The lessons of New Labour?

Someone called Tim Allan has emerged from well deserved obscurity to berate Ed Miliband in today's Observer (http://m.guardian.co.uk/ms/p/gmg/op/smBmnSswYJgAPSkOd_cicLg/view.m?id=590247&tid=120787&cat=Search). He's worried that young Ed may turn his back upon the "lessons of New Labour."



What are these lessons? That once the pound had crashed out of the Exchange Rate Mechanism the Tories were set to lose in 1997? That Labour could have won as a (rightward leaning) social democratic Old Labour under John Smith? That an expensive obsession with privatisation was damaging both politically and economically? That following a right-wing Republican President on an imperialist adventure was massively unpopular and wrong?



Apparently not. Mr Allan thinks Blairism is the key to future popularity.



Mind you I'm not inclined to take too seriously a commentator who asserts that the leadership election was "decided by trade unionists who are not even Party members after instruction from their union bosses."



He's wrong on two counts.



First political levy payers are affiliated members of the Party.



Secondly we all got individual votes and I was one of many who did not give my first preference in accordance with my Union's recommendation.



If this is the best the Blairites can manage they all deserve Mr Allan's obcurity. Who is he anyway? (http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Tim-nice-but-dim.jpeg?wasRedirected=true)?



Now that we have real Tories to worry about the cheerleaders for the corpse of New Labour are revealed as the irrelevance they should always have been.

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