August 23, 2006
ROOTS:
Unions tighten grip on Labour (Graeme Wilson, 24/08/2006, Daily Telegraph)
The big unions have tightened their grip on Labour as the party struggles to repay more than £28 million in loans, it emerged yesterday.New figures show that £3 in every £4 Labour receives in donations now comes from the unions, compared with just over half last year.
The party's growing dependence on union cash will increase fears that ministers will have to bow to their demands at next month's TUC conference to scrap plans to give private firms a bigger role in the NHS and schools.
It also underlines how the cash for peerages scandal and the ensuing police investigation have scared off many of the rich businessmen and wealthy donors who have supported New Labour.
As with his friend, Bill Clinton, it will be as if Tony Blair never happened to the Left. Posted by Orrin Judd at August 23, 2006 10:41 PM
The problem with Labour, as it was with the left of the Democratic Party in 1992, is that they think they're the ones who got Blair into power, as opposed to Blair being the one who got Labour back into power. So they see Blair's support for the war on terror the same way the American left saw Clinton's signing of welfare reform a decade ago, as not just a betryal of their beliefs but as bad politics, because the voters were really voting for the old-time liberal positions when they elected Bill and Tony, not for some Third Way solution.
Posted by: John at August 23, 2006 11:41 PM