So much about so little?

As I made clear in earlier blogs I am quite uneasy with the lib-con experiment in the UK even if i think that there was hardly any other option...

But I cannot but grin at Nick Clegg's comments on new labour's obsession with memoirs. Perhaps its too dismissive of new labour as an ideological and partially successful hegemonic construct BUT it is so uplifting:

"Has anyone else lost track of the books Labour people keep publishing? Never in the field of political memoirs, has so much been written by so few about so little. They went from nationalisation to serialisation. From The Third Way to a third off at the book shop..."

"The Labour leadership candidates are trying to rewrite history. But we remember. Civil liberties destroyed on an industrial scale. A widening gap between rich and poor. Failure to act on the environment. Locking up more children than anywhere else in western Europe. Kowtowing to the banks. A foreign policy forged in George Bush’s White House. The invasion of Iraq.

And then, on top of all that they brought the country to the brink of bankruptcy. Writing cheques, even in the final days of their government that they knew would bounce. This country could not have borne five more years of Labour."

Sometimes I also get the hunch that in various European societies the crisis of social democracy (in the UK and even countries like Sweden) and the rise of a far right has created space for variable alliances where social progressives can play kingmakers especially in countries which have a modern liberal centre-right....(not so easy to recognise and define)

In some instances one can notice a tendency in some social democratic parties to try recover their grass roots by going back to old labour (always half heartedly) or at worse by sounding tougher on migration (akwardly). The end result disorientates practically everyone.

That is something worth a deep analysis...