Jon Cruddas skriver intressant i New Statesman om Labours kris och pionjären Keir Hardie (som har ungefär samma roll i Labours historieskrivning som August Palm har i den svenska socialdemokratins).
”We have lost many millions of voters since 1997. We have lost hundreds of thousands of members. We have become reviled by younger generations that view us as the party of the Establishment, war and insecurity. Our orthodoxy has defeated our radicalism. We speak a desiccated language of targets; our story, our essential ethic, has been lost on the altar of the focus group. We have retreated into what is essentially a Hobbesian utilitarianism, which considers self-interest as the only guiding principle. Alan Milburn recently described our goal as being to equip people to ”earn and to own”; aspiration is reduced to a notion of acquisition. Materialism is all we have; we have lost the bright hope of building a different society.
The psychoanalyst Erik Erikson once said that ”hope is the basic ingredient of all vitality”. At such moments of crisis and uncertainty, Labour often turns to its founding figure, Keir Hardie, for hope. But he has become a myth rather than a historical figure. We tend to look to him for reassurance, rather than to ask awkward questions. Hardie inspired total devotion. On his death, he was described as the ”Member for Humanity”; Sylvia Pankhurst (a friend and onetime lover) simply saw him as the ”greatest human being of our time”. He was worshipped among the grass roots. Some considered him, literally, to be a prophet.”
I New Statesman kan man också läsa en ideologisk skiss över fyra framväxande riktningar i progressiv politik i Storbritannien: vänsterkommunitarism, vänsterrepublikanism, centerrepublikanism och högerkommunitarism.
