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Irrelevant. Labour will probably need to change its leader at least once more before it can develop a leadership team untainted by the Blair-Brown years.

But, irrelevant or not, the Tories will be watching closely - Ed Balls as Labour leader would certainly set the champagne corks popping at Tory HQ!!

How can any of the candidates, all faithful head nodding members of the most financially disastrous regime in living memory, possibly in history, be seriously considered as suitable to hold any kind of office in the government of this nation ?

Welcome back Nick. Here's hoping you had a pleasant holiday. Hope you're looking forward to being called a rabid 'True blue' Conservative supporter one minute, then accused of being somewhere to the left of Karl Marx! You really must have 'rhino' skin!
Good to have you back.

Being one of the few who will be opening my ballot paper tomorrow morning, I don't think I'll show any interest in Mr Blair's new foray into being an author. While I agree that he did some great things for the party, his, Mandelson's and Brown's time has gone. Having read the Alastair Campbell book first time round, I imagine that Mandelson's and Blair's book will be the same stuff, maybe an extra allegation or two. I don't think many Labour supporters are interested in what will be published tomorrow. I'm looking to the future, while thanking the people from the past, who should be firmly in the past.

So Blair is going to tell the hopefuls that they must never allow themselves to be controlled by a manipulative chancellor who only has eyes on the top job and has no real idea on how to set up the economy?

As Friendlycard said, Labour need to do a lot more to get the taint form them of the overspending. However, they may still get into government whilst still mistrusted depending on how the coalition fares. All bets are off on what the next election brings, whenever it happens.

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Having ridden on Blair's coat-tails for 13 years (and three successful General Elections) the five pygmy-contenders now battle each other to distance themselves from his legacy (not to mention that of his lamentable successor).

The fact that four of them served as ministers in Blair and/or Brown governments makes the whole thing even more laughable.

Love him or loathe him, at least Blair was a great beast of the political jungle. These five hardly qualify as rodents.

which candidate will have more chance of leading the party to govt and be acceptable to the majority conservative media and status quo destructive capitalism. or which candidate represents more truer labour values and policies. policies that that free people from poverty and from being victims of greed. policies that really protect the environment. that is the dilema. vote with your heart or a vote with maybe a better chance of getting rid of this appaling coalition.
personally i think david milliband represents little change from the worst aspects of new labour.

A lacklustre campaign in general, Balls has been spirited in opposition but we can still expect a Miliband to win.

Ed Balls claims the contest has become a "soap opera". Actually, it's not even that interesting. None of the candidates is remotely inspiring, and all of them - with the possible exception of TV star Diane Abbot - are tainted with the failures of the last Labour government.

To see the various candidates trying to distance themselves from the Blair/Brown years is frankly stomach-churning.

The reason this country is in such a mess is because of Labour's incompetence an the deliberate scorched-earth policy pursued by Brown. They were all 'loyally' supporting him at the time, so their Damascene conversions now are wholly unconvincing.

Labour deserves many long years in the wilderness - so it's an irrelevance whoever becomes the next leader of the New New Labour party..

Why is so much time being spent digging through the rediculous past, we all have seen what a terrible government new labour were.

When will the present government be given the same level of inspection from the media, after all surely it is the here and now that is important, this governments decisions will affect us all, yet very little debate has taken place!

My money's on Ed M sneaking thru on second preferences.

Meninwhitecoats...agree, whatever you think of him Balls has landed some blows in opposition,especially on Gove, although that's not particularly difficult.

Harking back to Michael Foot was quite appropriate. The man was crucified by the media because he wasn't a media savvy politician but a thinker on the left. The famous "donkey jacket" wasn't a donkey jacket but a quite ordinary short jacket. The media are on the whole "right wing". Not because they are Conservatives but because most reporters from the ´óÏó´«Ã½ are Oxbridge educated conservatives.

So they [the media] loved Blair and hated Brown. The media have quickly re-cast the enemy from being the bankers who brought down the economy to the poor, vunnerable and public sector who are going to pay for it. Suddenly the bankers didn't ruin the economy but shortly it will be Labour, the "huge" public sector and then unions will get bashing pretty soon.

So the media are going to put pressure on Labour Party members, MPs and Trade Unions. If David Milliband is elected then he will be the new Blair and ungo a media love-in. He will be "the man to beat Cameron". If the Labour Party turn to any other candidate it will be "Old Labour" victorious over the Blair legacy and the winner will be cast in the Michael Foot mode and the ´óÏó´«Ã½ along with the rest of the press pack will crucify him or her.

The media should be an impartial observer seeking to explain to the public the political landscape. Too often in a 2 minute piece to camera the roll of the reporter becomes more important than the news.

So it was no accident the history of Michael Foot was brought in. The subtle media message - stay safe and vote David Milliband.

There are differences in policy between the candidates. Of course they are all in the Labour Party so the differences are perhaps coded. The problem with the media is that they have created a political climate in which parties and candidates are tuned to the 24 news cycle. They are media friendly, avoid debating controversial issues on camera, avoid honesty with the electorate indeed avoid anything of real substance. This is precisely because the media has created the politics of a beauty contest rather than issues.

By a strange turn of events we get back to Michael Foot. In 1983 the Labour manifesto said: we cant afford Trident, we should leave Europe and the banks ought to be in public ownership. In those days the media labelled such politics far left fantasy. In 2010 the state owns substantial shares in the banks, the debate on Trident includes Michael Portillo saying we cant afford it and parties of the right are associated with leaving Europe.

No wonder Gordon Brown was afraid of nationalising the banks. No wonder no Labour leader seriously debates our nuclear deterent. No wonder Europe is a topic all leaders avoid.

The media has what it wants. All parties have learned from Michael Foot. The lesson is talk about issues and the media will destroy you but talk trivia and personality then Westminster Journalists will get their 30 seconds of TV time. Modern political journalism is the OK or Hello magazine of personality politics. The coverage of the Labour Leadership contest only demonstrates this.

Are we really that interested in Tony Blair's memoirs? He has given many TV interviews already and I should be surprised if we learn anything really new. He was quoted as saying "Gordon is Gordon" so that's all we need to know on that topic. Yawn yawn.

Until someone in the Labour Party spells out in detail how they would have dealt with the structural deficit why should the electorate take them seriously?

Stephen Townsley 13
What an eloquent and interesting post. How pertinent that the "loony left" of the seventies have been shown by events to have been, to some extent, accurate in their policy positions. I well remember Tony Benn being portrayed as a madman in Murdoch's media for espousing these policies. And yet he and Foot were and are men of principle, right or wrong, so different from the current politicians of all parties.

It seems that politicians have given in to the media, accepting that they can no longer take a stance which could be portrayed in a negative way. Nick says that all accept that Cameron is moving too fast but that's not what we read in the press. It seems every decision is carefully orchestrated to appeal to the media. This means that we are doomed to accepting the Murdoch view of the world, something Blair was very happy to go along with.

This type of politics is pretty poor. We need politicians of principle - Cameron may yet turn out to be one but many in his party and elsewhere are not - Clegg and David Milliband for sure.

I remember Benn coming into our local school and debating issues with local policians. What stood out was his command of history and sense of trying to do right for the majority of people - the others couldn't live with him. Do Cameron or the Labour contenders have these qualities? Maybe Dianne Abbott, maybe not. I think that many on thids blog and in the country are so taken in by the media that there is no room for the principled, radical politician any more. They go with the flow and don't actually believe in anything much.

It's probably going to be a Miliband, and of the two its very likely it will be David. A lot of people like Andy Burnham, but he wont quite get enough, and well nobody is going for Balls or Abott as I can tell.

Apparently unrelated though, but will tell you a lot about the labour party, is the current headline on ´óÏó´«Ã½ News:

'Brown was 'difficult', says Blair'

Apparently bears use the woods as a toilet as well.

Expect more voter disenchantment. Here in Oz the labour party is distinctly on the nose due to the real-lite media performances and the public understanding of win-at-all-costs bull---- that runs instead of policies - but the ownership of media in Oz ( and in UK) does make one understand the cleft stick that binds labour.
Bob Hawke ( Australian ex-PM ) said that he exuded credibility because he didnt exude morality. Now there's a thought for your pollies! I expect W. Churchill had the same real impact.

Who trusts what Blair says? A knocking job on Brown will sell more books.

Elsewhere there was an interesting article about PPE at Oxford. The most telling comment from someone who did the course, David Heatcote-Amory, was that it made him into a sceptic. This course has had many alumni including our present PM. It would seem that the course is very good at giving students the tools to win arguements, which is an essential part of any poltician's CV. However such skills are meaningless without a clear vision. By clear vision I mean an over-riding mantra, that is clearly explained to the rest of the country.

David Cameron's 'Big Society' could be one such idea, but needs a lot of fleshing out and needs to explain what happens to communities where the Big Idea doesn't work. It also needs to explain how giving more control to GPs is working towards this aim given patient inertia when it comes to changing GPs.

The successors to Brown/Blair need to develop an appealing mantra if they are to succeed. It will take some time to develop it, but by saying that this Parliament will last until 2015, Cameron has given them the time.

In the next few weeks one of the Labour hopefuls will win the argement within the Labour Party. The real skill will be to keep on winning the argument within the Labour Party AND develop an apppealing mantra to the voters at large.

What a choice....
a couple of Blair clones of negligible distinction,
one Brown clone already being portrayed as 'combative' so he better be careful of radio-mikes,
one little known white male of less known persuasion and
one black female thought to be almost-real-Labour?

Where exactly does any new Labour leader position their party up against a coalition of centre-right Conservatives and centre-left Liberals?

Why David Milliband is not Tony Blair:

1. David Milliband completely lacks charisma which is vital in the age of the TV debate. Blair oozed charisma.

2. David Milliband is tainted by his wholehearted participation in the New Labour project. Blair was untainted by the Callaghan government.

3. David Milliband doesn't seem to have learnt from New Labour's mistakes, other than trite, banal, meaningless soundbites such as turning Labour into a 'living, breathing movement for change'. Change into what for heaven's sake? Blair did learn, perhaps overcompensating, from Labour's past.

4. David Milliband is not photogenic, which, in an age of televised debates, really does matter. Remember the monkey grin and the banana? Tony Blair on the other hand was the 'favourite' of many women of all ages and some gay men too.

5. David Milliband says nothing interesting about the economy, if anything at all. If he isn't interested in it, who does he have who is? Blair did talk about the economy, and had Brown.

6. David Milliband is a symbol of the nepotistic clique that New Labour has become exemplified by the fact that the two frontrunners are brothers of a leading middle class Marxist, have never had jobs outside parliament and both did PPE at Oxford, and lack charisma, judgement, principles, vision, good looks and economic awareness, as shown above. Blair symbolised the big church, meritocratic vision of New Labour by being a public school nearly-Tory.

If David or Ed Milliband are the best that New Labour can do it needs to go back to the drawing board.

New Labour will have to lick its wounds, regroup and turn the page. Tony Blair's memoirs give a very interesting insight into two giant personalities who reinvigorated Labour but who also brought the party down because of sheer in-fighting. How long labour will be in the political wilderness is anyone's guess but the publication of Mr Blair's memoirs shows how fractured the Labour Party is. The Conservatives and Lib Democrat coalition will consolidate their position further at the expense of Labour. Tony Blair is full of surprises and is an enigma in many respects: no one would expect a man of such intelligence to seek solace in drink!

re #20
You could add Milliband Major's apparent lack of political nous and guts to the list. He bottled two obvious opportunities to replace Brown.

Not that that would have saved the rest of us from disaster. Millipede the Elder counts New Labour's time in office as an 'achievement'! Augh!!

re #18
Interesting post.

You could also argue that a good PPE course would teach you how to come up with little distractions to take everyones' eyes and ears (especially those of the media) away from other activities.

At the risk of being labelled a miserable cynic (still a cheerful one, actually, I am pleased to report) I wonder whether the Big Society thing, plus Govey and ID-S perhaps, might be little strategic moves by Dave just to keep us all occupied?

#23

I like the thought of Gove and IDS being Trojan horses to distract us because I would be really worried if that was all they had to offer.