The previous post mentioned the Labour Party’s problem with messaging and unthinking mantras. It also quoted the Power Inquiry’s criticism of the political strategy of ‘triangulation’, “a mathematical equation that secures power but in the end drives down people’s desire to be politically engaged.”
Right on cue, Ed Balls has launched a race to the bottom with the Conservatives to see who can be the most ‘tough’ with long-term unemployed people.
A genuinely radical party of the left would be articulating a real alternative to the failed economic orthodoxy that has caused high unemployment. Labour is not that party. Instead, it is competing with the Conservatives and Nick Clegg for an illusory ‘centre ground’, or what Balls calls “a one nation approach,” as if this empty slogan somehow distinguishes Labour from the coalition parties.
Anyone who thought ‘New Labour’ had died with Tony Blair is sadly mistaken. Ed Balls remains a true disciple. His politics is politics reduced to public relations. Millions of innocent people will suffer because of day-to-day tactical considerations about how to respond to the opinion polls and how to impress the right-wing tabloids.
Well it might win a temporary boost in the polls, but do you want this sort of cynic running the country? I don’t.
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