British people is that we will keep inflation and mortgage rates low, and side by side with our programme for three million more houses, enable thousands more young people to afford to buy a home of their own for the first time.”

So; equality of opportunity, tough on crime, choice in public servives, ending childhod poverty, equality of opportunity, low inflation, change.  Essentially, much of the platform New Labour ran on in 1997, minus details like constitutional reform.

Oh, and he associated himself with New Labour.  That might just indicate something.

He’s New Labour.  He helped create it, and he’s still a part of it.

Unfortunately for Brown, that means large parts of his speech don’t wash.  The speech was littered with references to new - as was Blair’s rhetoric in 1997.  He’s trying to paint himself as a figure of change, when he stands for what’s happened in the last 10 years.

This clearly doesn’t work.  New Labour is no longer new, and it’s no use pretending otherwise.  That only makes it look as if Brown is trying to purge the popular memory of the fact that Blair was the face of New Labour for so many years.  That, in turn, risks making Brown look bitter.

It would be far better for him to admit that he’s New Labour as he has done, stick with that thrust and emphasis, and stop pretending that he’s trying to change it.  Dropping the constant emphasis on newness is part of that.  If he feels it’s a platform worth running on, with policies that people will vote for, it doesn’t need it.

If he feels it’s not worth running on, then he needs a new thrust - and then, he needs to tell people it’s new.

What doesn’t work is taking previously electorally popular policies and dressing them up differently.  That either disguises those policies, and stops people voting for them - or makes Brown look like an overt delusionist.

Of those approaches, only the last is guaranteed to fail.  And it’s the one he’s taking.

Further to Ali’s superb article on the topic I only have this to add:

In his downright baffling critique of common law {which came bizarrely close to my studies of its establishment after the Norman invasion, with, ironically enough, only Churchmen excluded by the end of the Angevin era} Rowan Williams stated that he refused to countenance the possibility of it being used as a legal means of justification for discrimination against women.

See here the dilemma for cuddly multi-culturalist liberals the West over: as splendid as it would be to destroy the notion of everybody being the same type of citizen and thus officially dividing our society into pieces and annihilating any possibility of nation-wide unity and making all sorts of mess when people actually decide (gasp) that they they want to mingle and marry people outside their own faith the ineluctable problem which remains is how exactly do you implement the Sharia Law without letting it discriminate against women when Sharia Law states that the testimony of a woman is worth half that of a man?

As far as oraters go this primary round has left us spoilt. Although if you were unfortunate enough to catch one of Thompson’s before he split you were only likely to appreciate it if you were an insomniac, although Clinton sounds like a poorly programmed android, only less emotional and although Romney’s heavily buttered silk is often nauseating its still been great, if only for Ron Paul and Barack Obama.

The latter gave an astounding victory speech last night, that can be viewed here.

He seems to have set out to convince the world that he really is everything that they want him to be and managed it with ease and flair. The wretched foulness of partisanship was targetted head on and thus, by implication, the Clintons, who’s value-devoid longing to tear their way back into power has left them clutching onto their stranglehold on the party machinery as this increasingly seems to be all that they have left {besides, of course, that immensely healthy dependence upon Latino soft racism towards blacks}.

Instead he proposes an alternative of listening to what even the dreaded right has to say about things and treating them as human beings rather than blood-thirsty demons. That said he states that the “Past seven years” have been “Disastrous” and that the Iraq War “Should never have been authorised and never have been waged.”

This, along with the rest of his talk’s emphasis on big-government solutions to the immense problems that America faces, is likely to raise Conservative heckles, but without resorting to exactly the kind of stale partisanship that Obama wages war against they will find it impossible to attack him for this yet disregard the same tendencies that all three of the Republican candidates have displayed. Where is the difference between Obama wanting to keep a factory open to ensure that Walmart is not the only option left and Romney saying that he will roll up his sleeves and fight for Michigan car-factory jobs?

{Honesty, probably, but on face value it is certainly a struggle to see anything at all dissimilar.}

Obama is taking on perhaps the hardest and most entrenched target of all: not Clinton, not conservatism but cynicism. This corrosive, caustic force has gnawed a hole in the politics on both sides of the Atlantic. It has reached the stage where all are tarred so immediately that somehow the aforementioned Willard Romney has been able to escape with total 180 degree about turn on policy exactly where expedient for his ambitions and having replies to questions radioed into his ear because, after all, politicians are all the same, thus there is no call for outrage.

Nixon lost office, the conservatives gained an attitude which suited them. Their stance was always more of an outlook than philosophy anyway, so that was ample. Watergate was a life-line disguised as a shark for them. A bad experience left the psyche scarred.

It is a curiosity but no surprise that this negative mechanism, a method used by people to protect themselves from being deceived, has now come to aid the actual power-hungry tricksters, shielding the offensiveness of their actions in the grand stereotype that any wishing to use power to help others is simply a liar, who longs for control and nothing else. If this is the assumption made of all in the field of politics then how could the outcome possibly be anything else? They are all liars, after all, all deceivers. There is no difference between Romney and McCain, none between Clinton or Obama. They are all part of the political system, they are all foul.

This is curious in that it connects neo-liberalism and Marxism perfectly: politics its dismissed completely. Any notion of aiding those suffering is dismissed. Anyone suggesting it must be an exploiter who’s will is for power, rather than justice.

Who, besides the true liars, does this aid?

In both nations those that would have the political system damaged as severely as possible, the neo-liberals, the quasi-libertarians, the Guido Fawkeses, the borderline anarcho-capitalists, those that would have the NHS torn down in Britain and in America those who would prevent anything like it ever coming into existence. We can trust no servant of the public {besides the police} to protect us, we can rely upon no promises or pledges from allegedely earnest men to improve the world. No, we must let the plutocrats continue unmolested, let everything remain personal and stamp out any suggestion of collective advancement. Don’t vote {don’t try and reform they system so it would matter if you did}, don’t protest {just complain}, don’t write in {just whinge}, don’t stand {leave that to the liars}, don’t empathise {just get on with your life}, don’t get involved.

Forget politicians, they’re all traitors. Don’t try. Don’t bother.

{Just let the rich get on with it.}

As I have said before, many times, cynicism can ultimately only ever aid the right.

And he’s taking it on head-first. Peddling hope, pushing the positives. Demeaning the curmudgeons, preaching to whoever will listen. Not an inch given to the perpetual nay-sayers, an ear open to the woe but with an eye on its abolition and no heed given to those who argue that it is inevitable. Critiquing the state support given to the causes of suffering, radical moderatism {”Stop giving money to massive corporations overly keen on the down-size?!”}, triangulation tugged from the Clintons like a rug swept from beneath feet and transformed into something fresh and amazing like a lump of deadwood being wittled into a diamond.

No bone thrown to the jaded, no inch given to the dividers, no quarter offered to stereotype enthusiasts, no wailing, no gnashing of teeth, no focus upon the ego {”We…”}, no sight lost of the little people that the Big Picture consists of, no harsh offensives, no scare-mongering, no factional appeals, no theocracy.

Perfection.

I have long argued the merits of William Hague.  He is a consistently brilliant performer in the House of Commons, able to make important points in an entertaining and engaging way.  He also manages to bat off opponents with fantastic one-liners that could sound nasty but seem nothing more than cheeky from his mouth.

Mr. Browne: In 18 years in government, the Conservatives never once had a referendum on Europe. The last time there was a referendum on the European Union I was in primary school, and some Members of the House were not even born. The leader of the Liberal Democrats favours a referendum on whether we are, or are not, in Europe. Why does not the Conservative party back that promise?

Mr. Hague: That is apparently the Liberal Democrats’ position, and they tried to put it in a reasoned amendment for tonight’s debate—but it turned out that it is so crashingly irrelevant to the issue that the amendment was not in order. They therefore have the distinction of having adopted a policy so irrelevant to the debate that they will at no stage have the opportunity to vote for it. Even those in primary school could have worked that one out.

It is in the longer, less interrupted sections that Hague shows off his real skill, however.  I make no apologies for copying the Hansard text for Monday’s opening to the Second Reading of the EU Reform Treaty Bill.  I have taken the liberty of not clogging the front page with it, though.

(more…)

Today is Martin Luther King Jnr day in America - a national holiday.  Yesterday, Barack Obama gave a speech in King’s old church in Atlanta.  Brave move.  The comparisons between King and Obama are few, except for them both being trailblazers because of their ethnicity.  But I don’t want to dwell on that.  I want to look at the speech.

It was fantastic.  Obama’s delivery is not quite at King’s level of sublime brilliance - Obama has not yet been to the Mountaintop - but he is a fine speaker.  The text of the speech itself is, however, wonderful.  An intelligent fusion of God and campaigning, of religion and nation.  It doesn’t speak down to its listeners; it weaves veiled references to King, the civil rights movement he led, and the God he served throughout.  It uses the fall of the walls of Jericho to make a subliminal reference towards the Joshua-like Obama, through the surrogate of King.  It buys into King’s trademark Southern minister style.  It is a brilliant piece of work for January in a presidential campaign.  This time next year, I wonder what Obama’s inauguration might be like.

It is not enough to give health care to the sick, or jobs to the jobless, or education to our children.

But it is where we begin. It is why the walls in that room began to crack and shake.

And if they can shake in that room, they can shake in Atlanta.

And if they can shake in Atlanta, they can shake in Georgia.

And if they can shake in Georgia, they can shake all across America. And if enough of our voices join together; we can bring those walls tumbling down. The walls of Jericho can finally come tumbling down. That is our hope - but only if we pray together, and work together, and march together.

Brothers and sisters, we cannot walk alone.

In the struggle for peace and justice, we cannot walk alone.

In the struggle for opportunity and equality, we cannot walk alone

In the struggle to heal this nation and repair this world, we cannot walk alone.

So I ask you to walk with me, and march with me, and join your voice with mine, and together we will sing the song that tears down the walls that divide us, and lift up an America that is truly indivisible, with liberty, and justice, for all. May God bless the memory of the great pastor of this church, and may God bless the United States of America.