Tuesday 27 December 2011

Portrait of the young man as a sell-out artist

My local MP writes today about the riots at some length in today's Guardian:

Hold the front page: Riots are bad. Communities are good. But life in Tottenham sucks. Cameron and his toffs are out of touch. Big business doesn't care - in fact it makes money from it all.

Lammy's answer ? Labour got it wrong with the nanny state - what we need to do is share the profit - share the power. 

OK - I'll sign up for that I guess. 

But hang on what does Lammy mean ? 

Actually he explains - worker representatives on the boards of big business. And dividends not fat cat bonuses. Just like they do in Europe.

Because of course there's no economic crisis there. Fucking hell. 

Even that near extinct species, an honest social-democrat could find something a bit more progressive to point to in the European model: Maybe  a still-functioning public sector that wasn't constantly portrayed as a parasitic pariah, or trade unions that hadn't been emasculated with generations of restrictive legislation.

Given the usual trajectory of Labour politicians towards the right - fuck knows where Lammy is going to end up. Right now  he seems to be one of Labour's rising stars -  and one of the very few who they think can speak to the inner cities and the yoof.

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