Friederich Engels described British elections prior to the Labour Party as being a choice of which member of the ruling class would next exploit the workers.
Now a special Labour Party conference is to decide which Kinnockite is to press ahead with the rightward humiliating fourth electoral de feat and cil elections.
It was bad enough for many to realse that Nei Kinnock's reactionary rule changes had blocked any left wing challenge from Livingstone and Grant charade of a debate between the Gouldite Tweedledeos and Smithite Tweedledums - a debate in which all the traditional terminology is useless.
Is John Smith, the union bureaucrats' choice, who exudes all the char. isma of a merchant banker on Valium, to the 'right of Bryan Gould, the superannuated yuppie who masterminded Runnock s calastoon c 198/ elecoor Is Margaret Beckett, the former Bennite who backed the miners in 1984 before swerving to the hard right, (only to rediscover her CND card in a dressing table drawer during the i030015rip contos, 1035 Taokar war John Prescott whose main fighting ploits in the Commons tea-room?
magnetic you rodon we North Polo, your compass will not work. Labour's polcies have been so tar removed from any socialist or working class framework that the con. mean nothing. This is even more true now the 'soft left have diided their support between the various leadership contenders.
he LCC in particular is solt, with some rollowing cour wille oners. liko the bookies' triend Robin Cook (clearly with an eye to the best chance of preferment if he backs the winner). are backing the Smith campaign.
Quickly into the lists for Goukd was Clare Short, with an article in Tribune backing him because he is more radi sal and imaginative", but also backing Smith - John Smith and Bryan Gould would make a fine team'.
The reality is that all four contenders stand guilty of flagrant, long-term Kinnockism. Despite Kinnock's pre-election joke that no sensible householder would call back a plumber who had already falled three times to fix a leak, Labour Party members are being asked to choose a new leader from a gallery of falures.
mith and his deputy Beckett - the architects of Labour's wretched economic policy, so conservative as to offer nothing to working pecple; so hat-baked as to give the Tory press a field day, run on a ticket of more of the sama Gould's gossamer-thin left credentials rest on his commitment to economic interventionism", though he also pioneered ne concept of social ownersp as a facade behind which naHe was quick to describo Paddy Ashdown's cheeky suggestion of a Lb-Lab block as 'interes*nino extent of Prescotts poitical challenge to the existing leadership wan be seen front the fact no is wiling to be deputy to John Smith, doing the dogsbody work of buiding the party organisation while Smith steers through right wing policies. Is he any better? John Prescott For the left there is little option but to campaian for a wita. n carosor to spoil papers by showing support for Livingstone and Grant, and to press undemocratic requirement that a chai. lenger requires the endorsement of 20% of Labour NPs in order to stand.