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Tony Benn hopes to stand for parliament
Spotted this over on Grimmer Up North, Tony Benn intents to stand for parliament once more.
If he stands it'll be for the Kensington and Chelsea seat, which is a safe Tory seat.
However clearly there are many positives, first he may actually win; this is Tony Benn we're talking about here. But more importantly this puts socialism on the agenda again, the more attention we can get to this the better - at the coming election the left must make a push to get as many socialist in parliament as possible, we must build on the advances that came about thanks to John McDonnell's campaign.
Neo-liberal-Blairite-Tory candidates and MPs must be deselected and replaced by people who actually represent Labour, and not business. Every CLP in the country should be resisting candidates imposed on them top down. I am happy to see several Labour bloggers saying they will not doing any campaigning in their constituency if they have a right-wing candidate, instead they'll do their campaigning elsewhere, where the people standing actually represent their beliefs.
Tony Benn, by standing, can help this cause, to re-energise the left and bring more socialists into the Labour Party. Good luck Mr Benn.
5th October 2007 14:59:25, 200 words, 248 views
2 comments » 2 comments
(a) This is a recipe for civil war within the Labour Party; (b) purges are a symptom of either a fear of, or an unwillingness to engage with, alternative arguments; (c) conflating the opposing terms - 'neo-liberal', 'Blairite', and 'Tory' - without any definition or justification - produces nothing other than a straw-man; and (d) how can you accurately draw the dividing line between 'representing' Labour, and 'representing' business? FWIW, hitting business without a deliberate move towards post-capitalism (the British left is exceptionally unwilling to make such a move) has one ultimate effect: to make the capitalist system - within which all are immersed - work less well, raising unemployment and poverty.
"... I am happy to see several Labour bloggers saying they will not doing any campaigning in their constituency if they have a right-wing candidate"
This is indulgent and unprincipled: it's based on an ahistorical and inconsistent definition of the partial term 'right-wing'; it 'criminalises' many within Labour who are economic and social liberals; and most of all, it virtually guarantees General Election defeats in all but exceptional years, in favour of a party that is much worse than anyone within Labour. Such a campaign cannot be allowed to continue.
All the best to Tony Benn: if he can win, great, but over the years I've realised he's essentially a retro/conservative crank, who distracts his youthful acolytes from the interesting and complex contemporary economic, moral, and political arguments - in favour of anecdote, rhetoric, and conspiracy theory.
"This is a recipe for civil war within the Labour Party"
The Labour Party is left-wing and pro-working class, and completely out of step with the leadership, who are quite clearly anti-working class, anti-trade union and so on, this is a matter of freeing the Labour Party, about winning democracy. If that takes a civil war then so be it.
Those who call for unity and understanding are always those who would lose such an engagement. They cannot afford a battle of ideas, because their ideas are wrong, Tory and sick.
"It's based on an ahistorical and inconsistent definition of the partial term 'right-wing'; it 'criminalises' many within Labour who are economic and social liberals."
Economic liberals should not be in the Labour Party, neo-liberalism is the biggest offensive against the working class ever, and is responsible for the setbacks of the last 25 years. Social liberals, who bow before the pressure of Mr Brown and the Tories are weak.
I am a socialist, and I stand for socialism. Clause IV quite clearly states we're a democratic socialist party. So why do we have a Labour government continuing Tory policy?
Why is the country more unequal than in 1997? Why do we have a Labour government that has privatised more jobs than the Tories did in 18 years. Something is not right here.
"Virtually guarantees General Election defeats"
The point of democracy is not to win elections; it is to represent people within parliament. Also you need to ask why we lose such elections, it isn't because the policies are unpopular, there's another element lurking here, and that's the billionaire press. I am not going to change or hide my views because they disagree with them.