Letter No 45  by Mike Allott: back to directory
 

21 March 2008

Blurred visions of Labour's fourth-term prospects

Jon Trickett insists "election reverses in the 80s led New Labour to triangulate to the right in order to gain power". He believes this "triangulation" began as an "electoral tactic". But if he is right, surely he believes New Labour was deceiving the electorate by supposedly moving to the centre.

If so, did he support the New Labour prospectus when first elected, or did he share his trojan horse assumptions with his constituents? No, because his assumptions were clearly false. New Labour has been remarkably consistent in maintaining its centrist approach and progressing its public policy.

Jon Trickett sees the solution to new Labour's current unpopularity as now being in the hands of the "modernising left". But does he not recognise that the success of New Labour's centrism has modernised the Tories? Cloned Conservativism is likely to have far greater popular appeal than a resurrection of leftwing politics - apart from appealing to the left's own reducing ideological core.
 

Mike Allott
Eastleigh, Hampshire