POISON IN THE SOUL


An obsession with the narrow politics of the political class is not only a trap, one that I can sometimes fall into, - as it distorts perspective. It is only a tiny minority who care what goes on in the Beltway or Westminster Village, such an obsession leaves out the reality of peoples lives. It also, given the crudity and vitriol in which debates are often conducted, it can also coarsen you.

I thought of this often during the past week as Margaret Thatcher was physically, if not intellectually, buried. Don't get me wrong I have no intention of issuing a mea culpa, even if the virulent rough and tumble of week just gone made my language cruder, even crueller than normal. I may later regret some of the things I said, though I doubt it, and believe that I have fully explained my position in previous blogs with some clarity. Still it is worth watching oneself in the heat of battle. Whilst it is important to keep the rapier, and indeed the cudgel, to hand one must avoid falling into, what I will call for the purpose of this exercise, the Galloway sewer.
Dan Hodges

I thought of it too when I watched Dan Hodges, who sells himself as a Labour supporter, writes for The Daily Telegraph and declares himself to be a ‘Blairite.’ Mr Hodges is one of the small tribe of privileged politerati[1] that increasingly dominate and, so they believe, dictate the parameters of political discourse; the Miliband brothers come from this milieu, as does Cameron and Osborne.  

If Mr Blair was to spit out all the bile he feels about those who objected to the ‘New Labour project,’ it would take the form of Dan Hodges. Watching him disparage Ed Miliband and current Labour party strategy one was witnessing someone who not only does not think that Ed Miliband can win, but patently does not want him to succeed. It is far more important for Mr Hodges that he be proved correct than that the Labour Party enjoy electoral success, or that it do the right thing by those suffering benefit cuts.[2] When the poison has penetrated this deep it is time to step away.

[1] The "insider" group of politicians and others who know the voodoo ins and outs of navigating in the political world.
[2] Which is deemed electorally unpopular; well capital punishment and the criminalisation of homosexuality were unpopular.


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