What now for Labour? (Part 2)

First topic message reminder :

Phil Hornby wrote:I feel that Corbyn is sincere, polite, interesting and likeable - so are my neighbours but, like them, he isn't electable as Prime Minister.

In which case, why should we pay some phoney twicer to be something else?

Redflag wrote:The word going around is that tax receipts have gone down & No11 is struggling which has caused Osborne to borrow MORE which will mean the debt will rise to £1.7 TRILLION for the UK tax payer to have to pay back.

The word that's going round hasn't reached my neighbourhood yet, Redflag. I hope we tax payers don't have to pay back this £1.7 trillion in the near future - I just couldn't cope financially. Ultimately David Cameron, Gordon Brown, Tony Blair... speak the same language and follow the same aims.
They used to frighten children with stories that Boney - Napoleon - would come and get them. Now, our former chimney-sweeping urchins are told that the Tories will come for them. Same idea.

What our urchins should be really frightened of is Davy boy when he starts the building of the WORHOUSES It seems that does care about our grand children not have to pay back the deficit but does not care about them paying back £2 TRILLION of DEBT (rough estimate by 2020.

marcolucco wrote:I am marcolucco, not Murdoch,  and I stopped having a master when I left school. You have a kind heart in extending sympathy to poor Corbyn. I think of him as an Eddie the Eagle -  hopeless but so very, very funny.

Why then do you spend your time imitating a puppet?  Is there money in it or something?

Penderyn I think your spot on another Tory MUPPET, where Tories are concerned there MUST be money involved.

marcolucco wrote:trying to sabotage Mr Corbyn...........................  he needs no assistance; he does an excellent job of self-sabotage when his lips move.

With your rich friend Murdoch, doubtless. Why do you want to please him? Work for him, or what? To anyone who hears him he seems to talk more sense in a minute than you would in a lifetime.

Redflag - good post.

The word going around is that tax receipts have gone down & No11 is struggling which has caused Osborne to borrow MORE which will mean the debt will rise to £1.7 TRILLION for the UK tax payer to have to pay back

Hardly surprising tax receipts are down when Gideon and co encouraged wages to stay still and stagnate for several years; and also engendered a low skills / low paid workforce, zero hours contracts, part time work, temporary agency work, etc. We've ended up with a lot of workers not only paying no tax, but also requiring their paltry wages to be topped up with tax credits, housing benefits, etc. Some of us were warning about this back in 2008. Maybe Osborne is not so clever after all - he is still blindly / resolutely sticking to the unfettered greedy neo-liberal agenda despite it already having collapsed and failed once? And despite it creating wealth chasms in our society whereby 0.001% of the population (1000 persons) own £550billion in wealth, property, and assets whilst others are sent begging to food banks and made to pay for the greed of bankers etc who carry on unaffected and pardoned of their government sanctioned theft.

Penderyn wrote:Why then do you spend your time imitating a puppet? Is there money in it or something?

Eloquence in excelsis. Do those who merely imitate puppets earn money?

Penderyn wrote:With your rich friend Murdoch, doubtless.    Why do you want to please him?   Work for him, or what?  To anyone who hears him he seems to talk more sense in a minute than you would in a lifetime.

Logic tripping over eloquence - with just a touch of juvenilia to show Corbyn hasn't been left out. Do those blessed with hearing Corbyn's words magically know of mine? Perhaps you've been hearing TOO much of Corbyn. Miraculous how somebody not obviously endowed with discernment can assess the merits of Corbyn or anyone else.

A dose of our old friend Tosh anyone...?   

Phil Hornby wrote:A dose of our old friend Tosh anyone...?   

No thank you PH we get enough DRIVEL from Davy boy and his OINKS.

If so, I hadn't heard.

This must be a reincarnation...

"This must be a reincarnation."

Tosh and I had amicable disagreements. I liked him. He didn't bear fools gladly which may have proved unfortunate for some, I suppose.

In order to be didactic, it is necessary to know precisely whereof one speaks.  The unlamented Tosh was suitably named, easily tempted into bluster if challenged.

2 Corinthians 11:19 For ye suffer fools gladly, seeing ye yourselves are wise.

Judge not, that ye be not judged. Matthew 7:1-3 K J V

There may be a lesson there for the rows of milk-bottle-alike politicians who cannot come to terms with the gospel according to Corbyn.

The devil can cite scripture for his purpose, oftenwrong. Had you listened to Tosh more you might have renamed yourself "not-so-oftenwrong".

marcolucco wrote:The devil can cite scripture for his purpose, oftenwrong.  Had you listened to Tosh more you might have renamed yourself "not-so-oftenwrong".

Better scriptures than the SHYTE & LIES that comes out of the gobs of Tory HQ marcolucco, in recent years the UK gov'ts have taken us into wars in the middle east, now look at what has happened in those ares NOW, none of which is very pretty in fact it is a pure FAILURE. I just hope that Labour MPs will listen firstly to there constituents then to Jermy Corbyn, no one seems to have mentioned the COST of the bombs that would be dropped on Syria, which would do not good as to wiping out DAESH because they have build underground tunnels to hide in when the planes carrying the bombs are over head.

Just in case any one on this forum thinks that what I am saying is for any gov't to do nothing about Daesh I can assure you I am not, this murderous shower of nasty's have got brains and use them at out whitting those that do not believe in there sick minded version of Islam.

"In order to be didactic, it is necessary to know precisely whereof one speaks"

Not really - idiots can be didactic (disco, discere, didici - to learn, incidentally) as I'm sure you've seen. If Corbyn isn't an example of such then he is a calculating swine. I have absolutely no experience in matters porcine and so I can't make any judgments on this.

You normally come over as intelligently thoughtful, a veritable lux in tenebris, and I would have thought it within your capabilities to see the humour in Corbyn .... and the tragedy for Labour. But perhaps you are just teasing us.

I am uncertain as to whether or not to cancel my Labour Party membership, because not only am I totally disillusioned, but am also fed up to the back teeth of been abused and insulted by so called "fellow members" of the Labour Party, referred to as been "Tory" or "Tory Lite" or "Red Tory", told to leave the party, told to go join the Tories and made to feel like a leper.

As things currently stand, and without exaggeration, I would honestly and seriously conclude that the Labour Party is on its way out, and unless the Parliamentary Party take the bull by the horns, and do something, then I just cannot see any way back, and if the new wave of good old fashioned socialists take full control, I guarantee that you will not see another Labour government for a very long time, if ever at all.

Many of the elder statesmen of the party made direct and not so direct warnings about electing Jeremy as leader, they warned of the dangers of lurching to the left, and as one such person said ( I think it was Gordon Brown ), the party will become a "pressure group", and how right his words were.

The atmosphere within the Labour Party just now is that of two warring factions, the insults are flying like bullets, the old fashioned socialists and the new arrivals of Militants, quasi anarchists and utopian dreamers are utterly nasty, vile and within their ranks are real and genuine bullies, they are literally "Nazi's of the left" to coin a phrase once used by Shirley Williams as she left the party in the early 1980s.

If there were to be an election tomorrow, I guess my vote would go to the Lib Dems, and one thing is absolutely 100% certain, an election tomorrow would see humiliation for Labour, I am willing to bet my life savings on it.

Witchfinder let me see if I can clear a few things up for you, do not give up on the Labour party yet please.

From 2010 to 2015 Ed Miliband was our leader, I did not vote for Ed because there was too much HYPE around both brothers, you know what I did for Ed and the Labour party on the run up to the 2015 G.E at my own expense but I did it because I wanted help get Labour into gov't. After we lost BADLY then came the post-mortem of why we lost so many seats what I got on the doorsteps in Sheffield Carlisle & Wirral West was, why vote for the Labour party when all I will get is Tory Lite it was the voting public that told us we where Tory Lite.

Now Jermy Corbyn it is said that he disobeyed the whip 534 times in his 33 years in the HOC if you averege it out it comes down to 16 times over a Parliamentry year, but please take into account the years 2010-2015 because in those years he would have been voting against the Tories nasty bills Welfare cuts and the 2012 NHS care bill, which I am sure JC would have voted against both of these bills and others that would have effected the vulnerable of the UK.

I did not vote for JC in the leadership contest but did go to the hustings when they came to Glasgow, although I did not vote for JC I defend his right to get a FAIR crack of the whip with the leadership job, if it has just been the £3.00 mob that had voted for him I would understand all the fuss, but it was not just the £3.00 mob it was 85% of Labour long standing membership that also vote for him. P.S I hope you do not lose your life savings as they are very hard to come by.

Under Blair the tories took control and eliminated Party democracy, so we have only as real-Labour fuhrer who promises to give us our party back. I can see that it is very off-putting to those who joined Tory-Party-2 in good faith, but they will, I hope, now realise what happened to all the serious party members under the Pretend.

I am sure the tenebrae would have far more lux if we saw more Latin on these boards...     

I can understand points of view here, but here is the dilemma as I see it, giving a greater voice to the rank and file members is certainly democratic, but what kind of policies would it result in ?, and how popular would such policies be with the electorate. ?

The really important question is "what would make Labour electable", because unless Labour becomes electable, then what's the point of altering rules, changing the way decisions are made or altering the constitution of the party.

For example, I am absolutely convinced that Socialism is dead, not only is it dead, but it's "old hat", antique, something which belongs in yesteryear when Britain had vast masses of workers who worked in factories, shipyards and mines, most of which have now gone.
Most of the electorate will laugh in your face if you started calling someone "comrade" or sang The Red Flag, and the utter despair is that many of us thought we had rid the party of this archaic and Soviet style nonsense.

We thought "at last" we have a modern, 21st century left of centre poltical party, not socialist, but Social Democratic, based upon the successful left of centre political parties of Europe, not fixated on dogma, but on simply wanting a fairer society for all, not simply the rich and wealthy, or those with power.

The present grass roots members of the Labour Party want to bash business out of existence, abolish the monarchy, hug terrorists and nationalise the means of wealth and production, this in precisely what Tony Blair called "Alice in Wonderland Politics", and these kind of ideas are totally divorced from public opinion.

I accept that Corbyn was elected fairly, I accept that it is looking like the party is returning back to how it was before the great modernisation took place, if that is what members really want, then that's fine, but I am a realist, and I actually want to see the back of the Tory party, I want to see Cameron & Co out of office, but with the way things are heading, that is not going to happen, and thats very depressing.

You are not alone in your thoughts, witchfindsr.

Though I doubt that is much consolation for you...  

I am not one of the "£3 mob". I officially joined the Labour party after the general election because I was sickened by the Tories & their lies and because of what the right wing media did to Ed Miliband. They sickened me then and they sicken me now.

I had the misfortune of watching last night's press preview on Sky and that sickened me too. It featured the empty-headed Christina Patterson and the odious Vince Graffe who managed, in spite of dismal & disgraceful actions of Clarke & Shapps, to focus their attentions on Mr Corbyn. Vince Graffe actually described all newcomers to the Labour party as Trots & had to be admonished by the presenter.

I wouldn't describe myself as a Trot, in fact I wouldn't describe myself as a socialist. I'm just someone who cannot abide the injustice of what this current government are doing to people who simply weren't born with the proverbial silver spoon. Therefore, I vote Labour.

I didn't know who to vote for in the Labour leadership election. In fact, I left it to the last minute to decide. I watched all the debates and I listened to all the candidates make their case. The only one and I mean the only one who consistently spoke of Labour as a democratic group and who spoke to the public was Jeremy Corbyn. He spoke to people like me. I thought of my daughter & my grandchildren and I based my decision on who best would look after them.

To be herded into a group by the media and some members of the Labour party and called stupid, labelled a socialist as if that is a slur is an insult to people like me who made a rational & considered decision to choose Jeremy Corbyn. It offends me. He won by a mile, by an outstanding mile and the people chose the direction they want the Labour party to go. He has chosen MPs to be around him and not all of them share his views and so those 'worried' by him should know that those people will offer him their opinions which he will take into account. He has shown that he is a reasonable man, not one given to impulsive & arbitrary decisions.

The Labour party needs to stick together and not be blown about by the whims of the Tories.

Yes, we all like him.

But some want to see a leader who will be ELECTED by Britain, in order to unseat the Tories...

A genuinely Socialist party has little to offer "fair-weather friends", unlike the Tory Toffs who know that they are numerically unlikely to win elections unless they can fool most of the people most of the time. Which they have now done twice since the global credit crunch of 2008.

If voters can't see which side their bread is buttered, and who it is that scoffs all the jam and cake first, there will always be a right-wing government. Mr Corbyn offers the alternative of fair shares for all, but curiously has little support even from those professing to have a similar ambition.

There's nowt funnier than folk.

oftenwrong wrote:

There's nowt funnier than folk.

Sadly, I'd have to agree.

Lux in Tenebris is a short farce by Berthold Brecht about a moralist who campaigns for the closing of brothels.

Not sure what the connection might be with the Labour Party, but nil carborundum sub illegitimae.

Claudine wrote: He has chosen MPs to be around him and not all of them share his views and so those 'worried' by him should know that those people will offer him their opinions which he will take into account. He has shown that he is a reasonable man, not one given to impulsive & arbitrary decisions.

Uttered, I think, more in hope than in conviction. Those worried about him fear that his views won't allow him to listen to reason. And he has around him some pretty odd characters. He has shown himself to fly in the face of common sense, which is reason enough to worry. But the most important thing is that he will destroy the Labour Party. The opening lines of Kafka's Metamorphosis aptly parallel the installation of Corbyn as leader.

I’m not aware of Tosh’s death. I will write and ask him if, in the words of Mark Twain, reports of his demise have been greatly exaggerated…..  

witchfinder. There are a lot of angry people out there, and it’s not hard to see why. Since 1979, this country has become more and more unequal, while the mainstream political parties have been perceived, rightly or wrongly, as ever more similar. The average UK house used to cost five times the average annual income, now it’s eight times. If you couldn’t afford to buy, council housing was available at an affordable rent. In the private sector, rents were controlled and tenants had security of tenure. You could go to university and not leave in debt. We didn’t have around a million visits to foodbanks every year, and anyone working full time didn’t need tax credits and housing benefit just to survive.

The frustration of many with the so-called ‘Westminster bubble’ has been obvious for some time. We’ve all heard how “they’re all the same” and “Labour has neglected its core working class supporters” from people who then vote for minority parties or don’t vote at all. I certainly don’t agree with those remarks, but to the vast majority of people who aren’t overly interested in politics, the differences between the parties have been too subtle for them to grasp.

The SNP successfully tapped into this anger, and so did UKIP, but in the case of the latter it didn’t translate into more MPs at Westminster. Then when Ed Miliband resigned, a large number of the 75.6% of the electorate who either didn’t vote Tory or didn’t vote at all, saw the chance to support someone who isn’t prepared to accept the neoliberal consensus which has existed since 1979. As Paul Myerscough has written: "The 49.6% of Labour Party members (and 83.8% of registered supporters) who voted for Corbyn didn’t believe that Burnham, Cooper or Kendall offered a better chance of electoral success in 2020 than Brown managed in 2010 or Ed Miliband did earlier this year. Indeed they didn’t believe that, in a changing political landscape, their man necessarily stood a worse chance in 2020 than Burnham, Cooper or Kendall would have.”

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v37/n20/paul-myerscough/corbyn-in-the-media

We now have what Andrew Rawnsley calls “the Corbyn catch-22”. He says: “Labour is trapped. Trapped with a leader incapable of commanding the confidence and loyalty of his MPs. Trapped because Labour’s aghast parliamentarians are powerless to do anything about it. Trapped with a leader who can’t win the trust of the public but is strongly protected by the support of his members.”

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/nov/29/labour-mps-party-agonies-no-way-to-lose-corbyn

It raises the question: ‘What is the Labour Party?’ Is it the membership, those people you need to pay their subscriptions, distribute leaflets and canvass at election times, those people who elected Corbyn by a landslide? Or is it the MPs, whose claim to authority is that they’ve been endorsed by the electorate (although in most seats that effectively means being chosen to be the candidate by local party members)?

The right-wing of the parliamentary Labour Party abstained on the welfare cap and were prepared to support cuts to tax credits, which Osborne has since abandoned (at least for now). Sadly, since Corbyn was democratically elected, a group of his own MPs have been committed to the single aim of bringing him down. They are the people who are destroying the party. Personally, I was disgusted when Cooper, Kendall, Flint, Reeves and Umunna made themselves unavailable for shadow cabinet posts and flounced off because they hadn’t got their own way.

I shuddered when you quoted Shirley Williams. Apart from helping to split Labour in the 1980s and make life easier for Thatcher with a fragmented opposition, she conned the Lib Dems into supporting the Health and Social Care Act of 2012, then announced that she supported a charge for a GP appointment. She even maligned Tony Benn on the day after he died. Don’t let her oh-so-reasonable manner fool you, the harridan is one of the best friends that the Tories have had for decades.

Socialism isn’t dead. It’s a theory or maybe an ideology, and you can’t kill such things. To me, socialism isn’t just about owning factories, it’s the NHS, a welfare system from the cradle to the grave, affordable public housing, workers’ rights and a redistributive tax regime. The need for that now is even greater than it was in 1979, hence the public anger.

oftenwrong wrote:Lux in Tenebris is a short farce by Berthold Brecht about a moralist who campaigns for the closing of brothels.

Not sure what the connection might be with the Labour Party, but nil carborundum sub illegitimae

John tells us: "And the light shineth in the darkness and the darkness grasped it not".... I was paying you a metaphorical compliment, oftenwrong, but I see from your humorous addition that Latin was perhaps denied you in your Etonian days. Some regard Jeremy as Labour's lux in tenebris but I think they are confusing lux with luck - bad or good - who knows?

marcolucco wrote:

Claudine wrote: He has chosen MPs to be around him and not all of them share his views and so those 'worried' by him should know that those people will offer him their opinions which he will take into account. He has shown that he is a reasonable man, not one given to impulsive & arbitrary decisions.

Uttered, I think, more in hope than in conviction. Those worried about him fear that his views won't allow him to listen to reason. And he has around him some pretty odd characters. He has shown himself to fly in the face of common sense, which is reason enough to worry. But the most important thing is that he will destroy the Labour Party. The opening lines of Kafka's Metamorphosis aptly parallel the installation of Corbyn as leader.

Jermy Corbyn is just ONE of the MPs on the Labour side that is talking common sense, unlike the Tory side which all you are likely to get is "Drivel Crap & LIES"the reson that some Labour MPs are not happy is there candidate did not get the great vote that JC got in the leadership contest because he involved the Labour party members which is correct because after all it is the voters that put them into the HOC with there vote in the general election.

Ivan's version of the recent history of the Labour Party is similar to the one as depicted by many on the left of the Labour Party, however it is not a version which I either believe or adhere to.

The way I see the party over the past 40 years is of a party which became popular again after years of change and modernisation beginning with Neil Kinnock and ending with Tony Blair.

The Labour Party under Michael Foot was basically unelectable, and today we have come full circle, for Jeremy Corbyn is today's Michael Foot, the party has shifted left and we have returned back to the 1980s, and if Mr Corbyn remains leader, then we are going to have at least nine and a half years of Tory rule.

This week I shall go down to my bank and cancel my Labour Party membership, I no longer support the party or its leader, I think the tipping point for me was the nasty and utterly vile comments made by Livingstone on Question Time, but tonight I have seen more evidence (copied below) of the distaste that most new party members feel towards moderates and progressive's.

"Right-wingers in the Labour Party. You are NOT welcome. Go and join the Tory Party instead"

The words are to be found in a new on-line petition by Change.Org

Well I certainly wont join the Tory Party because I utterly detest the Tory Party, but what I will do either simply not bother voting, or perhaps vote for Tim Farron's Lib Dems, because Mr Farron is widely regarded as been of the left side of the Liberal Democrats.
The kind of caustic and abusive comments made against people such as me have made me bitter, I would not urge anyone to support the Labour Party any more, indeed I almost feel like actively campaigning against the party.

Of course there is a possibility of members of the PLP banding together and sticking the knife in, something I hope does happen, and there is the possibility of a large section of the Labour Party resigning the party whip or possibly talking to the Lib Dems.

Either way I truly cannot wait to see the shock on the faces of all the new Trot's and antique socialists in the party when they are humiliated in forthcoming elections, because humiliated they will be.

It is already widely accepted that the result will not be good in Oldham, indeed some feel the party may even lose the seat.

witchfinder wrote:The Labour Party under Michael Foot was basically unelectable, and today we have come full circle, for Jeremy Corbyn is today's Michael Foot,

Beneath that drunken exterior there is a lot of sober sense.

Witchfinder

You say you detest the Tories but at the same time you're in favour of the moderates within the Labour party who are opposed to Corbyn. These are the same new Labour moderates / blairites who have constantly voted through Tory policies / reforms, and haven't opposed Tory welfare cuts, bedroom tax, etc and no doubt voted in favour of tax credit cuts - fortunately the HoL stepped in.

So my question is why do you hate the Tories when you back a version of Labour that resolutely supports Tory policies? And how is that NOT a version of Labour that is Tory-lite?

You clearly don't want change because the version of Labour you support would change nothing.

I thank God for you Sickchip somebody that is talking loads of common sense, maybe those that do not think that Jermy Corbyn can take us into the 2020 general election and WIN.     Maybe those people and the MPs want to take the title off Ukip as the [b]"SECOND HAND TORY PARTY"[b] and wear that mantle themselves.

Let me give those a piece of advice to the Spit The Dummy Labour MPs & others that if Jermy Corbyn is FORCED out it will not just be JC that goes, it will be all those that JOINED or re-joined the Labour party since last September and as we have just heard the FBU has came back into the Labour fold but refusing any of there affilliaton fees should go to Scottish Labour.

witchfinder wrote:

The really important question is "what would make Labour electable", because unless Labour becomes electable, then what's the point of altering rules, changing the way decisions are made or altering the constitution of the party.

.

The important question is what is the point of electing a copy of the tory party? What on earth are working people supposed to gain from a steady march back to 1816?

Penderyn wrote:The important question is what is the point of electing a copy of the tory party?    What on earth are working people supposed to gain from a steady march back to 1816?

The devil sometimes has better tunes, o simple one. The language - "working people" - belongs to the time when we sent little boys up chimneys; now we have Labour lords, and some possess several homes and several cars. Tories have borrowed from Labour and vice versa - the red dividing line has got blurred, as Blair illustrated, getting himself elected for his sharpness.

If you wish to live in a past century, well and good, but around us we have lunatics who live in the 7th century, and we should be looking towards unity rather than preaching ancient dogma. Intransigence was what made Labour unelectable; common sense got them back in power. You should sample some.

No - careerists obey the rich, working people work for less and less. and only total mugs vote for this system.   I used to live in the Twentieth Century and find myself now in a Country we thought we had escaped from before my Father was born.   What the eff benefit to anyone but himself was Blair?

Sickchip

The less well off in society, the low paid and those that need a bit of help benefited more under Tony Blair than under any Labour prime minister since Mr Atlee in the 1940s, the so called "Tory Lite" as you describe (which I find insulting) introduced the Minimum Wage, opposed by the Tories, they introduced Tax Credits which Osborne attempted to abolish, and the Labour government of 1997 to 2007 did so much more, including rescuing the NHS from 18 years of neglect.

There are some issues where the current Labour Party bury their heads in the sand, one of which is Welfare, and there is a sensible, compassionate and logical middle ground to be found between the utterly nasty policies of the Tories and the denial of a problem which seems to emanate from the Labour rank and file, because the welfare bill must be arrested somehow.

How on earth could anyone in their wildest imagination even suggest that the Blair years were a version of Tory policies, the Tories opposed each and every policy designed to lift the low paid and fight poverty, from opposing the Winter Fuel Payments to introducing SureStart or universal free bus travel for pensioners.

Many sensible people in the Labour Party today are afraid to speak out and tell it like it is - that the deficit MUST be repaired, and that the only alternative to austerity is wide ranging increases in taxation, you either reduce what you spend or raise your revenue, and its really that simple.

The "Third Way" of the Blair era is what is required, we deal with economic issues, but we protect those that need protecting, and we get away from the silly old fashioned dogma that strangles common sense.

The period 1997 to 2007 were the best years ever in modern British history, the longest period of growth in history, an NHS rescued and revitalised, real help given to people who needed help, how can you say this was a version of the Tories. ?

The current Labour Party is living in cloud cuckoo land, they are going to do away with austerity, attend to the deficit, restore many of the welfare reductions, spend money everywhere and buy some printing machines to print all the money to pay for everything.

Just as I was thinking that I was alone...  

No - careerists obey the rich, working people work for less and less. and only total mugs vote for this system.   I used to live in the Twentieth Century and find myself now in a Country we thought we had escaped from before my Father was born.   What the eff benefit to anyone but himself was Blair?

Yep, I can see you're sincere. Life doesn't split itself into silver and lead spoons. I was born into poverty among folk who believed the Daily Worker was the Bible - understandably so from what they had experienced. Education is a great leveller.
Blair was undoubtedly popular when he first announced himself and could well have had palms thrown at his feet. Instead of crucifixion, of course, he metamorphosed into a millionaire many times over. "Just for a handful of silver he left us...."

You see things in black and white terms; them and us; rich and poor. Taking that as your starting axiom you will reach conclusions that follow from your beliefs but which are false. Lenin did not start off intending to murder: he wanted a good deal for the Russian peasantry and an end to the tsarist dynasty of cruel oppression. But Stalin, the man of steel, came and millions died. Was the change for the better?

There are BAD socialists and GOOD conservatives; no political system is perfect although Wellington thought our constitution was the most "marvelously perfect ever created by the wit of man." People thought that Blair was moving away from the tired old doctrinaire system that just patronised them, calling them workers but doing nothing for them. In some areas Blair did make progress but the lure of das capital was too strong. A pity.