12 Years Too Late!

Gordon Brown, quoted on the BBC website says the following. "Laissez-faire has had its day. People on the centre-left and the progressive agenda should be confident enough to say that the old idea that the markets were efficient and could work things out by themselves are gone."

Unfortunately this statements negates the economic policy that Tony Blair and Gordon Brown came in with 12 years ago and followed until the banking system crashed. They worshipped Thatcher's policies and now Brown is going to lead the Labour Party into its biggest defeat since the 1931 post-MacDonald election.

If there really are 120 Labour MPs who are willing to go against the New Labour leadership in support of the Post Office workers then now is the time to be looking at a leadership election that will allow all the party to have a say. Otherwise it's just posturing like Peter Hain and Harriet Harman have been doing. Labour needs a caretaker leader to clean out those who turned their backs on the basic principles of the party. There must be one moderate MP who is not beholden to the Blairites surely.

Elitism at Work

So Peter Hain resigns and Rose Gibb, who had already resigned, gets a £75,000 pay off. Rose Gibb was the chief of Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust where up to 90 patients died due to a bacterial infection caused by poor cleaning. The cleaning problems were down to lack of staff. Rose Gibb was on a salary of £150,000. Alan Johnson made some noises about not paying her, but this was probably just to take our minds off the fact he didn't support his old friends in the postal workers union at the time. I don't want to take the cheap shots at Rose Gibb like Alan Johnson, the Murdoch tabloids can do that far better than either of us.

But... how can a government that made a point of giving the NHS so much more money than the Tories, and won the first Blair election against sleaze in the then Tory government, get into such a mess. It's the arrogance of the buggers that's get me. Peter Hain is not going to admit anything. Alan Johnson is not going to make any significant change to the NHS.

What is the problem with this New Labour. I suspect it's just a dose of elitism. They do trust the common people. They trust people like themselves, people who can be highly paid administrators in the NHS, not sisters, nurses and cleaners. The elite know better. Peter Hain can be as crooked as he wants because he is part of this elite.

Everyone wants to be a cavalier, nobody wants to be a roundhead. They all believe in their divine right to rule. There are no Levellers left. I'm no longer a revolutionary, but sometimes I wonder if the second British revolution is long overdue. We need a dose of common sense and commonwealth.

Or maybe Gordon Brown is like Oliver Cromwell's son Richard, just there to hand over power over to the cavaliers after his father's death. Just had a quick peep on Wikipedia. Richard Cromwell reigned for just 8 months. His enemies called him Tumbledown Dick and Queen Dick. What is it they calling Gordon Brown, Mr. Benn!

Has the Labour Party become too broad a church?

A great Scot and Labour Party leader, Keir Hardie, formed the Independent Labour party because he felt that the Liberal Party would not represent the working class although it relied on their votes.

Gordon Brown, also a Labour Party leader, calls for 'a government of all the talents' and invites strange people like Shirley Williams into it. Now we have more sleaze with Peter Hain's deputy leader campaign money. Now Peter calls himself a 'libertarian socialist', whatever that means. I'm sure he thinks he is, but all I remember is, he was the leader of the Young Liberals, not the Young Socialists. Must be something to do with him becoming Welsh.

There must be a base to the Labour Party's socialism. Sure we don't need another clause four, but we do need more than the wishy-washy liberalism the leadership gives us today. They are talking about nationalizing Northern Rock, but only because they know the public is watching and won't accept an old friends deal with likes of Richard Branson. There's just too much tax-payers money already in the kitty.

I do fail to understand how campaigning for the deputy leader's post can cost so much. It's an internal party election so a candidate just needs to get his views out to the party faithful in the branches, parliament and the unions. So you build a website, travel to branch meetings, produce a few thousand pamphlets, and spend £10,000. The money Peter Hain forgot to declare was £103,000 and that was just part of what he spent. What did he spend the money on? Were the candidates buying TV spots? I just don't see it.

The Evolution of Corruption

When I first arrived in this country it was very common to give small gifts to low level government officials to get things done. A bag of apples for the girls at the driving license office, a small amount for the upcountry policeman who pulled you over on an empty road for some sort of infringement or a New Year bottle of whiskey to the local municipal office.

I didn't really mind as I could afford it and these workers were on low wages. I had seen it all before in many third world countries. Now, as the country becomes wealthier, petty corruption at this level has almost disappeared. We even get number queuing tickets in government offices.

But corruption hasn't gone away. In fact there is probably more money involved than ever before but it is done mainly at the very top level of politicians and civil servants. It is done on payment for government contracts and people on both sides of the transactions become very wealthy. Word leaks out and we all know it is going on.

We will eventually reach the level where corruption becomes almost invisible; where all top government deals are done between friends, and friends of friends; where the old school tie rules; in fact we will become like the UK, but this will make the corruption even more costly to the country.

Shame, but at least Tony Blair can't legally start lobbying the government on behalf of JPMorgan for another six months, and he wouldn't break the law would he? And that Young Liberal, Peter Hain, wasn't promising any favours for that money he collected in the Labour deputy leader's election was he?