Wednesday, December 22, 2010

No shit, Sherlock!

at the insistence of Simon I believe that it should be mentioned that I am no longer a member of the Labour Party.
I have previously explained why I joined in the first place; Labour's defeat in the election wiped out that reason, however I did not leave, reasoning that there were grounds to believe that opposition to the condems might be found from within Labour; that proved to be an illusion.

I had thought about a grandstanding letter of resignation, as if my actions or beliefs would have the slightest influence over 'Bland and the hard hitting parliamentary opposition that he leads(?) so well(?).
instead I simply allowed my membership lapse and got on with the business of opposing the Condemmers.
There was no actual "right, thats enough I'm out!" moment, in fact the total absence of anything at all from the Labour party throughout the summer and autumn in terms of oppostion was the largest factor in my decision. Once the autumn came and the local council cuts were being announced our local party's response was: a fully worked out proposal for an alternative agenda of cuts.
the failure of Labour to do anything but condemn the student protests was unsurprising, but their alibiing of Liberals (in the hope of enticing some across to their ranks) as prisoners of the conservatives rather than as the enthusiastic instigators of the cuts agenda stinks of cynical helplessness.
The student protesters, and especially the EMA kids, have done more in a few weeks to break the Coalition than 'Bland Labour has in 9 months.

1 comment:

bob said...

Off topic, but Darren I was partly inspired by your "world to win" post back in the summer to write this http://brockley.blogspot.com/2010/12/influential-left-wing-ideas.html and tagged you to do something similar. No obligations! Happy midwinter