theyounghistorian77
New Member
im deciding whether to buy the Blair memoirs, Here are some of the main quotes i gathered, What do you think?
Jon Cruddas: "reheated Bennism"
"Jon made quite a name for himself. It was clever political positioning. To his overall political analysis - New Labour had deserted the working class and thus our base - he added a programme for the party. It was clothed in some modernist language, but was ultimately an attempt to build a left coalition out of Guardian intellectuals and trade union activists. However beguiling - and he was smart enough to make it beguiling - it was, in effect, reheated and updated Bennism from the 1980s."
Douglas Alexander: "not a free-range thinker"
"Douglas was and is a very clever guy indeed. I had tried to wean him off membership of Gordon's inner circle; but to no avail. It was a real shame ... But the Gordon curse was to make these people co-conspirators, not free-range thinkers. He and Ed Balls and others were like I had been back in the 1980s, until slowly the scales fell from my eyes and I realised ir was more like a cult than a kirk."
Ed Balls: "muddled"
"He has guts and he can take decisions. But he suffers from the bane of all left-leaning intellectuals. As I have remarked elsewhere, these guys never 'get' aspiration ... He added a truly muddled and ultimately very damaging party critique. This was the view - I fear tutored by Gordon's inclination in dealing with the party - that I deliberately chose confrontations with the party in order to demonstrate my independent credentials with the public."
On the left wing opponents of Blairite reform
"recalcitrant union leaders, bolshie MPs, lefty activists and assorted intellectuals whose main contribution was to explain why nothing should change in the name of being real radicals".
John Prescott (Blair's condescension is withering):
" At Cabinet, he would occassionally sit like a grumbling volcano ready to erupt at any moment. The proximate cause of the eruption would more often than not be one of the women intervening. Patricia Hewitt was certain to get him moving ... John would make some slightly off-colour remark if he was in a sour mood. I would then bring her back in again, just for the sheer entertainment of watching him finally explode ... He genuinely made me laugh. It was a bit like 'How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria?' In The Sound of Music, though the similarlity ends there..."
"Perhaps his most alarming trait was his habit of starting a conversation in the middle - no beginning, no context, no explanation of what the problem was. I remember a time when it looking as if I was going to bring the LibDems into the cabinet ... In storms John. 'Where's fookin' Menzies?' he begins. It wasn't a promising start..."
And John Smith, of course, "was not a true radical".
Oddest of all, Blair has a premonition of Smith's death apparently
"Of course, I had no knoweldge that John would die prematurely. Except that, in a strange way, I began to think he might... I said to (Cherie): 'If John dies, I will be leader, not Gordon. And somehow, I think this will happen. I just think it will.' Is that a premonition? Not in a strict sense; but it was strange all the same. On Saturday afternoon we went to see Schindler's List..."
In many areas, the Conservatives should over-ride the Liberal Democrats
"In many areas of domestic policy, the Tories will be at their best when they are allowed to get on with it -- as with reforms in education. They will be at their worst when policy represents an uneasy compromise between the Old Labour instincts of the Lib Dems and the hard decisions the Tories will instinctively want to take."
That Blair deficit quote in full
"If governments don't tackle deficits, the bill is footed by taxpayers, who fear that big deficits mean big taxes, both of which reduce confidence, investment and purchasing power...We should have taken a New Labour way out of the economic crisis: kept direct taxes competitive, had a gradual rise in VAT and other indirect taxes to close the deficit, and used the crisis to push further and faster on reform."
On David Miliband
He now has "clear leadership qualities". But Blair also says: "Two years later he would be a different calibre of politician, with clear leadership qualities." (He says Miliband asked his advice about a leadership challenge in May 2007. "I think you might win, not obviously, but very possibly," Blair replied.)
On George W Bush
"In a bizarre sense...A true idealist" and "a man of genuine integrity".
http://conservativehome.blogs.com/leftwatch/2010/09/blairmania-more-blair-quotes-on-the-coalition-the-deficit-george-bush-john-prescott-ed-ballsand-his-.html
http://www.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/6242123/blairs-contempt-for-the-left.thtml
see also
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/blog/2010/sep/01/tonyblair-past
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/sep/01/tony-blair-economy-labour-leadership
These quotes certainly put what i said about Labour in the Authoritarianism and Atheism thread into perspective doesn't it?
from the Andrew Marr interview.
"A lot of people would say, well, it's absolutely clear, your vision is actually of a mostly conservative politician, and your journey has been from somebody who thought he was a Labour politician to someone whose realised actually he's not."
Blair denied that; he said he was progressive. He listed various policies, like the minimum wage, devolution and equality for gay people. Marr said David Cameron would support these too. Blair replied: "Why should we then say we're like him, rather than he's trying to get on our territory?"
Jon Cruddas: "reheated Bennism"
"Jon made quite a name for himself. It was clever political positioning. To his overall political analysis - New Labour had deserted the working class and thus our base - he added a programme for the party. It was clothed in some modernist language, but was ultimately an attempt to build a left coalition out of Guardian intellectuals and trade union activists. However beguiling - and he was smart enough to make it beguiling - it was, in effect, reheated and updated Bennism from the 1980s."
Douglas Alexander: "not a free-range thinker"
"Douglas was and is a very clever guy indeed. I had tried to wean him off membership of Gordon's inner circle; but to no avail. It was a real shame ... But the Gordon curse was to make these people co-conspirators, not free-range thinkers. He and Ed Balls and others were like I had been back in the 1980s, until slowly the scales fell from my eyes and I realised ir was more like a cult than a kirk."
Ed Balls: "muddled"
"He has guts and he can take decisions. But he suffers from the bane of all left-leaning intellectuals. As I have remarked elsewhere, these guys never 'get' aspiration ... He added a truly muddled and ultimately very damaging party critique. This was the view - I fear tutored by Gordon's inclination in dealing with the party - that I deliberately chose confrontations with the party in order to demonstrate my independent credentials with the public."
On the left wing opponents of Blairite reform
"recalcitrant union leaders, bolshie MPs, lefty activists and assorted intellectuals whose main contribution was to explain why nothing should change in the name of being real radicals".
John Prescott (Blair's condescension is withering):
" At Cabinet, he would occassionally sit like a grumbling volcano ready to erupt at any moment. The proximate cause of the eruption would more often than not be one of the women intervening. Patricia Hewitt was certain to get him moving ... John would make some slightly off-colour remark if he was in a sour mood. I would then bring her back in again, just for the sheer entertainment of watching him finally explode ... He genuinely made me laugh. It was a bit like 'How Do You Solve A Problem Like Maria?' In The Sound of Music, though the similarlity ends there..."
"Perhaps his most alarming trait was his habit of starting a conversation in the middle - no beginning, no context, no explanation of what the problem was. I remember a time when it looking as if I was going to bring the LibDems into the cabinet ... In storms John. 'Where's fookin' Menzies?' he begins. It wasn't a promising start..."
And John Smith, of course, "was not a true radical".
Oddest of all, Blair has a premonition of Smith's death apparently
"Of course, I had no knoweldge that John would die prematurely. Except that, in a strange way, I began to think he might... I said to (Cherie): 'If John dies, I will be leader, not Gordon. And somehow, I think this will happen. I just think it will.' Is that a premonition? Not in a strict sense; but it was strange all the same. On Saturday afternoon we went to see Schindler's List..."
In many areas, the Conservatives should over-ride the Liberal Democrats
"In many areas of domestic policy, the Tories will be at their best when they are allowed to get on with it -- as with reforms in education. They will be at their worst when policy represents an uneasy compromise between the Old Labour instincts of the Lib Dems and the hard decisions the Tories will instinctively want to take."
That Blair deficit quote in full
"If governments don't tackle deficits, the bill is footed by taxpayers, who fear that big deficits mean big taxes, both of which reduce confidence, investment and purchasing power...We should have taken a New Labour way out of the economic crisis: kept direct taxes competitive, had a gradual rise in VAT and other indirect taxes to close the deficit, and used the crisis to push further and faster on reform."
On David Miliband
He now has "clear leadership qualities". But Blair also says: "Two years later he would be a different calibre of politician, with clear leadership qualities." (He says Miliband asked his advice about a leadership challenge in May 2007. "I think you might win, not obviously, but very possibly," Blair replied.)
On George W Bush
"In a bizarre sense...A true idealist" and "a man of genuine integrity".
http://conservativehome.blogs.com/leftwatch/2010/09/blairmania-more-blair-quotes-on-the-coalition-the-deficit-george-bush-john-prescott-ed-ballsand-his-.html
http://www.spectator.co.uk/coffeehouse/6242123/blairs-contempt-for-the-left.thtml
see also
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/blog/2010/sep/01/tonyblair-past
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/sep/01/tony-blair-economy-labour-leadership
[url=http://forums.leagueofreason.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=10&p=73455#p73455 said:me elsewhere[/url]"]Re Labour Party: Despite calling themselves "democratic socialists", they have pretty much rejected socialism and moved to the right, and have adopted many Thatcherite policies, such as the continuing privatizations in Education, the NHS, The proposial to privitize Post offices etc . The Changing of Clause IV of the labour Constitution in 1995 signified a change to the Right. In fact, Political parties in the UK are now considered so close that the elections are now seen as a battle/referendum on competences rather than political ideology.
also see
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2003/aug/06/society.labour
"The better, and in my opinion the correct, modern model of regulation -- the risk based approach - is based on trust in the responsible company, the engaged employee and the educated consumer, leading government to focus its attention where it should: no inspection without justification, no form filling without justification, and no information requirements without justification, not just a light touch but a limited touch." - Gordon Brown. CBI Conference 2005
Even the retards at conservepedia have admitted that "It was once a bastion of socialism but has largely abandoned socialism in practice and in rhetoric" and on the page of the Conservative Party, it says that "By 1997 the Labour Party had finally embraced the more conservative direction for the country and abandoned many of its socialist economic policies of the past." Overall, the party has become one of the Centre Right with the Conservatives More right wing still. Tthe Liberal Democrats occupying a space just left of Labour (Very centrist, although socialy, they're far removed from both and are more inclined towards a more libertarian line than an authoritarian one.)
These quotes certainly put what i said about Labour in the Authoritarianism and Atheism thread into perspective doesn't it?
from the Andrew Marr interview.
"A lot of people would say, well, it's absolutely clear, your vision is actually of a mostly conservative politician, and your journey has been from somebody who thought he was a Labour politician to someone whose realised actually he's not."
Blair denied that; he said he was progressive. He listed various policies, like the minimum wage, devolution and equality for gay people. Marr said David Cameron would support these too. Blair replied: "Why should we then say we're like him, rather than he's trying to get on our territory?"