Comments on: What does Harriet Harman’s win mean?

By: sonia

sonia — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 17:13:01 +0000

Good one Leon. And no disrespect to you John..

By: leon

leon — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 15:15:09 +0000

Politics will be very different from this week onwards!

With all due respect John (and I actually do mean that!), I’ll believe it when I see it.

By: Muhamad

Muhamad — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 20:45:03 +0000

“Once bitten twice shy.” As they say.

New Labour needs to find out why a good number of people like myself won’t vote for them again.

It was interesting watching Channel4 news tonight.

By: sonia

sonia — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 17:07:31 +0000

and personally, i can see how decent people who really do want to make a difference – get caught up in such a system. I mean for goodness sakes – i don’t believe in evil – i think Tony Blair was probably a nice idealistic bloke back in the day, wanting to do his bit. and then you realise you have to play the system if you want to get anywhere, because otherwise, one may as well not bother at all.

By: sonia

sonia — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 17:03:55 +0000

and as far as i can see, not many people admit to this cyclical problem, so we expend all our energy getting into the rat race and we’ll carry on forever if we don’t admit there is a problem. Yes probably none of us have a solution, and we aren’t going to get on the road to thinking about how to evolve till we all at least ( honestly) admit there is a problem with the system itself. Of course such honesty is rare on the part of politicians because they’re all trying to get us to believe that they can make THE difference. So naturally they want to make ‘big up’ the agency they have as an individual within the party system. Which is frankly – a lie. They are far more concerned about their peers – than their constituents. Because how are they going to get anywhere in these precious ‘support me for deputy leader’ campaigns if they’re not winning the support of their peers?

By: sonia

sonia — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 16:58:19 +0000

yes Jon, let’s hope politics will be different ( of course that’s what they all said wasn’t it now)

By: sonia

sonia — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 16:57:38 +0000

yes and perhaps we can ask why it was that they allowed their arms to be twisted in the critical iraq vote back in the day. I mean its all very well to be jumping up and down now saying oh yeah we should get out of iraq ( which absolutely they should say) but that still doesn’t let them off the hook. Well what I mean is it points to the failure of the party system -when you’re trying to climb the political ladder, your arm gets twisted because if you don’t toe the party line, boom! you never get to deputy leader, so you have to think about your career. ah the idea is wait till you’re in power and then you can do what you like. till then, keep that mouth shut.

No wonder then they get so damn power-hungry when they’re able to twist the arms of the lowly climber-uppers.

And so the cycle goes on and on. I would be more interested in finding out if any of these smart politicians realize a) that the public is fully aware of this and hence the cynicism and b) what do they think about it?

frankly if i joined a political party i’d never get anywhere because i would actually stick to my principles and boom! i wouldn’t be able to climb the ladder. and oh yes everyone thinks, i’ll compromise this time, i’ll compromise next time, when i’m at the top ill change things. Oh boy and by the time you’ve got to the top: guess who has changed: you.

anyone been watching the trial of tony blair?

this whole thing about whether Crudas or Harman is all personality politics. I mean – who cares anyway? is one person going to change things when the overall system is problematic? We can crucify tony if we like, but again -he is the product of the system.

By: Rumbold

Rumbold — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 15:10:36 +0000

“What does Harriet Harman’s win mean?”

That diary secretaries can breath easier.

By: Refresh

Refresh — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 09:54:25 +0000

“What does Harriet Harmanâ€™s win mean?”

Sadly very little if we are to go by her statement of today.

By: Jon Worth

Jon Worth — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 06:52:04 +0000

It does demonstrate how different Westminster and the rest of the UK / Labour family actually are. Just being a ‘good guy’ (Johnson) is not enough to deliver an election.

Let’s see how things go. Politics will be very different from this week onwards!

By: Puffy

Puffy — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 06:45:02 +0000

Business as usual. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a politician backslide as quickly as she did when queries just ater her election about her call for an inquiry on Iraq. Our politicians really are despicable.

Incidentally, I noticed in the news that Cameron’s approval rating hs now slipped to -5, compared to -20′s for Blair and Campbell. What I thought was extraordinary about the story was that it took the fact that the people disliked all of our politicians, including Ming. Was there once a time when they were worthy of our respect?