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The politics of echoes Much has been said about the Labour Party’s election catchphrase “Britain forward not back”. It has been claimed that the phrase was stolen from The Simpsons. As The Times pointed out in February:
[In an episode of The Simpsons] Clinton appears during a presidential debate. “My fellow Americans,” he proclaims. “We must move forward, not backward, upward not forward, and always twirling, twirling, twirling towards freedom.”
Last night Labour said it had not deliberately appropriated the slogan from The Simpsons, but MPs said it was another example of a Milburn faux pas.
At the time of the controversy, I watched Milburn on the TV saying that it wasn’t stolen from The Simpsons. I do believe he was right. It actually came from the Tories. When Michael Howard was elected leader, BBC News wrote:
He urged his colleagues “to look forward, not back” and to recognise that Britain had changed since the Tories first came to power in 1979.
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Going even further back wasn’t the “forwards not backwards” speech a Peter Sellers line in one of his 1960’s films possibly the “Mouse that Roared” ?
The Simpsons episode was broadcast in 1996, Michael Howard was elected in 2003. The first reference I can get of “looking forward, not back” on Usenet is in 1984 in reference to the Macs forward lookingness. 1984…how apposite.
From the same episode:
Alien Bob Dole: “Abortions for some, little American flags for others!”
When you bring consumption forward, you basically take on debt.
A perfect description of the debt driven Blair Brown bubble which is popping as we blog!
There is simply no other way in which Bliar, steeped in the Whig interpretation of history, can conceive things.
Even in the face of the most damning evidence of social breakdown, he will believe society is moving forward, inexorably, to some Golden Age.
If it were less important, it might almost be touching.
Mmmm.. donuts!
Don’t blame me, I voted for Kodos.
I suppose it’s a comment on something that a political tradition that once produced Locke, Smith, Hume, Bentham, and, derivatively, Jefferson, Madison, Adams, the Federalist Papers and so much more is now reduced to bumper sticker political thought and sound bite political philosophy.
To paraphrase Prof. Higgins, the angels must weep for us.
that simpsons quote was from an alien who stole Clinton’s body (you will have to see the episode to understand), nonetheless, the quote is very apropos
This is what you have for imprudence in politics, these days??? Yeesh, must be nice.
Meanwhile, prominent anti-American bastard and 5th column general, Peter Jennings, has a nasty cancer. I wish him a long, healthy retirement.
The other great Labour supporter who liked slogans about “Forward with Britain” etc. was the unlamented late Robert Maxwell. Mind you, any slogan has GOT to be better than “Are you thinking what we’re thinking”; I just can’t believe that it took the combined efforts of the brightest and best at Saatchi’s to come up with that.
The Labour party isn’t the only one to borrow election slogans from the (far more interesting) world of cartoons. Am I the only one who see’s a similarity between the Tory slogan and Pinky and The Brain’s Are you pondering what I’m pondering”?
BTW: Your trackbacks are broken.
The politics of failure have failed. We need to make them work again!
Typical “progressive” bullshit, thinking that all progress is good, all the past is bad –when the evidence to the contrary is overwhelming. (Of course, a good socialist will never let fact contradict dogma, after all.)
Actually, if you add one word (“Comrades!”) to the illiterate “Forward not back” slogan, then the 1984 reference becomes complete.
Bollocks to ’em.
What a pity, when “Vote Labour: always twirling, twirling, twirling” would have been a shoo-in.
One could always adopt the anarcho-capitalist slogan from the Simpsons (via Kent Brockman):
“I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: democracy just doesn’t work.”
Neither will a good libertarian.
EG