Here are our terms
The Observer's lead story today:
I nearly choked on my focaccia when I read that.
I tell you what, Peter, here's the deal.
If you're really that worried about the poor, you and your colleagues can really make sure your leader has got the message. Replace Bliar with whomever you choose before the election, and we'll withdraw from the field. Otherwise, we'll see you in the marginals and there's everything to play for. Just don't try and pretend it's anyone's fault but your own...
With the mood among voters still highly volatile, cabinet minister Peter Hain launched a fierce attack on self-indulgent 'dinner party critics' among the liberal middle classes who are tempted to use the ballot box to punish Blair. He said that by doing so, they would only hurt the poorest, who were dependent on a Labour victory.
The leader had 'got the message' about their displeasure, Hain said, arguing that those who still disagreed over Iraq or civil liberties should reopen the arguments after the election.
I nearly choked on my focaccia when I read that.
I tell you what, Peter, here's the deal.
If you're really that worried about the poor, you and your colleagues can really make sure your leader has got the message. Replace Bliar with whomever you choose before the election, and we'll withdraw from the field. Otherwise, we'll see you in the marginals and there's everything to play for. Just don't try and pretend it's anyone's fault but your own...
22 Comments:
Sorry Mr Hain, you and New Labour have failed to deal with the Bliar, so it is down to us, to do so at an election.
Excellent posting. Every time someone like Hain attacks those who would normally vote Labour (or are merely thinking on doing so), they alienate people from their cause.
The Bloody tory bastards, im watching Howards Speech on Immigration......the evil, self loathing bigot
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you're playing a dangerous game.
As Nick Cohen at The Observer would agree:
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,6903,1456131,00.html
It's all very well Hain saying that the debate on civil liberties can be "re-opened after the election", but how can the public ultimately keep Labour to their promises except via the ballot box?
If they're prepared to stop attacking civil liberties, they should make some firm commitments in their manifesto. (Not that the top-up fees commitment last time was worth the paper it was printed on.)
This contemptible bullshit from Hain is the last straw for me.
I started a Hove chapter of BB this morning.
Call me Percy Psephologist, but I simply don't see how the Labour Party could have dropped ten percentage points of support without losing a single vote outside the NW1 and NW3 postcodes. I suspect that it might turn out to be the case that the working class (I met him once) don't like being lied to any more than we rootless cosmopolitans.
-dsquared
This guy is top of my list of "Labour MP's who stir me to violence".
This is nothing short of working class bigotry.
Al
Simon Hoggart was excellent on the Radio 4 Today programme this morning (Monday). He demolished Hain comprehensively:
""The last time I had a drink with him [Hain] in his office at the Commons, we enjoyed a very pleasant South African sauvignon blanc. He also has an exceedingly sharp eye for a refill, sharper I suspect than his eye for social, political and alcoholic change."
You can listen to the interview online here.
The fact is that the tories cannot win
look at the electoral map in 87 - since then they have been completely wiped out as the opposition in wales, scotland and many areas of Northern England
they were also wiped out from many councils in these areas - they have no party infrastructure in many of the areas they need to win if they are to gain a parliamentary majority. In many of these areas other parties, especially the LDs, have become embedded as the opposition
If you don't want the tories to win then don't worry - the worst result for labour would be a hung parliament, Blair would go, we'd probably have a re-election within a year with Brown as leader - who would at least have a chance of re-engaging with labour supporters who had left the party after Iraq
which for a worst case scenario doesn't seem so bad
As an ex-Labour party member, I couldn't agree more. What we need is:
(a) Blair out
(b) Labour in with a majority of <30
Personally, I have got to the stage where I see a Tory victory as an equivalent evil to Blair in. I can't see the Tories winning, but it's a risk I'll take if it avoids the next foreign adventure.
Vote Blair, get Bush.
Hain really does talk some rubbish doesn't he?
I mean, God forbid you should ever try to get involved in any kind of popular protest for a cause you believe in, eh Pete?
Peter Hain, you're sadly deluded if you think that no-one outside Hampstead gives a damn about your lying, murderous foreign policy, your criminal corruption of our voting system and your attack on our basic freedoms.
It's patronising in the extreme to pretend that ordinary people don't care about these things. You seem to think that anything goes so long as you can promise to build a few more hospitals than the tories.
It's you who's the smug, champagne-quaffing elitist, not the thousands who marched against your illegal war, and still oppose it. I can't remember the last time I went to a dinner party.
Here's the deal - you resurrect the 100,000 Iraqi civilians that your government has killed, and I'll vote Labour as I did in 1997 and 2001.
PS - Hain is just ripping off this snied little April 3rd David Aaronovitch article, in any case:
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,6903,1451118,00.html
If the best that "Champagne Hain" can do is to recycle other people's comment articles then Labour really is in trouble.
Would it really be so bad if the Tory scum got in? In some ways I'd prefer them to the present lot, as at least unlike Bliar and Co they're honest enough to wear their Tory credentials with pride. Bliar is nothing but a self-loathing Tory.
I'd rather labour got in with a tiny majority, so that they could stagger to the point where everyone could fully see the appalling mess thay have created.
I think it was a mistake to have Howerd. He can be too easily connected with the last tory government.
How come the more rabid (see comments supra) anti-tories believe Nu Labour CAN change, but don't think the Tories can change too?
For the Tories to get in with a small majority 30 seats there would have to be a swing of about 12% , that is not going to happen. Though a swing of 6% would leave Labour with a 30 seat majority that should wipe the smirk of Blair’s face & hopefully encourage him to retire. Quickly, though even a swing of 6% seems overtly optimistic.
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Children .... well, let's forget about all the relevant issues. At the General Election, go and vote the Green Party. After the election: table the issues again and begin to dicuss them! Amen.
oh my god, I'm stuttering ....
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