Whilst cowards flinch and traitors sneer…

By Sam Tarry / @SamTarry

Let us be clear about this – Hewitt and Hoon are traitors.

I understand why our colleagues in cabinet, many of whom have long personal and professional relationships with both the MPs’ in question, have been softly-spoken in their condemnation. But it is time to call this act what it was.

Not just wrong, but disgraceful. Not just bizarre, but sickening. Not just troubling, but treacherous.

It was said in the dark days following the 1979 election, that too many Labour activists had an attitude of ‘Let’s get Callaghan first, then Thatcher.’

Now two members of New Labour’s top brass, who have served at the very highest level, seem to care more about self-gratification than the future of our party, movement and country.

We know exactly what the result of this sort of behaviour is. What makes this plot so imbecilic, is that it was directed against the man who has consistently called for a social democratic answer to the global economic crisis, and has been vindicated. The world has followed Gordon Brown in adopting the cause we believe in – that Government can and must step in to protect ordinary people from the ravages of the free market. It’s policy that affects people – why will the various coup plotters never discuss it?

We should now be debating policies for our manifesto to win the hearts and minds or ordinary working people up and down this country – not debating who should lead us into the next election. It is after all the policies that need changing, not the leader. We need a leader with the vision and sense of historical perspective who can envisage a new vision of the good society; and have the courage to jettison damaging free market dogma.

To be prepared as Gordon Brown has shown, to move to make people the masters of the markets rather than their servants; to speak up for industrial intervention to protect and build the industries that will not gamble people’s livelihoods away in the casinos of high capitalism. Nor a government that will enact cuts to our public services with gusto and relish as we seek social democratic, not Thatcherite, solutions to the problems that face our country.

Now is not the time to down tools and start a fight on the shop floor, instead we must organise our people and our party for the most important election in a generation. It’s time to confront the task in ahead of us and not each other.

I am proud to support Gordon Brown’s global reaching actions as the leader of our party – as our country looked over the economic precipice – and so should anyone whose brain is not dwarfed by their ego. Now is the time for solidarity, unity, and common endevour.