In the beginning there was Gordon. Forget about everything else, it never really happened. It was all a bad dream. Gordon is nothing like Blair and never believed a word he said. Now is the time for change. From now on we are New New Labour (a bit like a Gillette razor, when the marketing for two blades slows down, add another blade - by the time Miliband takes over the Labour party it will New, new, new Labour). “Change” was most definitely the buzz word from yesterday. Brown said it so many times it started to sound clumsy. So is this an admission that the last ten years were a mistake and they got it all wrong? Surely not! Brown was virtually running the country while Blair paraded around the world. Miliband, Johnson, Straw and the other big names that are about to receive top jobs were all the key players in the Blairite years too. So if you all played such a key role and believed in New Labour and the Blair (and Brown) mission, why the need for change? This isn’t a PR job is it? A bit of spin that New New Labour don’t spin?
Picture Hat Tip: B3TA
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Paxo: 1, Burnham: 0
Did you see Andy Burnham on Newsnight last night? It was very funny. One of Paxo's best. The exchange went something like:
Paxo: So what are you changing then?
Burnham: Erm, well, the style will change.
Paxo: So no real change then?
Burnham: Oh yes, real changes.
Paxo: So where is your democratic mandate then? If you are making real changes, people didn't vote for what you will be doing. Better hold a snap election.
Burnham: Erm....
It wasn't quite as simple as that, but underneath Burnham's bullshit, that was the nub of it. It's a perfect Catch-22 Paxo has got them on, if they want to claim that this is a fresh start with real changes. Indefensible.
I did Newsnight - very
I did Newsnight - very amusing. He did a similar thing to Blears a couple of months back. They have got themselves in to a bit of a catch 22 over this one.
Tribal mandate
Diane Abbott and Michael Portillo both (on This Week) think that this question of a mandate for substantial change is a "silly question". What are we missing? Seems a reasonable question to me? it's only silly if people vote for a tribe, rather than either a leader or a manifesto. Ah... Now I see why they think it's a "silly question".