Tone' the Tempter Needs More Souls

Did Tony Blair actually say these words (my reading of the video) ?

I've known Jeremy going back many over many, many years.  I think we both came into Parliament at the same time together.  And it's not about...And it's not about an individual, it's about a platform, that, in the end, wouldn't work for the country.  And I want to stress that.

It's not that it wouldn't win power.  I personally think it's unlikely that we would win power.  But, even if you did, it wouldn't be right.  Because it wouldn't take the country forward, it would take it backwards.  So, that's why it's not the right thing to do.  It's not the right thing to do, because, you know... this is why, when people say, y'know, well my heart says I should really be with that politics...well, get a transplant, because that's just done.

Because that sure as fuck sounds to me like an argument to vote Tory.  Oh, and one thing for all politicians to remember, whether they identify as 'progressive' or not, is that 'forward' movement need have no correlation with actual betterment of one's circumstances whatsoever.  Moving 'forward' is just carrying on in your existing established direction, even if you just accidentally stepped off a cliff.  Or, for that matter, on a landmine.

And as for this question of whether the other contenders for the leadership would serve in the shadow cabinet under Corbyn, well, for myself, not that you probably care, I'd say that right here Liz Kendall just invalidated her case for the leadership bid altogether.  Cooper may have equivocated, but I don't entirely blame her, and Burnham comes across, to me, as the only one perhaps* genuinely concerned with something more than his own political career.

Jeremy and I so fundamentally disagree, with Jeremy's approach, that...And I think it would be disastrous for the party, it would be disastrous for the country, we would be out of power for a generation.  I don't want to be a party of protest.  And I wouldn't be able to stop myself from making that case.

Do you even think about how this sounds, when you say these words as a career politician ?...  I personally do care what happens to the UK, but I'm not that greatly invested in Labour, and I don't give a shit about Liz Kendall, or any of these assholes' personal political careers.

There is, I suppose, an argument to be made, that had New Labour not been in power when it was, that the Tories would have done even more damage even earlier, but there's also the counter-argument to that, that we might be now seeing the reaction against 'Conservative' radicalism, were there an actual mainstream opposition for voters to support, and had Tony Blair not completely sold out generations of non-right-wing-extremists.

One other thing, I don't at all understand is the acquiescence with the stupid Fixed-term Parliaments Act, let alone the idea that the party is somehow married to a particular leader for five years.  Deciding your leadership in the 2015 elections in 2010 and your leadership for the 2020 elections in 2015 is just frankly insane.  By rights, Ed should still be Labour's leader, and they wouldn't have to be worrying about who would take them into the next elections till 2018 at the earliest, were it not for the idiocy of fixed-term parliaments.  At what point did the choice for leadership become some sort of suicide-pact ?


* The eyebrows bewitched me, sorry.