Wednesday, April 19, 2006
Tories are not that desperate..
I followed the link from that article about class below to "renewal" magazine; in this article: 'Putting class back into British politics', I quite liked this point:
"Time will tell whether Cameron can get his bandwagon rolling in way that locks dissenting voices into lasting silence. What can’t yet be detected in the Tory Party is the utter desperation Labour had after 1992 to do anything to win again. The reasons for this are important. Thatcherism saw its task as the dismantling of the apparatus of social democracy. Trade unions were attacked along with local government. Nationalised industries were sold off along with council houses. Life for the left was painful. Where and how has New Labour made life uncomfortable for the real forces of Conservatism? The ban on fox hunting is probably as bad as its gets."
I think he means:
* The tories won't tolerate Cameron's 'triangulation' move to the left, in the way that labour tolerated Blair's move to the right.
* It's not analogous because the tories are not as desperate as labour was in the early 90s, because.....
* because life for a tory under new labour isn't bad, and nothing that worries them is happening.
I think this is an interesting point - one I hadn't heard before. I'd been thinking that labour party tolerated Blair because they were desperate for power, because they wanted power per se, rather than because they were watching terrifying things happening.
"Time will tell whether Cameron can get his bandwagon rolling in way that locks dissenting voices into lasting silence. What can’t yet be detected in the Tory Party is the utter desperation Labour had after 1992 to do anything to win again. The reasons for this are important. Thatcherism saw its task as the dismantling of the apparatus of social democracy. Trade unions were attacked along with local government. Nationalised industries were sold off along with council houses. Life for the left was painful. Where and how has New Labour made life uncomfortable for the real forces of Conservatism? The ban on fox hunting is probably as bad as its gets."
I think he means:
* The tories won't tolerate Cameron's 'triangulation' move to the left, in the way that labour tolerated Blair's move to the right.
* It's not analogous because the tories are not as desperate as labour was in the early 90s, because.....
* because life for a tory under new labour isn't bad, and nothing that worries them is happening.
I think this is an interesting point - one I hadn't heard before. I'd been thinking that labour party tolerated Blair because they were desperate for power, because they wanted power per se, rather than because they were watching terrifying things happening.
