The split on the left
It isn't just the moderate wing of the Labour Party that has had some differences of opinion about the PM pre-conference.
The Labour Hard Left is at war with itself. Campaign for Labour Party Democracy and Socialist Action were leafletting Labour Party conference calling for delegates to defend Brown, and my own local MP Diane Abbott circulated a report to her GC yesterday praising Brown's speech. However, their comrades in Labour Left Briefing are "angry with this approach", have "three strikes - Crewe, Glasgow E, Glenrothes - and you're out" on the front cover of their journal, and its editorial even praises lifelong Trot-basher Siobhain McDonagh for her "call for a wider debate".
Soft left Compass also seems to have some internal issues - Jon Cruddas is backing Brown but not quite clear where Neal Lawson and others are on this.
posted by Luke Akehurst at 5:02 pm
8 Comments:
All these things would be so much easier if people could have an honest debate and disagree with each other without it being called a 'split'.
There's a split among the Blairites, presumably, as you don't agree with Siobhan McDonagh... Or perhaps we can just say that people are allowed to have different views, and indeed welcome debate and diversity?
6:09 pm, September 26, 2008
That was the point I was trying to make.
6:29 pm, September 26, 2008
Ah well, then we're in accord. The word 'split' always implies censure. And you don't tend to refer to the left without meaning to censure us, so I just assumed!
7:07 pm, September 26, 2008
Just like the right-wing, then, Luke! The fact is that Labour are in the place where most parties are after a long time in power when things aren't going in the way they had hoped.
11:32 pm, September 26, 2008
Re Compass, I think Neal Lawson is very wise to be staying out of the nasty politiking currently surrounding the pro/anti-Brownites. Cruddas is free to back who he wants. He voted for 42 days remember, just as Compass expelled Jon Trickett as their parliamentary spokesperson for doing the same. if Cruddas wants a future backed by Compass I shouldn't think he'd want to make that mistake again...
12:12 am, September 27, 2008
It's not the left wing who have governed since 1997 on a disastrous extremist neo Conservative agenda-leading to the collapse of the LP?
12:12 am, September 27, 2008
"Soft left Compass also seems to have some internal issues - Jon Cruddas is backing Brown but not quite clear where Neal Lawson and others are on this."
Well, I like and respect Neal a lot but my biggest political disagreements with him have tended to be over his apparently limitless faith in Gordon Brown.
I'd be surprised if he wasn't taking this opportunity to convince himself that Brown has one more chance to lead us to Sweden.
I think most Compassites are falling in behind the leadership at the moment. I'm not.
3:14 pm, September 27, 2008
I don't think Neal has boundless faith in Gordon. But he realises that the most likely challenger is David Miliband who is likely to promote uber-Blairites like Purnell and Hutton. That makes it worth trying to hold Brown to his rhetoric on "boldness" and "fairness" a least worst option.
12:33 pm, October 03, 2008
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