Not-so-hard Labour

Well, the Government's in the brown stuff (hardly a hyper-perceptive or original observation). That they're strapped for cash is something I could work out entirely from the state of my e-mail inbox, as I'm still (and will remain) a member of the party, and they're even more assiduous about trying to tap me for cash than the Enormous Oafs.

Well, let 'em whistle for it, one might say. What the hell have New Labour ever done for me or anyone I care about? But then I saw the leader in today's Times, begging the rich bastards who utterly corrupted Tony Blair to carry on financing the party, so they can utterly corrupt the next few leaders too. After all, the alternative would be to leave the party in the hands of the trade unions (who already provide, er, 88% of its income, and we don't want it any more heavily influenced than that). Heaven forbid that the Labour Party should be overly influenced by working class organisations - much better to keep it as a lackey of bankers and non-doms, so that at each election the main parties can try to outbid each other as to which can get its tongue further up the Russian mafia's arse?

(Incidentally, that's why I don't buy the line of many left-wingers whom I otherwise respect and agree with, that we should regard Nu-Labor like Dracula regards a crucifix. If another movement rises up and gets the unions behind it, then it has my full support. Until then, whatever the ideological objections, we have to stay with what we've got. Hence my continuing receptivity for Labour blagging initiatives.)

If the rich decide they're better off with the Tories (and if they don't, it's a disgrace) we should pull out of the competition, and adapt our manifesto to however much of the union agenda we can win an election on. But we won't win anything on a platform of saying yah-boo, watered-down Islamism, and agreeing that people sitting in offices all day are doing a proper job of work and shouldn't be taxed.