I am responding here to statements made by Alan Johnson in an article to Politics Home where he suggests that the Labour Party is dead and finished and where he lays the blame squarely at the feet of Jeremy Corbyn. This is really just sour grapes from a defeated right wing moderate as he struggles to adapt to the much needed change happening within the Labour Party and is probably more about his own line of personal questioning and doubts about whether there is actually a place for him in the Labour Party of the future.
Firstly who does Alan Johnson think he is pontificating on such matters. Johnson, himself now a discredited politician, is a part of the unfortunate legacy of the now dying Labour Party. He is right to say that the Labour Party is dead which it most probably is but guess what: far from being Mr Corbyn’s fault the death of the Labour Party is actually because of people like Alan Johnson and Tony Blair who have killed the Labour Party. The autopsy is now on-going but it will surely be found to be the case that the death of the Labour Party was already a sealed fait accompli as soon as traitors like you and Tony Blair were able to meddle with its Constitution. Mr Corbyn now only presides over the dying corpse of the Labour Party perhaps in a vain attempt to bring back life to the already departed.
The changes to the Labour Party brought about by Tony Blair have ultimately ended with the Labour Party being steered away from it’s roots and history to end up just another very confused party with no real identity cluttering up the middle to middle right ground on the political landscape. Changes brought about by Tony Blair separated the Labour Party from it’s socialist roots. This made it pretty much impossible for a Labour Party taking office as a government to make any really important or significant legislative changes to undo the harm that the successive Conservative Governments under Thatcher and Major had done. It was almost as though that the Labour Government which came to pass in the 1990’s and 2000’s was personally endorsed by Margerat Thatcher ( no spelling mistake believe me!) and the Tories. To say that these Labour Governments lacked teeth is a real understatement. The only thing that can be said of the legislation they imposed is that, well in fact, the Tories would have been proud of it! These Labour Governments of Blair/Brown had no identity at all: they were insignificant making little impact, they had no resemblance to any previous versions of Labour Governments, they had no socialist identity nor credibility. The biggest disappointment was that they failed to challenge any of the Thatcher and Major privatisations because constitutionally now they were unable to do so: no longer being interested in representing socialism. However this proved to be their biggest single most flaw because the Blair /Brown governments just could not raise any capital for investment in anything of any significance or importance. These Labour Governments having shed their socialist economic models and principles they quickly became bankrupt and this has now left the Labour Party with the legacy that it is struggling to gain public trust to run the economy because of these previous financial mis-mangement issues. Labour’s legacy from the Blair/Brown years is the reason why the Labour Party have now seemingly become un-electable and this is through no fault of Mr Corbyn as Alan Johnson suggests. In fact people have come to see the new Labour of Mr Corbyn as a beacon of hope. The hope is that it will lead us away from middle to middle right politics and back towards something more real and instep with socialist beliefs.
Labour need to be a party with a political differences to the Tories: not similarities
Labour really need to be a Party of political differences not similarities to the Tories and that is why people have been energised or inspired again to join the Labour Party because there is a hope that this may actually come to pass. There is a hope that politics may again become a battle between ideologies of left and right and that is what has attracted so many more supporters back to the Labour Party young and old alike. Mr Johnson presided over and contributed to an era of Blair/Brown political ideology that was dull, uninspiring, insignificant and pretty meaningless. Under Blair and Brown the Labour Party became lost in the fog of it’s own making unable to offer a clear socialist choice. This is clearly at odds with Mr Johnson’s thinking but he is now so out of touch anyway that it does not matter what he thinks. Whether or not a true Labour Party comes to pass remains to be seen and depends to some extent upon Mr Corbyn’s direction of leadership. The Labour Party could be dead and finished that remains to be seen it all really depends on if it can expel and rid itself of the Blairites that remain. Unfortunately at the moment no one else other than Mr Corbyn represents any real hope for a proper and true Labour Party and that is what the majority of it’s membership crave. Membership and voters are wanting greater political choice on offer with significant political differences showing between the respective political parties. When it comes to elections they do not simply want the incoming party to be the same as the outgoing party
So Mr Johnson this is your legacy and I hope that you are really proud of it. It is people like you and your treachery that have led to the death of the once great Labour Party. Now you are merely an obstruction in the path of change.