The Heir to Blair

Having seen the candidates for Labour parties leadership i must admit, that my socialist heart is saddened. Labour was originally the party of the worker, aiming as clause four stated

To secure for the workers by hand or by brain the full fruits of their industry and the most equitable distribution thereof that may be possible upon the basis of the common ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange, and the best obtainable system of popular administration and control of each industry or service

While this is no longer a attainable target and whether rightly or wrongly it was removed from the party constitution , it seems clear the party is forgetting the clause ever existed. If we look at the list of candidates we will find them all to be oxbridge educated from fairly well off backgrounds, with the only female and ethnic minority candidate, Dianne Abbot, scrapping the neccessary amount of votes. This shows two things,firstly that diversity within the labour party is shockingly low, that more and more of the workers party is being consumed by middle class suits. If we saw a homosexual candidate or another female candidate (though i personally dislike harriet harmon for the sake of a proper debate and to dispel these claims of tokenism around Abbot she should have stood) or someone more defined as part of the left (in a similar vein to Tony Benn), then we would see that the Labour party was truly diverse and still stood for social progression, instead we are left with a raging doubt because of the narrow nature of this group. The struggle Dianne Abbot also shows that within the parliamentry Labour party there is little tolerance for difference, if a candidate needs the support of an opponent simply to be up for candidacy shows that within the Labour party there was little call for a real debate, because everyone on offer is exactly the same. This also brings up suspsions over the next election, choosing between Clegg, Cameron and Ed/David Milliband or Ed balls would be like choosing between Stalin, Hitler and Mussolini , no matter who you pick your still ending up with a dictator, before democratic elections gave us real choice and real options now we have predefined direction we are just deiciding on the dictator to take us down that part. However back to the issue at hand and the Death of socialism in Britian. Since Tony Blair took over the Labour party , popular socialism died, after so long under conservative rule, a child could have won in 1997 after John majors sparkless five years in power, however the centralisation of the Labour party was one of the most likely causes for the ridiculous majority. Traditional left wingers voted for there traditional party and the middle class's voted for labour because they seemed safe. However from 1997 we watched as Tony Blair moved Labour more and more to the right wing, savagely curtailing are rights, transfering more services to the private sector and showing little solidarity with the unions, as the socialist in Britain could only wonder what happened to there party. Now i find myself waiting for the next election, the first election i can vote in, thinking "who the hell is there left for me" i find myself falling most in line with green policy, but unless we see a true proportional system then i will never see my vote count. But then again that was the story of this election. 14 million people voted for the left 10 million for the right yet neither came to power, instead we have a coalition that managled manafestos of both parties leaving us mandateless , powerless and betrayed.