Given that the Freedom of Information Act allows us fresh access to thousands of government documents, there's one I'd particularly like to get my hands on. It was probably drafted by either Tony Blair or Alan Milburn and circulated to Labour MPs, and it goes something like this: "In the run-up to the election, tell any wavering Labour supporters they're outmoded dinosaurs who should either vote for us or get stuffed." It must be out there somewhere.
On and off for the last year or so, I've been travelling up and down the country, trying to get a grip on where once-loyal Labour people like me ought to take their votes. The questions I've asked MPs of all parties have taken in a range of fairly predictable subjects: the war in Iraq, tuition and top-up fees, the Blair government's brand of illiberalism and, in particular, the steady invasion of our public services by private companies. Relatively few politicians turned out to be sympathetic - and not entirely surprisingly, plenty of Labour people have been fire-spittingly hostile.
...
The strange thing is, I know I'm not alone. If one widely quoted statistic is true, around three million dismayed Labour supporters claim they won't vote for Blair again. Iraq seems to have been their tipping point, but the war surely isn't the only reason for their unease. Among other issues, I'd also factor in a widespread sense that private companies are being waved into places where they really don't belong (the latest New Labour wheeze, for example, is the mooted outsourcing of the fire brigade's 999 service). In the view of our high-ranking MPs, however, such worries belong in the same museum as all the other "old Labour" relics.
It's a convenient kind of delusion. Thousands of us are beginning to firm up a politics that takes in such 21st-century issues as snowballing corporate power, the polarisation of haves and have-nots - both nationally and globally - and the decline of our civic culture. What increasingly unites the Westminster class, by contrast, is free-market zealotry and an apparent belief in the notion of the undeserving poor, combined - as far as the Tories and New Labour are concerned - with a grim authoritarianism. Being generous, I'd root those ideas in the Thatcherite 80s. In all honesty, they date back to the era of Queen Victoria and Otto von Bismarck. So who's old-fashioned now?
· John Harris is the author of So Now Who Do We Vote For?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1396963,00.htmlI'm not exactly overjoyed by the Lib Dem response to the PFI question put - but I imagine many Labour supporters, including those here, are spitting feathers. What to do? Can Old Labour make a comeback? Can they at least make sure that Milburn never gets any more power?
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