John Harris in the Guardian this morning refers to:
[T]he general cluelessness [of the Labour leadership] that suggests it tends to view glaring political opportunities as some kind of bourgeois trick.
I don't agree with all John writes. But sometimes a sentence is very telling: that one is. It says a great deal about why we have such an ineffective Opposition in the UK right now.
And I wish it were otherwise.
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Hope to speak to you tomorrow morning , Richard. Enjoy your visit to Edinburgh.
One point about John Harris’s piece. He agonises about a conflict between the need to avoid a hard Brexit and respect for the outcome of the referendum. I think that is a mistake. The Brexiteers got no mandate for an economic war between Britain and the EU. They promised that would not happen and that , for example , the UK would get single market access , tariff free , without conceding freedom of movement.
You and might not have believed them but the public id. They are clearly now trying to wriggle out of their promises. The rest of us must hold them to them. This respects the outcome of the referendum – not the opposite.
That’s why they shout so loudly
Say Hi tomorrow, please
That’s a bullseye from Harris. Good writer i think, summing up the frustration that he and many members and supporters feel about the current (non) performance of the party’s leading figures.
But it is not just the leadership is it. Many in the PLP only consider their role to be opposition to their own leadership. I am disgusted by the moral bankruptcy of those who abstained on the Saudi vote.
There is a good piece by George Eaton in this week’s NS. The leadership is showing a bit more pragmatism (over Trident, Nato) and an effective team including Clive Lewis, Lisa Nandy and others is mounting a solid opposition. But there remains a core of neocon diehards who will never co-operate. Bryant was appalling on HIGNFY.
Accepted