November 9, 2003
ALWAYS STARTING OVER:
The Phoney Truce: They might be all smiles now but the rift between Blair and Brown is far from healed and the re-emergence of Mandelson does little to help (James Cusick, 11/09/03, Sunday Herald)
Linked to the Queen’s speech later this month – essentially the agenda of the coming parliamentary year – the Labour Party has been planning the launch of a nationwide “consultation” exercise on its future policy direction. The aim, according to some party executives, is to convince the grassroots of the party that the manifesto for the next election will be based “on what they tell us, not what we are telling them”.The Downing Street policy unit is said to be convinced that for a successful third term, New Labour needs a “makeover”: new faces, new directions, new sense of purpose. One source said: “Every government in power for this amount of time suffers from tiredness and fatigue – and it can wander. The challenge is to recognise all this before it happens.”
When he visited London in the summer, one remark by the former US president, Bill Clinton, is said to have caused an outbreak of unifying purpose among Downing Street’s leading thinkers. He said: “The burden of progressive politics is that we have to treat every single year of office as if it were our first.”
Or, as Pol Pot called it, Year Zero. Posted by Orrin Judd at November 9, 2003 7:20 AM
"This time we'll do it right." The problem of progressive politics is that it fails to learn from its own history: the corrosive effect of the welfare state, the inexorable growth of the size of government, the trend to large scale unemployment due to labor rigidity, the damage to personal self-initiative, etc.
Posted by: Gideon at November 9, 2003 10:05 AM“The burden of progressive politics is that we have to treat every single year of office as if it were our first.”
And that insipid bromide caused "an outbreak of unifying purpose" at Downing Street? Pity Tony. I've been more far more inspired by Hallmark cards.