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09. Jul 2007

'Welcome to your new New Labour government. Same bullshit, same flies, same smell'

 
Mange af Blair-regeringens liberale kritikere har haft travlt med optimismen efter Gordon Browns overtagelse af premierministerposten.

Brown står således, hedder det sig, for en mere seriøs og vægtig stil, mindre spin og mere indhold, mere Labour og mindre New, vigtige forfatningsreformer, en mere seriøs reaktion på terrortruslen, og hvad ved jeg.

Lenin's Tomb er man knap så imponeret:
Brown brought Digby fucking Jones into the government to be a trade minister. That's right, the union-bashing, war-supporting, pensions-busting, right-wing former tub-thumping tub of lard for the CBI. He isn't a member of the Labour Party, doesn't support it, and has often led the charge against it from the right.

Today, David Miliband - who, though he voted for the war on Iraq, supposedly held very private worries about the whole idea - told the press that he would not take the option of a military attack on Iran 'off the table', implying that Iran was developing nuclear weapons and that was destabilising its neighbours. Of course, these claims were delivered with a singular lack of conviction, because the purpose of this isn't to persuade but to wear down your resistance to these manifest lies, to dull your outrage on hearing this nonsense, so that eventually stop fighting it.

Now, take Kim Howells, the ridiculous Foreign Minister, and former chair of Labour Friends of Israel. This is the exchange between Claire Short and Howells over the current crisis in Palestine. Short's intervention is admirable, draws attention to the depraved activities of the IDF that she witnessed, outlines the conditions of the Palestinians, and explains who the putschists were in Gaza. Howells gives a classic piece of Foreign Office obfuscation - thanking this or that state leader, issuing glittering generalities about progress, making greasy insinuations, diverting the discussion down his memory lanes, and refusing point blank to consider any of the punitive actions against Israel that have been applied to its victims ...
Og sandheden er da også, at Brown har haft oceaner af tid til at iscenesætte "nybruddet" og "reformiveren" - og havde mindst lige så meget tid til at gå imod Irak-krigen og Blairs asociale og uansvarlige nedskærings- og skattelettelsespolitik, om det var det, han havde ønsket.

Browns "friske pust" er gammel vin på nye flasker, spin indeni spin, spin spundet som ikke-spin - men bagved det hele forbliver alting det samme: Same shit, same flies, same smell.

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