Interesting to see someone thinks as I do about New Labour. I constantly hear on the BBC and elsewhere that Blair and Co were right-wing whilst I was always of the opinion that Blair was in fact extremely left-wing and smashed those left-wing policies into the British Establishment, culture and society…yes he cosied up to the banks but even Lenin told us that Capitalism was a necessary part of establishing Communism…it needed the funds Capitalism provided in order to fund the revolution…and of course we had the massive expansion in tax/borrow and spend…so very old socialist Labour. Blair turned democratic government upside down with his sofa powered cabinet, the evisceration of the civil service, the attempts to undermine just about every national institution and the infiltration of those institutions with Labour placemen and women…never mind the huge project to ethnically cleanse the British population and change not only its physical makeup and identity but also the political views and outlook that the population would then hold..for example importing millions of Europeans would probably ensure any referendum on Europe keeps us in Europe, whilst Labour’s open door to world immigration meant that grateful immigrants were likely to vote for Labour. Blair’s apparent centrist politics were a means to an end. The reality can be judged by what he actually did.
Peter Hitchens thinks Blair’s New Labour was as much a menace as Corbyn’s brand of far-left politics….
The hard-Left menace we ignored
The continued rage about Jeremy Corbyn’s rather dated Leftism baffles me. Most British journalists weren’t (as I was) members of the Labour Party in the 1980s. In the months before I quit, I used to be angrily called to order by the chairwoman of my local party. She was cross with me for (as she put it) provoking too much heckling from noisily pro-IRA, ban-the-bomb types.
Meanwhile, the real Left worked by stealth. That is why our political media never understood that the Blairites were in fact far more Left wing than Jeremy Corbyn. The Blair faction’s ideas came from a communist magazine called Marxism Today. The magazine, in turn, got the ideas from a clever Italian revolutionary called Antonio Gramsci. He wanted a cultural revolution, a Leftist takeover of schools, universities, media, police and courts (and of conservative political parties too). That is exactly what New Labour did.
An astonishing number of senior New Labour people, from Peter Mandelson to Alan Milburn, are former Marxist comrades who have never been subjected to the sort of in-depth digging into their pasts that Jeremy Corbyn faces. Why is this? Is one kind of Marxism OK, and the other sort not? Or is it just that most political writers are clueless about politics?
I found myself agreeing with Hitchens, too. I never bought the myth that ZaNuLabour were ‘Right of centre’. They might have talked a good game but when you look at the huge damage caused to the fabric of the country by the influx of immigrants, the fattening of the educational Marxist establishment like a goose and the grotesquely inflated levels of state handouts, it was perfectly clear that skull-face and his Scottish pal were just the same old, same old, whatever lies they told to disguise it.
The fact that Blair swanned off to make himself a billionaire after he had done the damage was just typical of a Marxist. Look at how the Soviet Russian emperors lived. No capitalist, he – simply a traitor and a sociopath.
It strikes me that New Labour were the epitome of cultural marxism – they knew they had to use capitalist methods to keep the economy going, but most of their efforts were spent in changing everything else in a Gramscian way, eg, the politicising of the police and judiciary, especially the removal of double jeopardy, ushered out quietly in the hysteria of the Stephen Lawrence case.
>An astonishing number of senior New Labour people, from Peter Mandelson to Alan Milburn, are former Marxist comrades who have never been subjected to the sort of in-depth digging into their pasts that Jeremy Corbyn faces. <
I believe one reason for this might be that at the time these two and their like were in their pomp, none of the MSM really cared, they just wanted rid of a scandal ridden Tory government. As a result they didn't really do the checks that is possible now. In the years 1992-1997, the internet whilst up and running didn't contain the same level of data it does now.
Nowadays, because of the huge damage that the Blair/ Brown regime did across all sections of society, there is much greater suspicion and ever increasing research is possible. I believe this will increase around Corbyn as his supporters become more and more unpleasant, and Labour becomes more unelectable.
Newspapers have always had huge research libraries. What has happened today is that Joe Soap now has something similar thanks to the Internet.
Blair and Co were let off the hook because the political and media establishment of the day supported them.
Al Beeb has huge research libraries too but when the content has been fabricated or twisted the usefulness is limited. All of the current affairs programmes have legions of researchers too. Pity that they are incapable of providing other than tractor statistics and they certainly never give their ‘star’ interviewers material which might embarrass Leftoids or give the lie to their lies.
“An astonishing number of senior New Labour people, from Peter Mandelson to Alan Milburn, are former Marxist comrades who have never been subjected to the sort of in-depth digging into their pasts that Jeremy Corbyn faces. Why is this? ”
This is because it was not just the civil service, universities and the police who have been infiltrated, but the mainstream media too, particularly the most overwhelmingly dominant part of that media, the BBC. The Common Purpose plan for the “post democratic society” infiltrated every part public life. The last thing this insideous social cancer will do is uncover itself in the media.
That’s because ‘an astonishing number’ of BBC employees – especially their politics research unit, became New Labour employees soon after 1997. The “Tory Scandals” were in the main minor sleaze stories drip fed to Campbell and Co in an organised and intentional scheme. Within 2 years New Labour had accumulated far more real scandal with barely a murmur from the MSM whose extended honeymoon period for Blair et al deserves as much of the blame as new labour themselves. .
Dennis Healey died today. The Left winger of “squeeze them until the pip squeaks” fame, who after in the usual Labour practice of destroying our economy, retired to a life of opulent luxury in keeping with the Marxist paradigm.
The Leftoid author Robert Harris eulogises in the Times today about Healey being ‘the last of the greats’.
In the Times Culture section he also puffs the latest volume of his oeuvre on Cicero and includes the quote-
““To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child. For what is the worth of human life, unless it is woven into the life of our ancestors by the records of history?”
You have to question why Al Beeb hasn’t read Cicero and noted this wise comment and is ever ready to denigrate our ancestors in this once great isle and to conspire in its downfall.
“You have to question why Al Beeb hasn’t read Cicero”
Classics is elitist (despite the efforts of Mary Beard et al.), and he’s a dead white male. Next question.
‘Re-writes’ or ‘revises’, surely.
Peter, The BBC does not read history, it writes it !
Did notice that Thatcher was told that the BBC sees itself as a “state within a state”….she was told this by a head of Radio 3 when she was in power-Charles Moore says it in his serialisation in the Telegraph today.
I`ve decided that -to honour Dennis Thatcher-to call all BBC suckups “pinkoes”.
And-to show that I`m balanced-all Lefty oafs who follow Corbyn are now to be called “Toytown Trots”…if Denis Healey says that they are-then that is good enough for me!
Important that the departed live on in their words isn`t it?
Hitchens has always been good at calling out the Marxist Lefties masquerading as “pragmatic, centre-left” politicians.
I knew of Mandelson and Milburn…could add the likes of Charles Clarke and John Reid, Tony McNulty and Des Browne I`m sure.
If you add in the Paedo Info Exchange wing like Harman and Hewitt, the CND types like Ruddock and Ashton..truly you`ve got a Bitches Brew worthy of Burgess and Philby etc.
Healey, Scanlon, Jones etc?…I don`t know but I doubt they`d not know of it all…as for Corbyn and Abbott in East Germany on a bike?…not exactly an easy thing to do back then was it?
Scargill?
Nah-no conspiracy, they `weren`t disciplined and able to be coherent for long enough to create one.
But they hated Britain, still do-and were clever enough to be of use to the Soviets and their runners-unlike Prescott or Benn and Foot who were too thick and unstable.
And if you want to see the roots of Barossa and Merckel etc…safe to say that THEY did well out of the Soviets and Maoists…and the EU is surely riddled with these quisling freeloading shills for the coming Communislam.
Luckily I`ve read the end of the Book-and the good guys do win.
Tony McNulty and Des Browne. My God, there are blasts from the past. It is almost as if they never existed. Where are they now ? I think it was someone on this site who used to refer to McNulty as “The Forces’ sweetheart ” !
I remember back when Tony McNulty was pushing the manditory ID scheme claiming (with a straight face),
“We are not a totalitarian state kicking people’s doors in at 4 in the morning. We detain people at 7 or 8 o’clock”
Geyza, You are bringing back the memories now. I used to think Tony was great comedy value. I think he had to resign because of corruption on his expenses !
Foot was infantile, and a traitor, but he was not thick.
I think it was the Soviets themselves that said that-or maybe it was only Benn.
Certainly Foot wasn`t thick…but naive and gullible seemed to be the theme.
Not that it matters…didn`t he let his wife get raped and then “write stiff letter” to the sod who did it.
AJP Taylor or something similar?…can`t say I know or care enough, but it seems to give a flavour of the callow other worldy nature of Mr Foot.
I think it was Wedgwood Benn who the KGB thought was as thick as a very thick plank. Michael Foot’s wife, who slept around a lot and expected to get a medal for it, accused Koestler (long after his death and decades after it happened) of raping her. She succeeded in destroying his reputation, but her claim (not least the fact that she kept changing her story) is very dubious. They are all dead now anyway.
“Peter, The BBC does not read history, it writes it !”
So true.
I believe many of the so-called middle class voters voted for Tony Blair, not because he was left of centre, but because he looked and sounded like them. Out of a snobbishness they would never have admitted to themselves they would never have voted for a traditional Labour man.
Even Margaret Thatcher didn’t quite know what to make of him.
He was a “man for all seasons”.