He sat with his head in his hands grateful, in these days, it was merely a metaphorical expression, in the past his traitorous failure to the people of the UK would have lead to the headsman's block on Tower Hill. It had all seemed so simple. You target your policies at the 'swing voters' of Middle England as there was nowhere else for your main vote to go. It was Labour or nothing. By mimicking the Conservatives you opened a new line of financial backing which increasingly meant you could ignore the Unions, anyway where else could they spend their members' money except to prop up Labour. So you squeezed out the influence of the Unions while spending their cash as if there is no tomorrow and as long as you were getting your rich pals to fund you, what could the Unions do about it except seek to outspend the 'City of London' corporate backers in an attempt to protect 'their party'.
There were other nice earners for the Labour party, flogging honours just like the Tories did or making sure decisions and laws went financial backers' way no matter the damage done to ordinary people. The marketisation of NHS England was a classic example of 'New Labour' making new financial backers happy and giving Labour back benchers' the chance to make a bit as parliamentary consultants to these businesses or, better, lucrative directorships for Labour's front benchers. Everyone was doing well so party cohesion was not a problem and the Denis Skinner's could be ignored as simply grumpy and eccentric old men, out of place and out of step in 'New Labour's' trendy Britain. A Labour Party where 'loads a money', looking out for number one became the norm and the poor and vulnerable were expendable. A serial peadophile as a senior member of the party, no problems as the Tories were just a keen to keep a lid on 'kiddy fiddling' while all the UK spy agencies were concerned about was the possibility of enemy agencies using the information to gain secret information. There was the bonus as when Leon Brittain was Home Secretary he made damned sure all the skeletons of abuse in the 70's and 80's were well buried and reports about the abusive activities of Lords and MPs from the police or fellow parliamentarians never saw the light of day. In the 1990's the report into the peadophile Bryn Estyn abuse factory in North Wales was well and truly buried even when concerned Labour and Libdem MPs requested to see the unredacted report or requested its publication in full, from 1994 to the present day. Then it turns out Brittain was one of the 'kiddy fiddlers' along with a growing list of recently deceased Lords and parliamentarians of his era and the others who could not be mentioned because they were still alive.
It was all the fault of some northern local internet based news source the 'bodyguard of lies' had collapsed, who had ever heard of the North Yorks Enquirer? In their fight against what they saw as a corrupt Scarborough and District Council links between Jimmy Saville and certain councilors became clear. It took only a little bit of digging for the North Yorks Enquirer to discover complaints about Mr Saville's habits and those of local councilors had been made to the local police and apparently ignored (according to HM Inspector of Constabulary the complaints had been 'poorly handled and not given due care' by the North Yorks Force or as the North Yorks Inquirer put it more simply 'ignored'. In the aftermath of the Rotherham procurement ring's exposure what had been a Libdem or Tory problem became Labour's as the Labour appointed head of Social Work and Welfare (and past Labour candidate) was accused of levels of incompetence on the issue, almost to the point of suspicion of collusion in the cover up.
Then the sussurus of an organised cover up of long standing paedophilic behaviour in the Palace of Westminster became a whisper and then a clearer voice, until it ended up an angry shout from a UK electorate already well aware of the financial corruption endemic in the building amongst MPs and Lords.
There are many peccadilloes MP's may be forgiven but the abuse and molestation of children is not and never will be one. Still the Westminster old boys' club covered up, decried the paedophilia claims being made against their membership as injudicious, slanderous and a gross insult to Parliament. Even after the mess they made of the Westminster expenses scam cover up, they still had not learned. Even with the media in their pocket this longstanding sleaze leaked out. The next step was to claim that 'kiddy fiddling' members who were still alive were too senile to stand trial and the British Establishment with a nod here and a wink there, ensured the still alive abusers who had been named and shamed could avoid facing trial. After all a few expendable high profile paedophiles had been sacrificed to calm the mob along with two of the main providers of 'kiddies to the Palace' from Bry Estyn and Dolphin House days, luckily Leon Brittain died before he could blow the gaff on the cover up he lead on Thatcher's oblique instructions and of his own unpleasant habits.
All the while Labour went along with the cover up of this heinous crime, sought to dismiss the claims as unsubstantive, yet people carried on looking. Then a routine review of documents due for disposal at the Home Office, by National Archivists, blew the gaff, as papers which just a month before were claimed not to be present, suddenly were. An MP sent a new report with regards a fellow Labour MP's continuing predilection for small boys and the whole 'it all happened over twenty years ago' cover up balloon deflated catastrophically all over the British Establishment and the Palace of Westminster. The national media stayed horribly silent except from a nod here, a hat tip there.
Labour, the self acclaimed voice of the poor, the sick and the vulnerable of the UK stayed silent, too busy ripping itself apart while it argued it should be even more Tory in its policies to stave of its accelerating electoral collapse. Too busy thinking about its own narrow self interest rather than the needs of the UK electorate for an alternate voice to austerity. Too busy attacking a party it had more in common with simply because the SNP wiped it out in Scotland by being what Labour used to be. Voting for more austerity by default and calling it 'resistance'. To change from being minime Tories exposed the total failure of Blairism and the 'New Labour' way and could not be considered, as it exposed Labour's nearly 20 year lie. The first truthful thing Blair has probably said was comparing the current state of the Labour Party to the British Army after the initial Somme attack in July 1916.
He took his head from his hands, sick to his stomach. The veniality, turbidity and sleaziness of what was once his party brought bile to his throat. What was the point? The usual suspects were in the process of making all the same mistakes all over again while ensuring the neo-liberal, austerity policy which brought them to this pass remained the Labour way. He turned to his wife, who was looking over the Thames, at the physically collapsing Palace of Westminster which more honestly reflected the majority of the politics and politicians it contained, and said,
It does not matter how I see it, love; Labour's lost.
There were other nice earners for the Labour party, flogging honours just like the Tories did or making sure decisions and laws went financial backers' way no matter the damage done to ordinary people. The marketisation of NHS England was a classic example of 'New Labour' making new financial backers happy and giving Labour back benchers' the chance to make a bit as parliamentary consultants to these businesses or, better, lucrative directorships for Labour's front benchers. Everyone was doing well so party cohesion was not a problem and the Denis Skinner's could be ignored as simply grumpy and eccentric old men, out of place and out of step in 'New Labour's' trendy Britain. A Labour Party where 'loads a money', looking out for number one became the norm and the poor and vulnerable were expendable. A serial peadophile as a senior member of the party, no problems as the Tories were just a keen to keep a lid on 'kiddy fiddling' while all the UK spy agencies were concerned about was the possibility of enemy agencies using the information to gain secret information. There was the bonus as when Leon Brittain was Home Secretary he made damned sure all the skeletons of abuse in the 70's and 80's were well buried and reports about the abusive activities of Lords and MPs from the police or fellow parliamentarians never saw the light of day. In the 1990's the report into the peadophile Bryn Estyn abuse factory in North Wales was well and truly buried even when concerned Labour and Libdem MPs requested to see the unredacted report or requested its publication in full, from 1994 to the present day. Then it turns out Brittain was one of the 'kiddy fiddlers' along with a growing list of recently deceased Lords and parliamentarians of his era and the others who could not be mentioned because they were still alive.
It was all the fault of some northern local internet based news source the 'bodyguard of lies' had collapsed, who had ever heard of the North Yorks Enquirer? In their fight against what they saw as a corrupt Scarborough and District Council links between Jimmy Saville and certain councilors became clear. It took only a little bit of digging for the North Yorks Enquirer to discover complaints about Mr Saville's habits and those of local councilors had been made to the local police and apparently ignored (according to HM Inspector of Constabulary the complaints had been 'poorly handled and not given due care' by the North Yorks Force or as the North Yorks Inquirer put it more simply 'ignored'. In the aftermath of the Rotherham procurement ring's exposure what had been a Libdem or Tory problem became Labour's as the Labour appointed head of Social Work and Welfare (and past Labour candidate) was accused of levels of incompetence on the issue, almost to the point of suspicion of collusion in the cover up.
Then the sussurus of an organised cover up of long standing paedophilic behaviour in the Palace of Westminster became a whisper and then a clearer voice, until it ended up an angry shout from a UK electorate already well aware of the financial corruption endemic in the building amongst MPs and Lords.
There are many peccadilloes MP's may be forgiven but the abuse and molestation of children is not and never will be one. Still the Westminster old boys' club covered up, decried the paedophilia claims being made against their membership as injudicious, slanderous and a gross insult to Parliament. Even after the mess they made of the Westminster expenses scam cover up, they still had not learned. Even with the media in their pocket this longstanding sleaze leaked out. The next step was to claim that 'kiddy fiddling' members who were still alive were too senile to stand trial and the British Establishment with a nod here and a wink there, ensured the still alive abusers who had been named and shamed could avoid facing trial. After all a few expendable high profile paedophiles had been sacrificed to calm the mob along with two of the main providers of 'kiddies to the Palace' from Bry Estyn and Dolphin House days, luckily Leon Brittain died before he could blow the gaff on the cover up he lead on Thatcher's oblique instructions and of his own unpleasant habits.
All the while Labour went along with the cover up of this heinous crime, sought to dismiss the claims as unsubstantive, yet people carried on looking. Then a routine review of documents due for disposal at the Home Office, by National Archivists, blew the gaff, as papers which just a month before were claimed not to be present, suddenly were. An MP sent a new report with regards a fellow Labour MP's continuing predilection for small boys and the whole 'it all happened over twenty years ago' cover up balloon deflated catastrophically all over the British Establishment and the Palace of Westminster. The national media stayed horribly silent except from a nod here, a hat tip there.
Labour, the self acclaimed voice of the poor, the sick and the vulnerable of the UK stayed silent, too busy ripping itself apart while it argued it should be even more Tory in its policies to stave of its accelerating electoral collapse. Too busy thinking about its own narrow self interest rather than the needs of the UK electorate for an alternate voice to austerity. Too busy attacking a party it had more in common with simply because the SNP wiped it out in Scotland by being what Labour used to be. Voting for more austerity by default and calling it 'resistance'. To change from being minime Tories exposed the total failure of Blairism and the 'New Labour' way and could not be considered, as it exposed Labour's nearly 20 year lie. The first truthful thing Blair has probably said was comparing the current state of the Labour Party to the British Army after the initial Somme attack in July 1916.
He took his head from his hands, sick to his stomach. The veniality, turbidity and sleaziness of what was once his party brought bile to his throat. What was the point? The usual suspects were in the process of making all the same mistakes all over again while ensuring the neo-liberal, austerity policy which brought them to this pass remained the Labour way. He turned to his wife, who was looking over the Thames, at the physically collapsing Palace of Westminster which more honestly reflected the majority of the politics and politicians it contained, and said,
It does not matter how I see it, love; Labour's lost.
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