When Two Tribes Go To War...

More muck-raking about divisions in the Government in the Telegraph HERE

Seems Blairite irregulars are gleefully briefing against GB with the piece even speculating, heaven forfend, that a New Labour/ Tory coalition might one day be upon us!

Now there’s no doubt that some Blairite nose joints are probably a bit out of whack with the passing of their boy. But flirting with Cameron on the rebound reaches Olympian heights of tastelessness.

I really have no sympathy for them. Blair had ten years at the top. He did some good things, some not so good things. Never promised to do anything too radical (and didn’t – apart from the war business) then sloped off. What’s to cry about?

Blair stood for very little of substance, hence his legacy’s a bit thin (3 election wins; Ireland; Iraq). His was a political career, a brand at best. Not an ideology. So-called Blairites are looking for meaning where there simply isn’t any; nor, frankly, was there supposed to be.

The test now is whether a more balanced Labour party under someone who looks and feels like a Labour politician can break cover and try to popularise equality – the Labour party’s historic mission.

Blair and his band were creatures of the dismal Thatcherite mindset that ‘There is No Alternative’. Free markets, unemployment and greed are the natural condition of man.

Brown is no angel, but something resembling a socialist heart still beats in him; which means the Labour party has a future. Another couple of years of Blair and the party conference would have been meeting in the upstairs room of The Red Lion.

By the way, if you’re wondering which camp you fall into, here’s a little test:

1. Are there limits to markets?

2. Does principle ever win out over pragmatism?

3. Is equality more important than ambition?

If you’ve answered ‘yes’, you’re a Brownite. If ‘no’, you still cling to the old order. Goodbye sucker!