certainly not in his second iteration. He was very much an image man, probably a prototype for the third way in many respects. The fifty years was a reference to Atlee.

I hope Miliband wins.

He tried to get closer ties to Europe and kept the Uk out of Vietnam. He called for a cool down period before strikes and if the unions had listened to his proposals Thatcher never would've gotten elected.

he could have tracked more left, but he didnt. In many ways Miliband is to the right of old school labour positions but he is still tracking more or less as left as he can. Thats the metric that I use anyway.

government did all the big things already- universal healthcare, breaking up the empire, and having the government run the utilities/mines. What else was there left to do? Wilson was right to try to create a new image of labour as this technical happening guy who knew what was going on. None of his colleagues could've done any better than he did given the same set of circumstances. Even Calighan was really no better and his biggest flaw was not having a good sense of timing.

He came in in 1945.

and Atlee's leadership ended in 1951.

the last Labor leadership contest was between the two brothers, Ed and David. David is seen as more of a centrist, Tony Blair type character, Ed's politics are influenced more by his father (who was a Marxist theoretician).

I'm not saying he's Trotsky, but he's clearly to the left of just about any other leadership prospect in the English-speaking world for the last generation.

Yes, he's further from Blair than his brother David; but, in the Labour leadership election, her mother actually backed Diane Abbott, who was further to the left:

Greece did it, now Britain? Maybe people really are just fed up.

Is he for real, or just another place keeper?

Thanks

the real deal? After all, we just went through 7 years of intermittent disillusionment and on again off again buyer's remorse without the paradigm change we all know was needed to keep this country from sinking into a police state, with or without a war with Iran.

Sorry about the run-on sentence.

what Tory prime minister Harold MacMillan described as "events, dear boy...events".

I'm not disillusioned with Obama because I never had illusions about him.

http://www.politicalcompass.org/uselection2008

US Presidential Election 2008

This chart was constructed on the basis of the speeches, public statements and , crucially, the voting records of each of the candidates. During the election campaign, we'll be tweaking their positions as, inevitably, some of them change. We'll also be adding other charts as the campaign continues.

When examining the chart it's important to note that although most of the candidates seem quite different, in substance they occupy a relatively restricted area within the universal political spectrum. Democracies with a system of proportional representation give expression to a wider range of political views. While Cynthia McKinney and Ralph Nader are depicted on the extreme left in an American context, they would simply be mainstream social democrats within the wider political landscape of Europe. Similarly, Obama is popularly perceived as a leftist in the United States while elsewhere in the west his record is that of a moderate conservative. For example, in the case of the death penalty he is not an uncompromising abolitionist, while mainstream conservatives in all other western democracies are deeply opposed to capital punishment. The Democratic party's presidential candidate also reneged on his commitment to oppose the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. He sided with the ultra conservative bloc in the Supreme Court against the Washington DC handgun ban and for capital punishment in child rape cases. He supports President Bush's faith-based initiatives and is reported in Fortune to have said that NAFTA isn't so bad. Despite all this, some angry emailers tell us that Obama is a dangerous socialist who belongs on the extreme left of our chart. In an apparently close race, genuine leftists McKinney and Nader may attract sufficient votes from Obama to deliver McCain to the Oval Office.

<snip>



For those who are interested, we include here our earlier chart showing most of the candidates from the Primaries. Observant readers will notice shifts in the positions of Biden, Obama and McCain.



<snip>

text books called The State in Capitalist Society. Ralph must be ROFL in his grave.

My blue book - Ralph clearly understood Gramsci

As Labour support in Scotland is collapsing, with the separatist SNP on course to win a huge number of Scottish seats.

Scots on both sides of the independence referendum issue are still furious with Labour for running a joint campaign with the Tories(called "Better Together"-I'm pointing this out for the benefit of my fellow Yanks who may not be up on all of this-or, as pro-independence types refer to it "Bitter Together&quot .

In Scotland, people on the left side of the political spectrum consider it unforgiveable for anyone on their side to make common cause with the Tories on any issue, as I understand it.

In many respects, losing the referendum has turned out to be the luckiest break the Scottish National Party ever got-since their support as a party soared massively after the referendum(they had never cleared the 30% level of Scottish voter support in any previous British general election-and may win 50% this time).

If Labour hadn't badly misplayed the Scottish situation, they'd be headed for a solid parliamentary majority.

And the morgue, which is where the Scottish branch of that party will, sadly, end up next week.

Labour has decided, apparently, that it is more important to appease the egos of the small remnant of Blairites still involved in the party than it is to save Labour MPs in one of their traditional heartlands.

Scottish Labour is being sacrificed on the altar of the high priests of the Third Way.

Hopefully, this leads to the Blairites being exiled from Labour once and for all, after the votes are in. The slaughter in Scotland will be solely their fault.

And if the Scots Nats gain a clear majority, are they going to bring up independence again?

for a "no" vote...a progressive campaign, not a "shut up and know your place" message like that of Better Together.

And that campaign should have acknowledged that Scots had legitimate reasons to be angry both about what has now been effectively thirty-six years of continuous Thatcherism (Blairism was just Thatcherism with a human skin mask) and about Labour's early Nineties decision to surrender and accept, for all practical purposes, Thatcherism as the natural and permanent state of affairs.

It should have been "We Will MAKE IT Better", not "Better Together" an essentially Tory slogan.

As to whether the Scots Nats sweep the Scottish seats(which now looks likely, if not absolutely certain-there are polls showing the Nats winning EVERY Scottish seat at Westminster), it's hard to say. If they end up with the balance of power in a minority parliament(which seems to be the outcome most pollsters predict), it would actually be in their short-term interest not to-"National" doesn't necessarily equal "nationalist", and the SNP bloc at Westminster will be able to get a lot of concessions out of Labour in exchange for issue-by-issue support.

If the Tories some how end up getting a majority(unlikely)or staying in power at the head of a stable right-of-center coalition(with the sharply-reduced remnants of the Liberal Democrats, probably also the Democratic Unionist Party-the leading "pro-British" party in Northern Ireland-and possibly also UKIP, the anti-Eu, anti-immigrant party of the far right)then all bets may be off. In that situation, it's possible(unlikely, but possible)that the SNP might declare the Scottish Parliament to be, more or less "the first Scottish Dail"-I'm drawing a parallel there to the Sinn Fein MPs elected in Ireland in 1918 doing that rather than taking their seats in the British Parliament).

Unpredictable situation in many, many ways.

The big question is "what can a labour leader do in a post-thatcher/post-new labour UK?". It'll be tricky considering he probably won't have a majority and any deal with SNP will probably make his government unpopular.

Hopefully. They want Trident scrapped and spending increases, which Miliband will probably go along with.

Scotland. I'm for it if they can find a way to do it, keep power for at least 4 years, and not break up the UK. If Scotland ever leaves labour won't see downing street for decades.

which indicates that they will not necessarily be demanding another referendum this electoral term.

...is that he never won a general election, losing to Thatcher in 1979. His was a minority government though, so the Callaghan government is very relevant today.

Blairites love to point out the electoral success of Tony Blair, but it's increasingly clear that the Blairite model of "triangulation" and top down control is becoming much less relevant in the current political landscape of Britain.

which in my book gives him real liberal creds.

I had a hunch the moment he became the Labour Leader that he was on a mission to shake things up. Milliband is the bizness.

I'd rather not say much more before they start hating on him.

He's actually allowed Labour to drift aimlessly in the past 5 years.

I hope so. Next, Portugal and Ireland? All those nations have been subjected to the Austerity policies of the Neo Libs/Cons. And look what happened to them.

The greedy got too greedy. As they always do.

to the US and Canada, and even beyond.

He's not going to get an outright majority so that seems like a pretty gutsy move. His reasoning was if you want a Labour government vote Labour.

He wants to scare Scottish voters that they might get a Tory government if they don't vote labour. I don't think they'll fall for it though.

Besides if he does say that there will be a coalition there will be talk about how many cabinet seats they should get, etc etc.

That's Labour In Name Only...

if there ever was a chance though, here it is. No one from the left of the party has gotten their hands on the leadership since Kinnock.

Just like here in the U.S., when voters are given the choice between assholes and diet assholes, they go for full flavor.

Labour, like Democrats, have to actually stand for something, not just run on the "We suck less than those mean conservative" platform.