What the Blair-Brown sideshowdown is really about

k-punk

Spectres of Mark
Been meaning to quote this for a while now. Simon Jenkins, two weeks ago, Sunday Times - purringly enjoyable blistering take-down of Gordon Brown, which accords very much with my own views of the power-crazed, psycho-sexually twisted calvinist:

'On any blink test, Brown's face, clothes, office, lifestyle and friends suggest a man temperamentally unsuited to public politics. He is averse to man-management, foreigners, the countryside, Londoners, the arts and good living, not to mention compromise, forgiveness and hail-fellow-well-met.'

LOL.... and: 'He is currently trying to "do a Blair" by kissing babies in Africa. It is painful to watch.' Wasn't it just?

Course, Brown's personality foibles are of no political consequence. But what is important about the Blair-Brown soap opera is not only that it distracts us from real issues (the whole parliamentary sideshow does that natch) but its false libidinal promise. In terms of the desiring economy it promotes, the Blair-Brown antagonism couldn't be more positive for New Labour. The constant lurking presence of the 'more ethical, moreintellectual and less superficial' Brown facilitates the illusion that there is a better alternative just out of reach. Course, given the actual choice betwen Blair and Brown, most NL supporters would unhesitatingly go for the PM, no doubt for the reasons Jenkins enumerates above. But having Brown there allows them to deceive themselves that what they <i>really</i> want is something else.
 

john eden

male pale and stale
It's a replay of all the stuff around Livingstone when he was out of the party and then returned. Spurious opposition within the Labour "left".
 
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