Playing the loyalty card
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1474571,00.html
Faced with defection over Iraq and a falling turnout, Labour blames the
electorate rather than its own policies
Gary Younge
Monday May 2, 2005
The Guardian
For a party that long ago abandoned any pretence of class struggle,
class envy seems to come easily to New Labour. Redressing economic
inequality through more progressive taxation of the rich is out.
Ridiculing the wealthy who refuse to support them regardless of what
they do is, apparently, in.
First to the barricades is Peter Hain, who defines the rich not by what
they earn or own but what they drink. "There's now a kind of dinner
party critic who quaffs shiraz or chardonnay and just sneeringly says,
'You are no different from the Tories'," he said recently. "Most of the
people in this category are pretty comfortably off; it's not going to
be the end of the world if they get a Tory government. In a
working-class constituency like mine, this is a lifeline. It's not a
luxury." Other advocates for New Labour have slammed Labour defectors
for their "bruschetta orthodoxies" and lambasted anyone who refuses to
vote Labour as a result of the war as "decadent" and "self-indulgent".
Gary Younge
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