Labour Morals

Phew! The mice have been out to play but, thankfully, the cats have been around to deal with them. Things can get a bit hairy while a chap's on holiday, but I'm delighted to report that various good eggs have dealt with the situation during my absence.

The issue in question was the Labour Party and morals - and the Chief Mouse (or in his case Chief Rat) was the revolting Neal Lawson, Chair of Compass. Readers will recall that Lawson led the group of traitors who, on the eve of Party Conference this year, attacked the Party in the Channel 4 smear documentary "The Labour Loans Scandal" - telling the whole world and its mother that Labour is bankrupt and unable to repay its debts.

I'm really p****d off that my letter publishers at The Guardian ignored my own fine submission this week and chose instead to print the rantings of Paul Foot's spiritual typewriter. But I'm grateful to everyone who picked up on Lawson's comments and diverted the debate away from the amorality of Labour and onto the role of religion in society.

A fine example of this diversion strategy was provided by my old mates Ant & Dave at "The Labour Humanist" whose posting quite rightly demanded to know what manner of mental gymnastics allowed Lawson to put on a pedestal figures such as Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor with his "appalling record... helping to cover the tracks of child abusers" and "campaign of bigotry in favour of laws to discriminate against people based on their sexuality".

Contributions from The Blogging Philosopher (Tom Freeman) and the muck-stirrers at Idiots For Labour were also useful, inasmuch as they helped to obfuscate the discussion to such a degree that readers quickly forgot what the debate was all about. So, well done to them.

Like Neal Lawson, I'm an atheist and I'm proud. But unlike Neal Lawson, I know full well what morals are and I can tell you that there are plenty of them to be found in our great Party.

Before New Labour, you were lucky to get hold of a few tasteless buttons. But under the Tony's democratic socialist leadership and with Gordon's steady hand on the tiller, ordinary trade unionists and other common people have seen a fantastic rise in their standard of living and can now for the first time afford to put decent food on the family table.

Not just morals, but shiitakes, chanterelles, enokitake and porcini. It would have made Keir Hardie so proud!