All that remains to do is to read the last rites for the British left

Article by Nick Cohen (who obviously lives on a different planet to the rest of us if the richest people he knows read Michael Moore and Noam Chomsky).

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2083870,00.html

We are all leftists now, united in our righteous anger - except there is no left left for us to join. Last week saw the death rattle of its remnants in the Labour party. After the controversies about Iraq, privatisation and tuition fees of the New Labour decade, the inability of Michael Meacher or John McDonnell to find 45 Labour MPs willing to back either of them as a left-wing challenger for leadership was both a pathetic failure of organisation and an extraordinary admission of defeat.

In part, the crash of the left was due to its incurable factionalism. Supporters of McDonnell and Meacher refused to work together and in the process proved that Brendan Behan's quip about the first item on the agenda of any new Irish political party being the 'split' applied to the British left as well. Petty personality conflicts weren't the whole story, however. The manifestos of the Labour left revealed a sickness that went far deeper than the usual bickering of politics.

However far it is from achieving power, a serious political ideology has to have a positive programme to live. For example, it is perfectly possible to imagine what a green government would do, while realising that the greens cannot conceivably win an election. By contrast, the Labour left talked at length about what it wouldn't do - keep British troops in Iraq or Afghanistan - but had no coherent principles, no guiding programme.

The policies that had defined the left in the 20th century were long gone. Fellow Labour MPs weren't presented plans to nationalise the top companies, bring the banks into public ownership or allow workers' control. It turned out that the Labour left no more believed in socialism than anyone else did. Its victory was unimaginable not merely because the balance of power in the Labour party meant it couldn't win the leadership election, but because no one, not least Labour's leftists, could explain what it would do with power if it did. They had no answer to the most basic question in political life: why are you here?

it will probably be the end of the Democratic Party. :(

in 2008, it will mean yet another election has been stolen. If that happens, the Republic will be very truly really dead.

Act. Even historic rights our forefathers enjoyed before they rebelled against George III have been taken from us, and the Supreme Court has been packed with Opus Dei fascists.

At this time, an American citizen's freedom and very life rest upon the whim of an unelected "president," who can imprison and even execute those he, and he alone, considers a "terrorist" threat.

Land of the Free? According to statute even citizens of the former Soviet Union had more rights -- they just weren't enforced. When Crazy Joe Stalin had someone summarily imprisoned or executed, he was breaking the law. Crazy George can do so legally under the provisions of the "Patriot" Act.

If the White House is stolen for the third time in 2008, there next to no chance the Constitution will be restored and the Republic saved.

around here.) You meant the Republic of the USA. I agree with everything you have said - 100%. Sorry, I misunderstood at first. :(

:hi:

...sensible definition of the word. Anywhere else in the world, the Democrats would be regarded as firmly center-right. It's only because the GOP are currently occupying the part of the political spectrum normally reserved for Nazis, that the Democratic Party looks like a bunch of commies by comparison.

What's happening in Britain now is what happened in the US a long time ago: the evisceration of the true left. All that will remain is various flavors of right.

... in the pay of the right-wing press.

Wanker.

:evilfrown: :evilfrown: :evilfrown:

The Skin

...he makes some good points, but then he goes off talking utter cobblers about an opera production none of us lefties give a monkey's toss about.

The British left has some big problems, but Cohen is hardly the man to look for when it comes to solutions to those problems. Especially given his stark raving bonkers scribblings on the left's opposition to the war against Iraq.

Oh, and I know that he used to write for the London Evening Standard not too long ago, but I'm not up to date on who their current colummists are at present.

Party that lies ahead. The Democratic Party will win the Presidency, the Senate (by an increased majority), and the House in 2008. The popular vote margin will be substantial, but the Electoral College vote will be a landslide. The west coast and the northeast are solid. The mountain states and the upper midwest will turn permanently blue. "It's the economy, stupid!" It's also the war, the corruption, the mindlessness.

The Republican Party is going the way of the Whigs. All that will be left are the whining, grousing, dyspeptic reprobates who congregate at the country clubs.

you say about reprobates.