I remembered it as the 82 year old pensioner had been handled roughly and hurt - even in that article Wolfgang says they were going to manhandle him until he offered to go peaceably. Would you want stewards handling your 82 year old relatives like that?
He was then arrested under anti terrorism law that Blair had promised would only be used in the most severe situation, although quickly released after.
For me the underlying point of unscrupulous abuse of power stands - treating a vulnerable old man like that to stop him making a point at party conference says all you need to know about Blair's leadership
Going back to my original point though, I believe that Labour need a Blair type character to drive the necessary changes within the party to make them electable again. The hard left are too wrapped up in their own ideology, they seem to forget that they will only win power through reasonable and popular policies that the electorate will accept in large numbers.
Contrasting the leaders shows how important a decent leader is. Policies almost take a back seat. Look at Johnson and Sturgeon compared to Corbyn and Swinson (or evening May for that matter)
To a large extent, but the most persuasive leader in the world isn’t going to succeed in selling socialism to middle England. Labour need to make their policies reflect a broad church that encompasses a lot of the middle ground or they will find themselves remaining out in the cold.
For all the talk of "centreist" and "moderate" policies, I point out that the SNP has a fairly centre-left policy agenda (and not actually that different to Labour's last offering) and won losts of seats.
And how many seats did the 'centreist' Lib Dems win???
I say again, the policy agenda wasn't that far left - certainly not by European social democratic standards. And a lot of it is very popular. Just because the papers and Tories have decided to label Corbyn a "Marxist" (he isn't), it doesn't automaticaly mean the poicies are "far left"
The problem was (as backed up by the Opinium data) Corbyn and his leadership style and inability to "sell" the policies.
And I say again if all you are going to do is put forward centreist status-quo policies that just ignore/duck the *BIG* challenges facing the country then a lot of particularly younger voters are going to think you're barking mad.
There's a reason that younger voters don't turn out to vote (at least partly) - if all the parties are offering are policies to pensioners and the wealthy (e.g. Brexit, triple lock pensions, tax cuts), then it's no great suprise they're unengaged. At least momentum and Corbyn have engaged some of that youth vote and in return offered those under 40 something on their priorities (e.g. Climate change...)
Name-calling will be called out, and Ad hominem will be frowned upon. And whatabout-ery sits somewhere above responding to tone and below contradiction.
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Fantasy General Election
Jul 2024
