All these people do is get our backs up

By John Gray

Was I the only one to have his commute into work ruined yesterday morning by listening to this idiotic interview on Radio 4 Today with Compass’ Neil Lawson and Tribune‘s Chris McLaughlin?

The interview was supposed to be about an article by David Miliband (of all people) published in Tribune which was interpreted as supporting the idea of a Totnes style MP selection process.

Now I suspect that many Labour Party activists, including myself, would have reservations about this, but it is an interesting idea. What was simply unforgivable in my view was Lawson using the occasion to grandstand and attack his own party as “dying”, a party “that doesn’t believe in anything” where members have “absolutely no rights and no say whatsoever”. Not only that but Lawson also called Labour a party that “doesn’t believe in a different or better society”, doesn’t have any vision and is merely being run by careerists and opportunists. With friends like these…?

What really annoys me about this is that we have less than a year to a general election. Yes, there are things wrong with the Labour Party and its internal democracy which need changing. But did this interview actually contribute to changing things or did this ex-lobbyist, self-publicist achieve nothing more than getting real activists’ backs up?

The interviewer Jim Naughtie noted pointedly that Lawson refers to his opponents as “they”, as if they are from a different party and that ordinary voters will notice this.

What I also found unforgivable is that these two self professed lefties never even bothered to discuss the only really different and radical suggestion by Miliband about a new possible role in the Party for the 3 million trade union political levy payers.

No, no mention of this at all – rather it was just the usual self-indulgent moans and whines by the excluded wing of the self appointed Party Intelligentsia which no doubt gets a sympathetic hearing at dinner parties and first nights.

These people self-evidently don’t give a real damn about the prospects of the Party if they are not the ones in charge. Frankly following this morning’s farrago they have only succeeded in making even Hazel Blears seem an ultra Party loyalist.