Essentially Labour only succeeds when it is the product of two or more tendencies, New Labour was broadly speaking revisionist/soft left/old right. Left to its own devices, the old right talks a lot about the importance of winning - while losing!
Yes the same is true for the Tories; you need 2 'tendencies' or 'minds' to succeed. It makes for chaotic HQ but without unifying 2 fairly different groups a party cannot get a majority.
So, the 'old right' is generally used to mean the pre-1994 right of the party. As distinct from New Labour it had a wider range of views on Europe (whereas the Blairites were all pro-EU, some of the old right were hardcore Outers), more rooted in the trade union movement and more supportive of it...
...and it has seen the Labour party's job as to represent a more narrow set of 'workers'. The revisionists have tended to be more interested in the idea the party should be a home for liberals and/or leftward opinion of all kinds, has been more preoccupied with questions like....
...'what do we do to grow our support among the middle classes now that the country is much more middle class', etc. As a general rule of thumb, you can see the differences between the two by examining where the Starmer government is to the right of the Blair one and where it is to its left.
Though like the 'soft Left' (which e.g. includes both people like Dodds and, well, the Bevan>Wilson/Crossman>Kinnock line) it was/is more variegated than is often realized. The Whips Office in the 60s/70s is a good way of showing this as it tends to be seen as THE classic stronghold.
Always blows my mind that the same year that Waddington is found to have bungled his way into sending an innocent client of his to prison for 16 years he gets to go to Bermuda to be governor.
My parents sat me down one weekend to ask why, despite working a lot of hours at the supermarket, why I hadn't saved any money for uni and basically did I have a drug habit.
The expression when I told them I'd splurged on a limited edition X-men issue was a combination of relief and disaspointment.
I remember years back having an argument with a friend by text (heh, time capsule) about whether governments lose or oppositions win elections, and I pull out “what about Blair?” for the latter proposition and he replies with “half the fucking cabinet were in prison” which, while exaggerated…
Quite fun that a forgotten scandal now was when the government was encouraging British arms companies to sell arms to Iraq, a country against which the UK was enforcing a no fly zone and had recently been at war with..
Also that he was reportedly a strong supporter of capital punishment (not clear if he ever changed his mind post exoneration of the guy he'd have sent to the noose had it been legal)
Unfair on Rishi tbf, because while he's not everyone's cup of tea, he never incompetently caused one ofthe worst miscarriages of justice in British history
I was mostly just reaching for a fairly genetic and forgotten late period Minister of that era and couldn't remember the name of the guy who fed his daughter the burger tbqh
Gummer was quite an old Tory wet in comparison, bless him. Poor sod is lumbered with that image forevermore and he was basically exiled to Ag fish and food for not being “one of us”
There was quite a big* difference between old Labour right & New Labour. Not least their attitude to the unions. Modernity had no place for unions so ignored them. The old right organised within them (poorly admittedly for a long time).
*yeah, yeah within the minutia of Labour Kremlinology.
I think actually now we are living through a government in which the old right is dominant and the revisionists and soft left are the minor players, compared to the last Labour government where the same three elements were in different proportions, we are seeing it is not that minute!
No that’s fair. It just feels a bit minute when it comes to, well, war in Europe and Trump in the White House. I mean it’s my bread and butter so I find it all fascinating. But I don’t know that I have the skill to convince others of that.
These intricate threads/discussions positioning Labour figures on the political spectrum are exactly the kind of thing I come here (and went to the old place) for. I’m sat at my desk, grinning into my phone and hoping I don’t have explain why to my colleagues.
Comments
"Kiszko's ordeal was described by one British MP as 'the worst miscarriage of justice of all time'."
i remember it at the time
The expression when I told them I'd splurged on a limited edition X-men issue was a combination of relief and disaspointment.
*yeah, yeah within the minutia of Labour Kremlinology.