tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4486641877026778105.post3691781142986971122..comments2024-03-27T09:14:27.496+00:00Comments on All That Is Solid ...: A Monologue on Labour's Dialogue RewardsPhilhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06298147857234479278noreply@blogger.comBlogger13125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4486641877026778105.post-88207073577533904632020-12-24T12:16:15.188+00:002020-12-24T12:16:15.188+00:00Worked in an MPs office a while. What Phil says d...Worked in an MPs office a while. What Phil says does def. ring true.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4486641877026778105.post-72458864870882159762020-12-24T08:39:18.610+00:002020-12-24T08:39:18.610+00:00If you do lots of voluntary work for the Labour Pa...If you do lots of voluntary work for the Labour Party you get a signed Christmas card from someone important in the party sometimes it is signed by a member of their staff but often just an electronic one that looks like the MPs signature. I think this is their way for saying thank you and we hope you will continue with your unpaid work for us or indeed me.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4486641877026778105.post-31403540378351012782020-12-23T16:30:30.924+00:002020-12-23T16:30:30.924+00:00«the threat to seats, career aspirations, and lay ...«<i>the threat to seats, career aspirations, and lay officer positions at constituency level held the Labour right together and gave them the cohesion no amount of Fabian pamphlets or Tom Watson diet books could.</i>»<br />«<i>Roy is old school after all. [...] spoke about social democracy from a Gaitskellite perspective (as I recall it was a version of social democracy which would now be regarded as from the radical Left).</i>»<br /><br />An amusing aspect of this is that T Benn was originally a gaitskellite, and J Corbyn was originally much more radical, but eventually J Corbyn effectively became a gaitskellite, and H Gaitskell became retroactively a radical leftist.<br /><br />«<i>This blog is literally riddled with fears and concerns about avoiding pasokification</i>»<br /><br />As always I see a big difference between the Labour right, people like R Hattersley and G Brown, and the non-Labour Mandelson Tendency entrysts and the careerists, and there is a difference as to PASOKification too:<br /><br />* The Labour right does not desire and rejects PASOKification, even if some of their politics may end up resulting in some degree of PASOKification.<br /><br />* The Mandelson Tendency entrysts and careerists aim for PASOKification, because their goal is to destroy social-democratic politics and to ensure that all main parties are thatcherite, obedient to her command that "There Is No Alternative".<br /><br />My usual quotes as a reminder of the huge difference between the Labour right and the liberal-tory entrysts:<br /><br />Lance Price, 1999: “<i>Philip Gould analysed our problem very clearly. We don’t know what we are. Gordon wants us to be a radical progressive, movement, but wants us to keep our heads down on Europe. Peter [Mandelson] thinks that we are a quasi-Conservative Party but that we should stick our necks out on Europe.</i>”<br /><br />Roy Hattersley, 2001: “<i>It has been a difficult four years for the Labour Party's unrepentant social democrats. One by one, the policies which define our philosophy have been rejected by the Prime Minister. [...] In fact, success has emboldened the Prime Minister to move further to the Right. [...] Tony Blair discovered a big idea. His destiny is to create a meritocracy. Unfortunately meritocracy is not the form of society which social democrats want to see. [...] Now that the Labour Party - at least according to its leader - bases its whole programme on an alien ideology, I, and thousands of like-minded party members, have to decide if our loyalty is to a name or to an idea. [...] A Labour government should not be talking about escape routes from poverty and deprivation. By their nature they are only available to a highly-motivated minority. <b>The Labour Party was created to change society in such a way that there is no poverty and deprivation from which to escape.</b></i>”Blissexnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4486641877026778105.post-18821899117076956022020-12-23T16:09:50.957+00:002020-12-23T16:09:50.957+00:00«rational choice-influenced approaches to parties ...«rational choice-influenced approaches to parties and social movements knows would spot the similarities between it and the assumptions informing this scheme: people get involved in politics because it appeals to their interests.»<br /><br />This seems to me a bit too generic: politics is about interests, but it makes an enormous difference whether it is pushed as being about a person's *individual* interests and the same person's *group/class* interests. It makes a big difference between getting involved in politics to get their nose into the trough, or doing it to improve the lot of their own group/class.#<br /><br />What this crass "activist rewards" scheme does wrong is to push a bit too much the individual interests angle, the personal transactional aspect of politics.<br />Otherwise praising those who make efforts and take risks to help the politics of defending the weak and poor from predation is quite right and is a positive message. I guess that a reason why someone like Jeremy Corbyn is still motivated at his age and situation is the number of people who write to him or walk up to him to thank him for what he has been doing for the weak and poor. I doubt that many will write, never mind walk up, to Tony Blair or David Cameron to thanks them for tripling their house price and shafting the "scroungers" (but some may well do that).Blissexnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4486641877026778105.post-78190492875316301952020-12-23T13:50:30.133+00:002020-12-23T13:50:30.133+00:00This blog is literally riddled with fears and conc...This blog is literally riddled with fears and concerns about avoiding pasokification, even if it doesn't use the name!Philhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06298147857234479278noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4486641877026778105.post-51965216655359570502020-12-23T13:46:49.155+00:002020-12-23T13:46:49.155+00:00People are still talking about PASOKifiation in my...People are still talking about PASOKifiation in my parts, but we're waiting to see what happens in the local elections. I am in Leeds and surrounded by what was the red wall.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4486641877026778105.post-13335021240158653352020-12-23T12:16:33.507+00:002020-12-23T12:16:33.507+00:00Public sector reform; a process to manufacture BS ...Public sector reform; a process to manufacture BS jobs, the phrase which comes to mind about this is middle management. When canvassing last year, our secretary had a row with an apparatchik over how/who to canvass. He insisted that his model was the way to win elections. He reminded me very strongly of administrators in the public sector. One example of this is a disagreement with an administrator over the need to fill an extra page in what was already a complicated form. The response I got was that this piece of paper was “evidence” that something had been done. Not that a piece of paper had been filled in, but that some action had taken place. It’s enough to make you suspect that Weber’s label of “rational” for bureaucracy was a tad hopeful.Kennoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4486641877026778105.post-42871713477002260892020-12-23T11:05:39.268+00:002020-12-23T11:05:39.268+00:00Very New Labour. Very Tory-lite. Yet... strangely....Very New Labour. Very Tory-lite. Yet... strangely... no-one is thinking about PASOKification these days, even though it was a major talking point on the left as recently as this time last year. It's never mentioned.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4486641877026778105.post-29183245437695210192020-12-23T10:12:59.508+00:002020-12-23T10:12:59.508+00:00Thank you for putting my unease, so eloquently, in...Thank you for putting my unease, so eloquently, into an historical context as well as the referencing of rational choice influence and motivation ... I think you missed out 'patronising' .... Sarah Whitelaw .. Sally Lawson 1967 to 1972https://www.blogger.com/profile/03724232947522890141noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4486641877026778105.post-37810464726731449082020-12-23T10:10:24.561+00:002020-12-23T10:10:24.561+00:00Nice one, Phil. I found the whole thing nauseating...Nice one, Phil. I found the whole thing nauseating, I must say. Good on Roy Hattersley for being off message all those years ago! But then, Roy is old school after all. When I was a student I was a member of the Cambridge Fabian Society and we used to meet every Saturday (I think) lunchtime when a visiting speaker would turn up. Roy H came when he was Minister for Europe in Wilson's pre referendum government, and spoke about social democracy from a Gaitskellite perspective (as I recall it was a version of social democracy which would now be regarded as from the radical Left). He was very approachable, happy to share our lunch of apple, bread, cheese and pretty rough red wine, and insistent on paying his own expenses.Scott Newtonnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4486641877026778105.post-69006542137589966832020-12-23T10:06:47.982+00:002020-12-23T10:06:47.982+00:00A phone call from Angela Rayner if you didn't ...A phone call from Angela Rayner if you didn't make any calls would have been a better incentive.Dippernoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4486641877026778105.post-36127614349829323942020-12-23T00:17:14.476+00:002020-12-23T00:17:14.476+00:00People on my local left group were talking about l...People on my local left group were talking about leaving, or else stepping right back, after this came out. Coincidence? I know its effect on me was anything but motivating.Philhttp://gapingsilence.wordpress.comnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4486641877026778105.post-56856032291795645212020-12-22T23:44:35.347+00:002020-12-22T23:44:35.347+00:00This is reminiscent of the old right wing trade un...This is reminiscent of the old right wing trade union response to falling membership whereby reps and activists are “incentivised” to “sign up” members either through prizes or, in the most mercenary of unions, through cold hard cash payments for signing up a certain number.<br /><br />Quite apart from the fact it doesn’t actually work (unless accompanied by a serious and sustained organising campaign to win better rights at work), at least with that approach you get something tangible I suppose. I’d rather get a tenner for ringing a hundred punters than a bloody zoom call with my local MP or a snivelling cut and paste note from the leadership’s office.<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Alex Dawsonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04187037725003689333noreply@blogger.com