Telegraph | News | Clarke attack on Brown ‘the deluded control freak’
Well, obviously we wouldn’t want a deluded control freak as Prime Minister, would we?
Rachel, as always, is excellent on the punch-up, while Chicken Yogurt thinks it’s only to be expected, really, that
Shedding all claims to dignity and self-awareness, and confirming the essentially hollow nature of New Labour, its ‘ideology’ (the term is used loosely) and intellectual underpinnings (ditto), the main protagonists are going at each other’s throats, having nothing else to argue over other than the grottier aspects of their respective personalities.
What with
all of them being complicit in the crimes of the New Labour era. They can’t criticise each other over Iraq or the fact they spent billions on computer systems only to receive steaming turds in return (to read but two charges from the epic rap sheet). It’s like Reservoir Dogs where the characters soon forget about why and how the heist went wrong and instead focus on the personality of Mr Blonde. Blonde in this case, of course, being Gordon Brown – he’s mental say his detractors and a coward (more Mr Yellow than Blonde, it has to be said).
Meanwhile, Stumbling and Mumbling is appalled by Blair’s assertion that ‘There is no fundamental ideological divide in the Labour party for the first time in 100 years of history’, rightly replying, if it’s true (not necessarily when Blair says something, of course) ‘it’s a terrible indictment. There damned well should be ideological divides within the party’.
He goes on to list six possible divisions — liberty vs paternalism and equality of outcome vs equality of opportunity, for example — about which
Any group of intelligent people on the left or centre should be divided [....] When Blair boasts that there are no ideological divides in the party, he’s therefore confessing to something utterly deplorable – that he’s taken politics out of the Labour party.
