Labour's plans summarised

The Daily Mash has it here:

LABOUR will today unveil a detailed plan to alienate its last remaining pockets of support.

The central plank of the party's strategy involves identifying the 10 most popular family cars in Britain and then making them a nightmare to own.

A Labour spokesman said: "We're going for the double whammy of making them too expensive to drive, but also impossible to sell.

"And if that doesn't work we'll just spray paint a big swastika onto the bonnet."

Let's hope Darling is reading this. Sometimes sarcasm can help you think more clearly.

Simon Heffer thinks Al Qaeda Have got guts

Simon doesn't like the idea that we should negotiate with Al Qaeda. You know, he is right about that, but being Simon idiocy will out:

Al-Qa'eda is far more threatening to us than the IRA ever was, for three reasons. First, its network of supporters is vast. Second, and as a consequence, it has better recourse to funding and weaponry. Third, it lacks the IRA's sheer cowardice. No republican was prepared to blow himself up on an aircraft, a Tube train or a bus in order to inflict heavy casualties on the innocent. All too many militant Islamists seem happy to do just that.

It's the 'sheer cowardice' bit that makes no sense. It does not take a suicide bomber to blow up aircraft, tube trains or buses. Al Qaeda's carnage on the Madrid train system in 2004 did not require a suicide bomber, neither did the IRA's massacre in Omagh. Suicide bombing has nothing to do with operational effectiveness and everything to do with a death cult that fixates on self-immolation. The IRA's unwillingness, in most cases, to slaughter civilians in large numbers had nothing to do with a dislike for suicide or 'cowardice', and more with a considered view on the likely political effect of their actions. They knew that wholesale slaughter of men, women and children would be counter-productive. Al Qaeda's mix of religion and politics leads them to think differently; and that's it. Neither have any moral courage and Simon's seeming admiration for the most vicious of our enemies is actually quite disturbing.

Left commentators go mad

Johann Hari is joining a number of others on the Left who have decided that the game is up with Brown, Conservative victory at the next General Election is now inevitable and that the best course of action is to implement a hard left agenda without regard to the consequences.

The reality is that if a Labour government decided, as policy, to ignore the electorate and push up taxes, 'price SUVs off the road' and allow vast new immigration then it would not just lose the next election, it would be the last Labour government ever. What would the campaign slogan be, 'We don't care what you think?' or 'So what?'. As political advice goes this is actually a bit bonkers and it suggests that Hari and is cohorts actually have no clue about, well, anything much. The point of representative politics is to balance the concerns of the electorate with the national interest and a vision for a better society. If you deliberately detach from the electorate then they will vote for someone else. A Labour government that effectively told the voters to shove off would not just lose, it would be obliterated.

Hmm...maybe Hari has a point.

Interesting article by Matthew d'Ancona on Brown

Matthew d'Ancona is not quite as smart as he appears to think he is, at least based on his writings to date. However, his article in today's Telegraph is an excellent analysis of the state of Labour. In particular he hits upon Brown's coronation as the pivotal failing. By not having a leadership contest, Labour put off any debate about its future as a movement and as a government. Instead they let Brown and his cronies bully them into not even putting up another candidate, when the fact that the man was even doing that said volumes about him as a potential leader. In contrast, the effect of Conservative leadership contests has been beneficial, each time moving the Party on in terms of ideas. The last contest arrived at unexpected new thinking from an unexpected new leader, and that has sort of worked out. Now Labour are trying to rethink on the go, with a leader who has never even been tested by his own Party much less the country. How did they get here? Because too many of their MPs rolled over under pressure from the coterie that surround the PM.

They have only themselves to blame.