Being an independent has many advantages, especially for a centrist like myself. Most importantly, it lets you sit above the tribal fray and base your decisions purely on convictions and principles. You can speak your mind without caring what others might think about what you feel or have to say. But the downside to it is that people often call you a hypocrite and accuse you of not standing up for what you believe in – fighting a corner – and instead take the lazy way out.
It is a fair point.
As a result, I thought about joining a political party for several months – Labour or Conservatives. I was courted by the Tories much more than by Labour but both sides presented good and strong arguments, which made it immensely difficult for me.
I was impressed by Cameron’s leadership over Libya and I support many of the coalition’s cuts. But after all Cameron is not a neo-conservative and has probably only slightly more interventionist blood in his veins than Ed Miliband. The cuts are right but too fast and too deep.
As for Labour, I strongly disagree with the direction the party has taken since Tony Blair was ousted by a ruthless coup, initiated by the Brownian cronies, and I consider the leadership’s continues attempts to trash and bury his legacy as not just fundamentally wrong but appalling and disgraceful. The Brownites are still spilling their poison, lowering the standards of the political culture and making the current Labour leadership as intellectually exclusive as ever.
But here comes the point.
New Labour’s record is worth fighting for. Not just the domestic achievements – minimum wage, high employment, tough on crime, pro-business – but also the promotion of a liberal interventionist foreign policy, which saved hundreds of thousands of innocent lives on the Balkan, in Sierra Leone and Iraq.
That is why I decided to join Red Ed’s Labour – not out of enthusiasm but strategic considerations. I have to admit the fact that Owen Jones asked me to become a Tory was yet another incentive to do exactly the opposite.
Ultimately, it is best to take on the ultra-left from inside. Otherwise you are just another sleazy, opportunistic Tory, whose opinion is not worth listening to. Be warned. I will not be an easy Labourite and lurk on the very right- wing periphery of the party.
All I have to offer is honesty.
This is excellent news! Labour needs intelligent, hard working people like yourself to defend Labour’s record in office. We did so many great things and should be proud of our achievements!
I just hope that you take an active interest in Labour & hopefully see you leading Labour forward in some manner. I see people like yourself & Harry Langford as the future of Labour!
This has really cheered me up!
Ryan D you have twitter? , and Harry Langford Is part of the future though home to influence him as his housemate
Like Richard, I wish you well and Good Luck. AMEN.
Well, that makes two of us, when shall we mount the Blairite coup?
Same reason Why I am still In the labour Party we need to defend tony blair and new labour record and fight the left in the party.
https://twitter.com/thrashdanny
In the race for the position of Mayor of London, the lead has been taken by the candidate who tops the poll for the National Executive Committee of the Labour Party and who openly campaigns for anti-Labour candidates of the Far Left.
He is now ahead of the candidate for whom the London Labour Party’s paid staff and their courtier media are campaigning, namely the pro-drugs Conservative, an Ottoman aristocrat of very recent extraction who has publicly recited the Shahada in Arabic, who believes that Christianity overthrew a superior civilisation (slavery, pederasty, the games), and who sees the means to putting things right as being a European Union of which the most populous member-state would be Turkey.
Mayor of London? President of the Third World Banana Republic of London, more like it.
Meanwhile, after having ridiculed Ed Miliband for his Conference denunciation of predator capitalism, David Cameron now echoes the sentiment and wants there to be far more co-operatives. Jolly good. Although, of course, there are still those who disagree. I refer, of course, to the tiny Blairite rump within the London Labour “Party” set out above, which monopolises media coverage of Labour affairs, and the standard of which is borne by the execrable Dan Hodges. Read him today, and see if you can work out whether to laugh or to cry.
If I thought that the Co-operative Party, the Fabian Society and the Christian Socialist Movement were actively co-operating with each other and with the unions in order to replace in this Parliament the party of Andy Newman and Dan Hodges, the party of Ken Livingstone and Hilary Perrin, then I might rejoin them. In fact, I would have done it by now. Why aren’t they? What are they waiting for?
Genuinely wishing you good luck and I hope you manage to beat some sense into the party.
If you have any degree of success, it might just be enough to make me vote for them again.
I mean, I *want* to vote for Labour… but as a middle-of-the-road kinda centrist they really don’t make it easy for me. And sometimes I think they would be happier without my vote at all.
But anyway, I hope you find it worthwhile and that the party finds its way again.
“TO DEFEND LABOURS RECORD IN OFFICE” Gap between rich and poor widened, child poverty increased, legitimising of the poverty wage and then sticking 10 p tax on it, cash for honours, no trade union reforms, an explosion of quango,s [ jobs for the boys and girls] architects of the Welfare Reform Bill, conning the pensioners with WFP, [ i care bit] rather than bringing their pensions up to date with the cost of living, [ what the wfp,s equalled was 3-5 weeks difference there is 52 weeks in my year] illegal wars and as for W.M.D,S . blue labour is a weapon of mass destruction on the poor, weak, vulnerable elderly & disabled, etc etc try a re-think!
Hey Teddy, check this out http://www.ifs.org.uk/publications/4806 New Labour was redistributionist.
Well done! You have exposed the so called shift of Red Ed. as a centreist and having the choice of blue tories or pink tories, you plump for the pink version. have you not read/seen anything about all the good work Labour did to destry the working class, or are you seeing everything through “rose tinted” spectacles with blinkers on. no doubt many will welcome you as another “nail in the coffin” of the principles on which the party was founded, (which caused me to leave). My trade union “teachers” and my grandparents will be birling in their graves at how their party has sunk so
low. The freeze on public sector pay to continue, the Tory cuts to be deepened, support for private firms in the NHS, honours for the likes of Goodwin and failed MP’s/MSP’S (despite being opposed to the Lords) the list is endless. I hope you succeed in shifting the deckchairs on the “titanic”
WOW Brillo news – I was sure you’d go the other way. I know you are a very balanced person and will always make the right choice for you.
xx
I’ll be lurking there with you. And at least, unlike me, you’ll be able to actually vote for the Labour party.
Please don’t join us! We have had our principles destroyed far too much. We don’t need any more pale pink Tories. Join the Libs. instead
Any examination of the Mail and Telegraph newspapers confirms that the Coalition’s savage cuts in services and in spending power, the road to yet further economic ruin, are no more popular with Conservative supporters, Middle England, or what have you, than they are with anyone else.
The Coalition of Resistance to them can and must include Conservative supporters, Middle England, the Mail and Telegraph newspapers, and what have you. They would flock to a party which promised to bring back their libraries, their buses, and so on. Five by-election results and numerous local election results have indicated that they are already doing so.
Meanwhile, certain Labour councils in the North East have long been criticised, not without cause, for their reluctance to appoint from without. Across the public sector, the ability to recruit the best people from the national field depends on maintaining national pay structures. People like that who come here want to live in, say, Lanchester. That is no cheaper than living in a comparable part of any other area.
Yet what do we get instead? Ed Balls. If it is not the Blairobite partisans of David Miliband as the only legitimate heir, then it is this.
The case for a new party in this Parliament, already set out in part here and here, is rapidly becoming unanswerable. What are the unions, the co-ops, and their MPs waiting for? What, exactly? And why, exactly?
Very pleased your joining. Agree it is very important to defend 13 years of excellent socialist government. Not so anti-Brown as you because think TB and GB needed each other more than either likes to admit. Take care
Sorry, meant ‘you’re’ rather than ‘your’.
Hmmm. Think that defending Blairite policies like the ones you cite in Ed Miliband’s Labour Party might be the very definition of banging your head against a brick wall. Fact is, Labour members and unions didn’t like the policies anyway, they simply tolerated Blair as he got rid of 18 years of Con rule. They are now solidly back on the bus towards their faux socialist utopia. Resistance is futile!
Pingback: I joined Labour to get one over @hopisen but now I’ve been done over by @misintervention – bastards « The Right Left
Glad to see you have come off the fence. Not sure if being a self confessed right winger will win you much support though in defending TB´s
legacy.Blairism is yesterday´s ism and Labour need to find a more social inclusive way before it becomes electable again. I read about your problems with a look alike . I hope they have stopped .