- the Glasgow East by-election was a mixture of the funny and disturbing: Labour losing a solid heartland seat is not such a surprise, as its being so late to come. Labour have abandoned almost every core principle, even the least controversial ones, and given a contest in Scotland where there is another option that is, these days, looking more to the left of Labour (SNP), its not a big shocker. it'll be interesting to see if it occurs in an English constituency, where the alternative is the Tories or Lib Dems, both of whom are concentrated on the centre right now. The truth is that Labour have introduced so many policies that would've been expected of the Tories, they may have lost the heartlands forever. this could be the beginning of the end for the party (or it could be a rebirth. my money is on the former. especially, as the post-defeat analysis has been about them not being right-wing enough (how,exactly? a lack of kinky sex,and jackboots???), or problems with the leadership. but what the defeat has shown is that the party cannot go chasing as far into Thatcherism as it likes without losing the party base. they banked on always being able to rely on them on the basis of fear of the Tories. but when the Tories are indistinguishable from them, and they seem to have no regard for civil liberties, human rights, and egalitarianism(supposedly their core values), and are prepared to increase tax on the poor, but not the rich, then there is no choice. to use, an oft-quoted Orwell example, no-one can distinguish the pigs from the men anymore. it took forty years odd, and a solid, powerful, and increasingly radical trade unionist movement to put Labour into government, it may prove twice as difficult to win back the progressives, and radicals in this country. i can't say I'm sure they'll even try.
- on a connected note, i almost feel sorry for Gordon Brown. he's intellectually superior to Blair, that much is always obvious. Brown could have ideas, Blair needed to hire people for it. but he's become a Blair-mould prime minister (a mould he does not, and could never, fit), and finds himself being swayed backward and forward in the wind by the media, the public and his party. he can't win, if he doesn't change, he's called washed-up and backward, if he asserts a more classical Labourist position he's accused of U-turning. the poor man is scared, and he didn't/doesn't realise that what made him so popular in that first few months was his solidness, his honesty, and the fact he wouldn't be the straw man like Blair. regardless of whether i agreed with him (mainly i don't) i expected him to hold to his position and beliefs unless genuinely convinced. he hasn't, and unlike Blair, he lies very poorly. he's a symptom of all the flaws of the last decade: a government in debt to an ideology, Thatcherism, it should've opposed, and in fear of the media and public to such an extent it could never cling to any values. The difference between the 1945 government (and even the 1960's Labour government) is indicative: everything the Conservatives did from then on, was being pulled by Labour's values, and thinking; since the 1980's everything, including New Labour, has been a direct outgrowth of Thatcher's values. The Tories, along with their media allies, make the agenda. sad. very sad.
- the furore over Max Mosley's victory in the 'Nazi sadomasochism sex' privacy case has been just as "funny" (for want of a better word). the News of the World is screaming its usual "restricting the freedom of the press" line. but what right do they have to interfere in people's private lives? i can imagine how little they'd have to say about Mosley if he was involved in shady business practices, people in glass houses etc, so they give us the spurious news of an F1 big-wig's less orthodox sex life. utter crap. none of their business or ours. these things are only of interest if the party involved is making some claim to moral/sexual normality ( for example the exposure of Tory ministers personal lives when they were standing on a narrow notion of "Family Values"). there is no incursion into press freedom here, other than to say that if the press are to intrude into people's personal lives, they have to justify in terms of wider public need to know. what's most irritating was the sanctimonious balls of seeing the paper that proudly present page three girls, taking the moral high-ground on someone else's sex life.it wasn't the sadomasochism or even the spurious Nazi-link we should be offended by, it was the NotW use of the word "sick" in it's headline. i had rather hoped were past the stage where ANY consensual sexual act was considered sick. are we all so certain of our own proclivities, and likings that we'll condemn others for theirs? god, i hope not. and if the NotW wants to get het up about such things maybe it should consider the extent to which its role as page 3 purveyors plays in the grooming of girls to enter the sex trade.
- on a more personal note, when I'm hitting a periodic downturn (as Gordon would probably phrase it), i try to remember Christmas 2002. now i wouldn't say Christmas 2002 was the worst time in my life, but it had an outstandingly bad convergence of BAD SHIT going on. I'd left uni, and after six months dispiriting unemployment, i was entering into 18 months doubly dispiriting employment. the sort of low level job, with no mental involvement we all end up taking sometimes for purely cash reasons. furthermore, I'd managed to shatter two of my closer friendships (one irreparably, and the other after some time, salvageably). the irreparable one was one i still miss, as they'd been a very close friend who'd helped me through my inaugural and nasty bout of depression. none of this was helped by the fact other friendships were suffering from impermanent and very permanent separations: all my uni friends (with one exception, who I'd only just started to know properly) had gone back to their respective home towns, or new home towns; my school friends had gradually fallen away to the point where they remain (i only have one, who i see rarely, that i consider a proper mate); and a couple of other friends had gone away to their first year at uni too. i had at one point, probably one person was a friend, and actually talking to me. the two friends I'd probably count my closest had yet to become proper friends at all, I'd hardly spoken to them. it was NOT a good Christmas. how i managed to survive it intact, without even medication (which I'd come off six months earlier) or much in the way of career-based engagement, i do not know. i had, like all fools, A Plan; a plan that took me 4 years longer than expected, but a plan all the same. and if i am not a well-regarded novelist at 27, then i am a fairly well-regarded and liked, if over-opinionated, fool at 27, who has some idea where he wants to go. hallelujah for that.
a small secular blessing and a furtive fumble to you all :)
