The queues to get online in the conference centre (6 PCs for 30,000 visitors) and the competing attractions of the bar of the Midland mean that I haven't written anything since Monday. In the mean time the little counter thingummy on this site has gone past 10,000 which I suppose is a good number of hits (I only installed it in mid August).
My take on the speeches:
Brown - could only find 2 things I disagreed with - giving Parliament a vote on going to war (which is a confusion of the roles of the executive and legislature which if Brown is PM he may regret) and the double devolution reference (eroding the powers of elected councillors and giving them to unelected, unaccountable community "activists") which is outrider stuff from DCLG that I was hoping Brown would drop. Otherwise the content was excellent and gave rather more policy cheer to people like me than to people like Compass, who will at some point wake up and realise Brown is not going to be the kind of PM they would like him to be.
Blair - summed up for me by the hardline Brownite sat next to me who turned at the end and said "that was beautiful" and the soft left friend who texted me immediately afterwards to say they had "become a Blairite". Better late than never.
The overall impact of the last 48 hours: the total ideological triumph of my end of the party and the extinguishing of any risk of Labour veering off to the left post-Blair. Which has got to be a good thing.
What do you think of dear old Cherie who almost showed that her ego is bigger than Clare Short's one with her, maybe done, little outburst?
ReplyDeleteTony's speech put a lid on the left for now- the bun-fight for power will commence shortly!
ReplyDeleteI'm fairly sure Compass would also disagree with 'double devolution' as it leads to varying standards of service provision..
ReplyDeleteWould you be in favour of devolving power to elected regional assemblies?
Yes, "extinguishing" is a good word to use. Extinguished by the Conference Arrangements Commitee censoring out motiond dealing with the leadership, housing, Iraq, Trident - anything that's "inconvenient". Hence little debate. The stuff on council housing and health that did get through the platform suffered defeats on.
ReplyDeleteSo, yes, extinguishing. But not through means of democracy and votes but through a lack of those two things - through censorship and stage manangement.