A blog by Luke Akehurst about politics, elections, and the Labour Party - With subtitles for the Hard of Left. Just for the record: all the views expressed here are entirely personal and do not necessarily represent the positions of any organisations I am a member of.

Saturday, September 09, 2006

Semantics are important

So why is Tony Blair still PM rather than having been replaced this week?

The bottom line is that most Labour people want to keep the Party's record of never having forced a leader out of office - every one so far resigned of their own accord or died in office.

This meant that a big lump of the people who may well vote for Brown as leader were happy to demonstrate their loyalty to Blair at the point when it mattered.

The issue is one of semantics - there are a whole mass of people who see Brown as Blair's natural "successor", but not his involuntary "replacement".

4 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

How about we shut up about Blair and Brown. Who really gives one.

The next labour leader for me will have to have more respect for democracy and the trade unions.

12:29 am, September 10, 2006

 
Blogger Luke Akehurst said...

Dear ultramoderniser, you obviously were not listening to the PM's speech today. Not clever.

12:38 am, September 10, 2006

 
Blogger kris said...

I think ultramoderniser has a point-

I don't think it's about labour members not wanting to be the first in history to run a leader out on a rail. On the contrary- it's because the majority must have realised how self-destructive and downright unseemely the whole thing was. Your party is playing into conservative hands with this crap.

What is it about British people? (I am a recent citizen) Without bothering or caring about the consequences- when you want somebody's head on a platter- the momentum is like an out of control steam train.

Well done chaps- you've just taken the legs out from under one of the best leaders, of either party, for the benefit of somebody you really don't know much about- and it's been done out of pure spite.

10:16 am, September 10, 2006

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

ultramoderniser is a wind up - this was the tactic used by James Graham before, so don't feed the troll

12:20 pm, September 10, 2006

 

Post a Comment

<< Home

 
Free Hit Counters
OfficeDepot Discount