Good god, what happened?

I'm thinking of returning to blogging under my own name again, and I occasionally scan the referer files of my site. (Oh OK, that's the home page I use on Safari.) And so I came across Curse Those Islingtonistas! pre Aaro Watch Nick Cohen blogging, by me. I was going to call this, 'Nothing Changes' because back in July 2005 Nick was banging on about the abysmal state [school] system and why religious education is better. But what strikes me as really odd now is just how much I agreed with the first half of his column from January that year.

I live in an area which isn't so much a place made up of streets on the map and people on the electoral register as a curse on and shorthand for all that is wrong with Britain. I live in Islington. If you believe most of the politicians and journalists you will hear in the run-up to the general election, 'Islington' and the 'liberal elite' who slurp their lattes in its cafes are responsible for depraving the morals of the public and sapping the strength of the nation.
The limp-wristed are surprisingly strong. In the past few months, Robert Kilroy-Silk reported with rage a survey of the 'metropolitan media elite' which found that they are 'invariably left-wing, live in north London - Camden and Islington - [and] read the Guardian.' The Daily Telegraph described the decision of Islington council to change the name of St Mary Magdalene School because the 'saint' was divisive as a 'symptom of something very sick'. Other cuttings show that the liberal elite is responsible for drug addiction, crime, yobbishness, sluttishness, incivility, insolence and ignorance.

Tony Blair asserts that 'people have had enough of this part of the 1960s consensus'. New Labour will appeal to 'hard-working families' in the election campaign with some good promises on childcare and the usual 'eye-catching initiatives' on ID cards, asylum seekers and the rest. Launching the Conservative pre-election push on Tuesday, Michael Howard said that he wanted to talk to the abandoned Britain, the slighted Britain, the hard-working, law-abiding Britain of the 'forgotten majority'.

I've been dissecting this humbug for so long I can do it in my sleep now.

All excellent stuff. What's odd is that he went on -

The few gentrified streets did once house members of the leftish intelligentsia.

But since the property bubble inflated, the old Islington middle class is being steadily replaced by partners in City law firms, venture capitalists and Spectator journalists with their harems of mistresses.

(He then moved to attacking the anti-war left, yada, yada, yada.) But in July, he wrote:

Surrounded as I am by New Labour's Islington supporters, ...

It seems unlikely to me that "venture capitalists and Spectator journalists" are "New Labour's Islington supporters" so something must have changed. Also in January, most of Islington was "miserable". In July, it was "a far cry from Islington to the slums of the north."

It's like he was abducted and replaced by a pod person who just repeated the usual received wisdom about North London sometime in between. Also, it's interesting that Michael Howard talked about the 'forgotten majority' - a group which Ed Miliband seems to have just discovered. Tory Manifesto 2005 = Next Labour Manifesto 2015?