So...a real old fashioned 1930s style economic crisis. Lots of press telling us Things Will Never Be the Same & the Old Paradigm is Broken. Squillions of zlotys of debt 'nationalised' on both sides of the Atlantic. This - we're told - has stabilised the situation: but stabilised for whom? Can massive spending cuts be far behind?
& calls for socialism? Keeping listening, there a squeak coming from Manchester where the dear old Friends House is playing host to a 'Convention of the Left' as a sort of counterpoint to the Labour Conference which is also in town. Unity and Fraternity dominated the opening proceedings. I'd say even the most mouse like market dealer with the the smallest surviving appetite for risk would go short on those themes lasting the week...
Anyway, the problem, as far as I can see, is not with the soon-to-be-squabbling denizens of Friends House. The only real question there is what is going to be the label affixed to the next vehicle for testing to destruction, after the Socialist Alliance and Respect. It's the lack of any anti-recessionary economic policy around which the Left might rally. I'm investigating this lot now - I'm rather hoping they might help me think this through....
Oh - and a poll of 35,000 people say Labour's going to lose the next election worse than it lost in 1983, after the so-called 'longest suicide note in history'. 160 seats will be left with a Labour MP, and the Tories will have a majority of 146.
Personally, I feel this could yet be a over-estimation of the remaining support for New Labour in the country.
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