AREN'T BRITS ENTITLED TO HAVE A LEFT WING PARTY?:

The cost of privatisation will haunt us for years to come: New Labour's aversion to borrowing to invest is driven by corporate siren voices. It is time to ditch this irrational dogma (Kelvin Hopkins, November 30, 2006, The Guardian)

If Labour is to win the next general election a major change of direction across a wide range of policies is now vital. Simply changing the names on the doors in Downing Street will do nothing to dig the party out of its current depression, nor revive the enthusiasm of the millions of Labour voters yearning for that fundamental break with Thatcherism they expected in 1997.

Beyond the Iraq war, nothing has dismayed Labour supporters more than the government's relentless determination to privatise public services.

New Labour's reactionary agenda has failed (The Independent, 30 November 2006)

When New Labour was in opposition, it adopted a progressive stance on questions of crime and punishment. In 1993, Tony Blair famously spoke of the need to be tough, not only on crime but also "the causes of crime". When the former home secretary, Michael Howard, declared that "prison works", he was criticised for being dangerously over-simplistic.

But New Labour in office has been a very different beast. Since 1997 we have been subject to a succession of home secretaries, each wielding more reactionary policies on criminal justice than the last. New Labour's approach to criminal justice over the past decade has amounted to a crude demand that the courts lock more up people - and that they lock them up for longer. All those progressive intentions on crime and punishment have crumbled in the face of sustained hysteria whipped up by the populist press.

Thirty years of Thatcherism is enough?

Posted by Orrin Judd at November 30, 2006 8:34 AM