Join the Blue Ribbon Online Free Speech Campaign
Fighting threats from Stalinists and Fascists to use court injunctions and physical violence to silence free speech
The working class can kiss my arse, I've got the Councillor's job at last
The Luke Akehurst blog - The genuine Luke Akehurst weblog about politics, elections, the Labour Party and that ghastly Hackney place. Ignore counterfeit Luke Akehurst blogs - this is the genuine article from the chap who whips Hackney Labour councillors in his spare time.
Now with extra added ingredient Linda K Smith. Helps wash your family whiter!

"My favourite film is Dr. Strangelove, Or: How I Learnt To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb" - Luke Akehurst
"Funny and clever but not particularly nice" - Time Out
"With added foie gras, steak, soft cheese, claret and port (hic!)" - Luke Akehurst
"In gustatus perquam putidus est" - Vatican Bank
"Not so much 'Who's Who?' as 'Who's Sleeping With Whom?'" - Peter Mandelson
"You can judge a blogger's politics by the colour of their blog banner" - The spoof Luke Akehurst
"By a coalition of Trots, tree huggers, anarchists, Tories and a nasty little clique over-excited about my hair colour" - Luke Akehurst

Sunday, January 07, 2007

Doing It From The Bottom Up

I must confess that I've been a bit dismissive of John Cruddas and his Deputy Leadership campaign in previous postings here and here.

On this issue, it would only be right for me to take the unusual step of crediting my spoofster, who has consistently portrayed my true feelings of mind-numbing ambivalence far more honestly than I've done myself.

When asked, for instance, "whether Cruddas is on the right, blairite wing of the party", I was credited with having responded: "I don't think everyone neatly fits into categories and labels... also the Blair/Brown dividing line, the old/new Labour one and the left/right one are not identical. Some people in Compass are very "new" Labour but leftwing, some Brownites are new Labour, some are old Labour rightwingers, and some are more traditional leftwingers". You can see why the spoofster has a reputation for political wit and repartee. There are some contenders whose politics we know we know, some whose politics we know we don't know, but some whose politics we don't know we don't know...

Doppelganger has also suggested that it be great if comrades took time out from listening to Jon Cruddas and did some canvassing and leafleting.... although you can see the inconsistency in his position when he had previously heaped praise on Cruddas for having really worked at regenerating his CLP.

When I came out in favour of the candidature of She Who Must Be Obeyed, on the grounds of a more convincing coiffure than Cruddas as well as not being associated with Compass, my impersonator covered his bets skillfully by indicating that Cruddas would still be a preferable candidate to the greasy spick Miliband.

So... where is all this taking us? Well I've been mighty upset by Jon's recent mouthings about Party membership. At a time like this, when the Party is in dire financial straits, we need comments about declining membership like we need a hole in a Trident submarine.

Jon has been very selective in his use of the figures - he talked about the huge drop off in membership since 2000 as though it was continuing at the same rate and could therefore be extrapolated to show a membership of zero by 2013. In fact, membership was fairly stable in 2005/6 and the just under 200,000 members we have now are here for the long haul. Both of these facts are plain to see from the following membership projection:


One reason why Labour candidates should shut their mouths on issues like this is, if course, that they offer an opportunity to the Lev Davidovich media campaign to steamroller along behind. I was shocked to see this clip on the BBC news the other night. It's the sort of filth that Channel4 specialises in, but not what we expect to pay our licence fee for. Nor indeed our Labour Party membership fee.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Well, you're always going on about wanting to become an MP. If the figures are correct, some time in the second week of April 2013 there will be fewer Labour Party members than places on the Labour benches... so if you can time the election right you are quids in!