Is the New Labour experiment finally over?

It's had 15 years but with the first recession they have faced while being the government New Labour is falling to pieces. Now their spin doctors are trying to remove the "New"; if anyone's to blame, let it be the whole Labour Party. The Blairites are biding their time to put the knife into the Brown. Hazel Blears who has managed to fiddle £13,000 in taxes owed, goes in such a way as to make Gordon Brown suffer the most. Rumours are that she is organizing the rebellion.

The truth is once tested New Labour failed. The reason I think is it was always a grouping that turned its back on Labour's history and traditions and had no real principles to replace the old ones with. What Blair and Brown were offering the public was a better Tory party and while the Tories were committing suicide with sleaze and right wing policies it left a space for New Labour. As the Tories moved back to a center right position, this spot got crowded. We find the Liberals to left of the Labour Party which just shouldn't be.

The lack of principles gave the Parliamentary Labour Party a yuppie careerist look that Cameron's Tories now do better. I feel it was this lack of principles that sees so many of these New Labour MPs in deep expense trouble. The lack of internal party democracy will for a time support the New Labour leadership but eventually it will have to be replaced.

We need to look at why Blair and Brown managed to take over the party because there were reasons that allowed this. Michael Foot was a disaster and Neil Kinnock not much better. We must also not forget that Militant gave them an excuse to curtail the internal democracy. If we acknowledge what went wrong before it makes it less likely it will happen again.

What we should learn is we must never trade principles for power and hopefully the experiment is coming to an end.