A glib managerialist wanker? You say that like it's a bad thing
Well, here's my go at answering the other BB's question ... I agree that it's not at all clear what DA is on about.
I don't think Dave does hate Cameron, not deep down. He wants Labour to win because he has a bit of cash on them and blah blah single mothers minimum wage (not that the individual parts of the Denis MacShane "if you could see my constituency" litany are bad things, but the big picture of Britain under Labour is that it has got more unequal, not less). But he doesn't hate David Cameron with anything like the passion that he hates Old Labour.
BB notes that Dave is accusing Dave of tokenism and being patronising to the population. I think that this is actually praise. Remember that Dave holds to the "right brain/left brain" theory of politics, a kind of Birtspeak Straussianism in which politicians have to be lying and hypocritical simply because the public are so venial that we won't drink our cod liver oil unless they tell us it's Coca Cola. Cameron is, after all, "the best asset his party has" and is opposed to all the horrible knee jerk instincts of his party. In other words, he's for the only party that Dave is really committed to – the party of radical, directionless reform. Aaronovitch's politics is basically aesthetic (I think that this is AW's main contribution to the literature) and you have to admit that Cameron is easy on the eye.
I don't think Dave does hate Cameron, not deep down. He wants Labour to win because he has a bit of cash on them and blah blah single mothers minimum wage (not that the individual parts of the Denis MacShane "if you could see my constituency" litany are bad things, but the big picture of Britain under Labour is that it has got more unequal, not less). But he doesn't hate David Cameron with anything like the passion that he hates Old Labour.
BB notes that Dave is accusing Dave of tokenism and being patronising to the population. I think that this is actually praise. Remember that Dave holds to the "right brain/left brain" theory of politics, a kind of Birtspeak Straussianism in which politicians have to be lying and hypocritical simply because the public are so venial that we won't drink our cod liver oil unless they tell us it's Coca Cola. Cameron is, after all, "the best asset his party has" and is opposed to all the horrible knee jerk instincts of his party. In other words, he's for the only party that Dave is really committed to – the party of radical, directionless reform. Aaronovitch's politics is basically aesthetic (I think that this is AW's main contribution to the literature) and you have to admit that Cameron is easy on the eye.
posted by The Rioja Kid at 10/04/2006 07:33:00 AM
4 Comments:
But [Aaro] doesn't hate David Cameron with anything like the passion that he hates Old Labour.
Ah, the Blairite posaition in a nutshell.
I'm puzzled. Do you mean "venial" or "venal"?
venal, probably. I can never remember which is which.
I think one of the most interesting facets of the Decent's is there inversion of that old CP slogan, No enemies to the left.
They just replace left with right.
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