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[Thread] The one thing that binds together all of the MPs who have left @UKLabour over the last few days & all of the MPs rumoured to be leaving, is an adherence to New Labour. They can talk about all sorts of reasons & they will, but this split is entirely ideological (1/7)
So let’s just remind ourselves what New Labour had become: First, the role of members had shrank to virtually non-existent. Members were expected to pay their subs & be quiet; conference was disempowered, local parties emptied; candidates were imposed on the membership.(2/7)
Second, New Labour became a fiefdom for the leader and his advisors & spin doctors. They were a law unto themselves, deciding policy without any reference to the labour movement & with an unhealthy relationship with big business, leading to the most awful cronyism. (3/7)
Third, this political arrogance led to a series of disastrous decisions which not only discredited the party in the country, but led to hundreds of thousands of deaths abroad. When people took to the streets to protest against this, they ignored them & fabricated evidence. (4/7)
Fourth, the same kind of elitist arrogance resulted in a Labour Govt, a Labour Govt!, supporting & expanding PFI in hospitals & other public buildings, an unregulated banking sector, academy schools & the internal market in the NHS, policies we’ve still to recover from.(5/7)
And fifth, over a number of years, New Labour pandered to the most base prejudices of the right wing tabloid press, at some times actually allowing them to drive the Govt’s thinking on benefits, foreign policy & crime. Again, legacies which we’re still dealing with. (6/7)
So please, spare us the “new politics”. It’s old; it’s establishment; it’s machine politics; it’s Blairism 2.0. What’s more, it’s a politics that received 4.5% of the vote in the 2015 Leadership Election. You’re not looking to #ChangePolitics, you’re just very sore losers.(7/7)
