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New Labour

In these we trust?

Is it a coincidence that so many of capitalism's Great Men - its leaders and captains of industry - are so utterly unworthy as human beings?

By all accounts, including his own, Bill Clinton is a mendacious, sleazy rogue, whom you would trust to look after your shares but not your younger sister. Clinton's own analysis of his condition, after taking priestly counsel, is that he's a sinner. His process of repentance has involved dropping bombs on Iraq, for which he has been praised as a defender of global peace, and parading around America exhibiting his ubiquitous smirk. It is the insolent smirk reminiscent of a southern Baptist choirboy caught nicking the church collection whose only resource of defence, after months of righteously denying the charge, is to bite his lip and utter hoarsely "I was looking after it for Gaad".

Editorial: The cracks start to show

Eighteen months on and the Blair project is looking increasingly hollow. Government resignations, charges of "cronyism" and sleaze plus the apparent feuding between Blair and Brown. It seems like a far cry from the happy days of May 1997.

This is not all. There is the NHS crisis (nothing new about this of course), a looming recession and government plans to join the Euro which could prove tricky.

For our part, we did argue at the General Election that the New Labour project would be a damp squib. Unlike the leftists, we did not feel that the working class should have to experience yet another Labour government to realise that it would be anti-working class. We were arguing that reformist politics is anti-working class before the Labour Party was even properly formed! We feel the current government has not disappointed us—it has demonstrated yet again that capitalism cannot be reformed in the interests of the working class.

Voice from the Back

Knowledge is power
"Evolution," says the message from the Alabama State board of education, "is a controversial theory some scientists present as scientific explanation for the origin of living things such as plants, animals and humans . . ." New York Times, 24 November.

The promise—
Mr Raynsford, MP for Greenwich, said that begging was the most disgraceful indictment of the present [Conservative] government's policies. "Our task has got to be to eliminate begging in London and create a memory of how bad life was in the late 80s and early 90s." Camden New Journal, 7 July 1994.

Greasy Pole: Byers Market

Greasy Pole

Byers Market

Perhaps it was because he feared that Blair is coming across too effectively that William Hague complained in Prime Minister's Questions about whether a British Prime Minister should spend time solemnly discussing a barmy football coach's religion. Perhaps it was because Blair realised uncomfortably that the Tory leader had a point that made him react so sourly: he could scarcely believe, he snarled, that Hague had raised the matter—ignoring the fact that he had been the first to try to exploit that particular piece of mind-numbing triviality.

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