A Labour view which gets something right
Yes, occasionally a member of the Labour party gets something absolutely right.
And not always when they are criticising their own party, though I admit I am most likely to agree with and quote them when they are, as here.
It can be a problem for members of every political party, and indeed for campaigners for a cause who are not in any political party, that they become so completely convinced of their own rightness as to be totally blind to the fact that they are applying blatant double standards, or that in other ways their position is morally bankrupt.
Atul Hatwal has a brilliant piece on "Labour Uncut" which points out some of the dire mistakes Labour have made in their recent campaigning, and how they got into that situation, at
http://labour-uncut.co.uk/2015/02/27/labours-campaign-is-a-mess-so-much-wrong-so-little-right/
He cites three examples: the first was when Andy Burnham was trying to use a very modest rise in the proportion of NHS care outsourced to the private sector to prove that the Conservatives want to destroy the NHS. Atul Hatwal points out
"Given two-thirds of the rise in outsourcing happened under Labour, with the rate of increase actually slowing under the Tories, it doesn’t take David Axelrod to work out why Labour was on the back foot almost immediately."
The article goes on to refer to
"Harriet Harman’s pink battlebus. There’s nothing wrong with the bus being pink and the issues raised by the women’s tour are important, but when Labour frontbenchers have been campaigning vociferously that equating the colour pink with girls is sexist then, once again, who couldn’t have predicted disastrous headlines?"
And then there was Ed Miliband’s offensive on tax avoidance.
"Cue embarrassing questions about whether shadow ministers collected receipts for every odd job or window cleaned and the circumstances in which Ed Miliband’s mother seems to have avoided tax on the house in which he now lives."
And then Atul Hatwal makes a really important point which politicians of other parties as well as Labour could learn from:
"Individually, these incidents seem like discrete gaffes but a common thread runs through each failure.
Andy Burnham, Harriet Harman and Ed Miliband all walked into such eminently predictable elephant traps because their moral certitude blinded them to the politically obvious.
For Andy Burnham, outsourcing operations to the private sector while he was Secretary of State for Health was not comparable to the Tories doing the same because he is Labour and they are Tories.
Harriet Harman was not being sexist in her choice of pink because she was Harriet Harman and could not be sexist.
And Ed Miliband’s minor domestic tax avoidance was morally different to what avaricious capitalists do. How could his mother be like them?
This mode of insular righteousness is nearer the behaviour of a cult than a party of government. It is not enough to believe we are right because we are Labour ..."
"Swing voters will look at these episodes and shake their heads. At the apparent hypocrisy, and the basic political incompetence."
And not always when they are criticising their own party, though I admit I am most likely to agree with and quote them when they are, as here.
It can be a problem for members of every political party, and indeed for campaigners for a cause who are not in any political party, that they become so completely convinced of their own rightness as to be totally blind to the fact that they are applying blatant double standards, or that in other ways their position is morally bankrupt.
Atul Hatwal has a brilliant piece on "Labour Uncut" which points out some of the dire mistakes Labour have made in their recent campaigning, and how they got into that situation, at
http://labour-uncut.co.uk/2015/02/27/labours-campaign-is-a-mess-so-much-wrong-so-little-right/
He cites three examples: the first was when Andy Burnham was trying to use a very modest rise in the proportion of NHS care outsourced to the private sector to prove that the Conservatives want to destroy the NHS. Atul Hatwal points out
"Given two-thirds of the rise in outsourcing happened under Labour, with the rate of increase actually slowing under the Tories, it doesn’t take David Axelrod to work out why Labour was on the back foot almost immediately."
The article goes on to refer to
"Harriet Harman’s pink battlebus. There’s nothing wrong with the bus being pink and the issues raised by the women’s tour are important, but when Labour frontbenchers have been campaigning vociferously that equating the colour pink with girls is sexist then, once again, who couldn’t have predicted disastrous headlines?"
And then there was Ed Miliband’s offensive on tax avoidance.
"Cue embarrassing questions about whether shadow ministers collected receipts for every odd job or window cleaned and the circumstances in which Ed Miliband’s mother seems to have avoided tax on the house in which he now lives."
And then Atul Hatwal makes a really important point which politicians of other parties as well as Labour could learn from:
"Individually, these incidents seem like discrete gaffes but a common thread runs through each failure.
Andy Burnham, Harriet Harman and Ed Miliband all walked into such eminently predictable elephant traps because their moral certitude blinded them to the politically obvious.
For Andy Burnham, outsourcing operations to the private sector while he was Secretary of State for Health was not comparable to the Tories doing the same because he is Labour and they are Tories.
Harriet Harman was not being sexist in her choice of pink because she was Harriet Harman and could not be sexist.
And Ed Miliband’s minor domestic tax avoidance was morally different to what avaricious capitalists do. How could his mother be like them?
This mode of insular righteousness is nearer the behaviour of a cult than a party of government. It is not enough to believe we are right because we are Labour ..."
"Swing voters will look at these episodes and shake their heads. At the apparent hypocrisy, and the basic political incompetence."
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