If I Ran Labour

• Looks as though Labour is headed for a painful train wreck in next week’s election
 
• Looks as though the Tories will hold the single strongest hand in a hung Parliament
 
• Even if Brittania tilts the tables away from the Tories, Gordon Brown has spent the past week giving away reasons to think he oughtn’t be the leader for Labour
 
Especially if Tories and Lib Dems trounce Labour, Brown will have to be replaced
 
So why not throw Labour’s support behind a coalition government with Clegg as PM? There’ll remain enough differences between Labour and Lib Dems that in subsequent elections, a fresh Labour leadership will be in a position to run against the Lib Dems. Both Labour and Lib Dems would be able to rationalise reneging on particulars of their manifestos (ascribing that to the compromises the other half demanded). Labour would avoid looking like whipped-dog losers, and would be able to marshal their substantial (disproportionate) advantage in seats toward a prominent role in the Cabinet and policy decisions. Any good things that the Lib Dem coalition brings about, Labour will be able to claim to have brokered. It looks to this (apolitical, naîve, outsider) onlooker as though it would be win win win for everyone except Brown and his die-hard loyalists. And to be frank, it would probably look better for Brown than the upcoming electoral thrashing will.
 

2 thoughts on “If I Ran Labour

  1. AKMA,

    You ought to check out Philip Blond’s Red Tory analysis. It doesn’t provide a blueprint for utopia. But smart subsidiarity and local association might be the West’s only hope – Catholic socialism, not the anemic statism of tired Labour. 13 years of Labour and the poor get poorer! Clegg’s marginally better, but he believes in utopia. One tires of the boomer politics in the US and UK – this hypocritical rhetoric of “care for the poor” combined with sickening compromises with vested corporate interests (e.g., Obama’s deal with the insurance lobby before the Health Care Bill) and the banks! The poor get nowhere in globalization. There is now no real party for the poor. Maybe there never really was one. But any propping up these shameless regimes is a failure of Kingdom politics.

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