What does ‘Labour values’ actually mean, Alan Johnson, the former Labour Home Secretary says Labour in worst position since days of Militant Tendency, he should lay the blame for this firmly at the door of the Labour ‘moderates’, the careerists middle class people who brought down the party and help to create Momentum

Dear All

Yesterday’s blog was all about the need for the Labour Party to change, not just in Scotland but through-out the UK. The elections results were hailed as a success for Labour by Labour, they acquired 60 plus extra seats.  It was progress but it was a breakthrough especially when you consider that the Conservatives are effectively up to their eyes in Brexit.

In the dark old days of Labour, the party had Militant Tendency, this happy little band pushed Labour towards being unelectable. In 2018, we have Momentum; Momentum is a vehicle for supporting Jeremy Corbyn. There are two Labour Parties rolled into one, there is Momentum and there is Progress, the latter is seen as New Labour who love to tag themselves as ‘moderates’.

New Labour isn’t interested in the working class or the poor, these people are middle class careerists straight out of University who use ‘poverty’ as their vehicle in the same way that social scientists use the poor to extract money from the system to fund their lifestyle.

What is missing in the Labour Party is balance.

Tony Blair brought the Labour Party great success but the price was too high, he sold out his people, his party and his country to the Americans. A lot of people died in the Iraq War because Blair wanted to get close to President George W Bush.  

Alan Johnson, the former Labour Home Secretary who is more of a TV pundit on shows like This Week says that Labour is in worst position since days of Militant Tendency. Johnson claims that leadership of Jeremy Corbyn would “all end in tears”. Judging by the political situation as it stands now, it is unlikely that Corbyn will be Prime Minister. Although Jeremy Corbyn does well in home affairs, he has never got over the hurdle of foreign affairs, in that regard he is out of his depth.

As to the idea of Diane Abbott as Home Secretary, this clueless wonder has no aptitude, ability or sense to hold such a sensitive post. I liked Diane Abbott on This Week a lot doing her chitchat with Michael Portillo but Home Sec….. please!

Speaking at a conference held at Brighton College, Alan Johnson also turned his fire onto Labour's pledge to scrap tuition fees as "a crazy piece of populism". In Scotland, we have ‘free tuition’ except it isn’t free, the tab is picked up by the taxpayer which means the many are paying for the few, and the few are generally middle class. Free Tuition in Scotland should be reserved for the poorest; under various governments, they were increasingly shut out of a university education.

What Alan Johnson effectively saying is that you can have a Labour Government elected in name only which won’t uphold the principles of Keir Hardie but it will be run by university educated middle class people. These people are the ones who brought us the Iraqi War, the bedroom tax and ATOS; they call themselves ‘moderates’.

Since the days of Tony Blair, the Labour Party has been plagued by ‘careerists’ which brought the party to its knees, Scotland is a good example of how it goes drastically wrong when you elect people who don’t represent the people of their constituency. In the old days, you used to get great parliamentarians, now you get dross for the most part, really dross that sat on huge Labour majorities and did nothing.

      

One thing that the 2015 General election did was to remove many useless Labour MPs who should have been removed by the Labour Party; the electorate done them a favour. That said, we had Labour dross replaced by SNP dross which didn’t make a difference as some people have told me from their experience of surgeries.  

Alan Johnson questioned the purpose of pro-Corbyn group Momentum, saying:

"Why do we need a second organisation within an organisation, particularly when it is just a fan club for the leader?"

This is easy; they have the same role as ‘Progress’ which is seen by some as a second organisation within an organisation.

Finally, I am neither in the Momentum or Progress camps, I see each of them as having problems which doesn’t attract me to their cause. If there is to be a Labour Government, then the party has to come together, so far there is no sign of unity either side of the border. Having rejoined the party, I don’t see a reason to offer my services as an experienced activist to them, or any particular clique within it.

Yours sincerely

George Laird

The Campaign for Human Rights at Glasgow University