David Clark - wrong as usual

David Clark is part of the tag team of commentators in the Guardian - alongside Polly Toynbee and Neal Lawson - doing their best to make Labour unelectable, despite having worked in the '90s to help make it electable.

As usual today he is putting forward dangerous nonsense with an added sprinkling of sectarian bile about Hazel Blears.

His starting point is an understanding of where the British public is at politically that takes the single genuine case when the public was to the left of the Government - Iraq - and extrapolates from it to make the almost moronically deluded case that the "grassroots" (by which he presumably means people that whinge a lot at their GC, or join Compass) are more in touch with public opinion than Ministers are.

A) He must be canvassing a different planet to me, because - again with the genuine exception of Iraq - the attacks on Labour I hear from ordinary voters are based on a perception that we are obsessed with political correctness and not seriously enough tuned into dealing with their preoccupations about their tax burden, crime and anti-social behaviour and immigration. I have yet to ever meet a voter who wants a 50% higher rate of tax, or renationalisation of the railways, or any of the other "please vote for me for Deputy, I'm ever so radical really" election-losing policies floated in recent weeks.

B) If I hear one more person try to make "grassroots" a synonym for the left of the Party I will scream very, very loudly. Jon Cruddas and Harriet Harman do not own the grassroots of the Labour Party. They represent a legitimate strand of it, yes. But there is an equally legitimate strand of GC delegates, leafleters, canvassers, councillors who are not members of the whinging tendency, who do not want to apologise for 10 fantastic years of an excellent Labour Government, who are loyalists who would have did in a ditch defending Blair and now offer the same loyalty to Brown. We are the grassroots too. It is our Party too. Our votes have not been counted yet and when they are it may surprise a few people.

Anyway, I don't think much of David Clark or what he stands for. The fact that the Government actually paid him to advise the Foreign Secretary takes my breath away.

End of rant.