Bryan Gould has hit the nail on the head when he says that Labour’s abandonment of principle for power (i.e. instead of confronting capital becoming an instrument of it) provided the backdrop for the widespread corruption of the Labour backbenchers.
There is near unanimity that New Labour has failed and is now widely loathed across the country. War, corruption, debt and increased social inequality are what Blair and Brown have bequeathed to the country. Yet opinion is sharply divided on one key point.
Some relish an immediate general election which would catapult Cameron’s Tories into office. Yet those of us on the left cannot see Thatcher’s heirs as a solution to the problems created by New Labour; they would be a means of making a bad situation for ordinary working people worse.
What the left needs to do is not call for an immediate election. Nor should it follow Polly Toynbee’s idea of believing that a new leader drawn from the ranks of New Labour can put everything right. Instead, the left needs to disown utterly and completely the government and start putting up serious candidates in elections.
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