Roy Hattersley, in a short piece in the Guardian today commenting on this story, illustrates how the fundamental difference between Old Labour and New Labour, is not in their attitude to governance. It is the willingness of the former to express themselves clearly, and their angry confusion at the rhetorical deformations that New Labour uses to lead the public by the nose:
How likely is it that a mother who (whatever her motives) insisted on her son having unhealthy food will be either willing or able to ensure that he is educated at the right school or treated at the best hospital? The Rotherham sausage makes the government’s “choice agenda” look rather overdone.
What Lord Hattersley does not get is that the government is equally contemptuous of people’s ability to make ‘the right’ choices for themselves and their families. That is precisely why the Rotherham sausage smuggling is taking place. Government has removed choices that it does not approve of from the school menu. The ‘choice agenda’ is a three card trick. The method is misdirection; the effect is dirigiste.
NueArbeit (Macht Frei) offers us:
Choice, but not Freedom
Spending, but not Investment
Law, but not Justice
Hattersley is part of the problem – he is a Statist, he believed in Nationalisation. What was useful in the past was their clear speaking so the electorate could keep well away!
This school seems to be involved in child abuse, keeping children in at lunch time so they don’t buy food outside. I have to say that I am tired of overpaid TV chefs telling us what they consider healthy. Looking at the shape of some of them, they should be the last people to lecture others. Oh yes, that goes for MPs and their lapdog doctors as well.
Good post. There is indeed only a difference of presentation between “Old Labour” and “New Labour” (at least if we are talking about the nonMarxist wing of old Labour – such as Roy Hattersley). Indeed, if anything, New Labour is more hostile to liberty (especially civil liberties) than Old Labour ever was (some old Labour people were and are quite supportive of civil liberties).
Of course the sad thing is that there is no real difference between New Labour and the Cameron “Conservatives” – they are both part of the “modern” system.