Byebye Blairism

The rejection of Tessa Jowell (to whom my sympathy) as Labour's mayoral candidate, the Corbyn surge and the crash of Kendall all go to tell us one thing.The Labour Party is thoroughly pissed off with the modernisers.

The rank and file are fed up with being run like an alternative Conservative party with a smile. Fed up with policies being diluted.  Fed up with being told it must be nice, soft and appeal to people who're not going to vote for us anyway. They are fed up of being lectured by smart Alec know alls, of being told they must never fart in public and must be intensely relaxed about greedy bastards making millions by gouging the people. That invading small countries is not only a good thing but right and legal, that the public service is disreputable, that the state is mean, and party and the trade unions brutish bullies.

Most of all they want their party to offer hope and if that involves polishing up the policies of the past, like full employment, growth, fairer shares and rising wages then so be it.

That's the main failure of this election campaign. The three establishment candidates were far too busy denouncing Jeremy to tell us what policies  would take us to victory in 2020. They seemed more determined to tell us that Jeremy was a major threat to the party and to civilisation itself than to denounce this appalling government which is out to destroy not only the post war settlement but the fabric of the state itself.Even worse they denounced even the new policies Jeremy advocated like People's QE and declared the intention of wrecking the party unity they claimed to be upholding by refusing to serve in a Jeremy team if he's elected as leader. 

The sooner they get it into their heads that Blairism, "Modernisation" and public service "reform" (which really involves firing public servants) the the nearer we'll be to giving the people what they really want from the Labour Party: jobs, growth, fairness and a better future. Whoever wins must develop the policies for ending austerity and doing that not prate on about balancing the budget, helping Syria by bombing and promising huge sums for a nuclear sub system we'll never need and won't be allowed to use if we did.