CNJ COMMENT - Labour squabbles leave party tweetering on brink

Published: 12 May, 2011

ONE thing can be said of a group of politicians who are riven by tittle-tattle and the resounding clash of personalities – they are standing on the edge of an abyss.

Politics recorded over the years at Camden Council by this newspaper have shown occasional in-fighting among all the parties. There have been times, admittedly, when a lot of this was delivered well below the belt.

But, generally, the culprits were few in number.

But the fall-out from the annual meeting of the council’s Labour group (see page 4) reveals an astonishing level of bitching – and bitching, extraordinarily enough, in public with the internet used as an instrument of bilious gossip and four-letter words.

We believe it is possible to track this back to the hollowing out of fundamental Labour ideology from the party by the Blairites once they had taken over the reins in the early 1990s.

With the Labour victory in the local elections last May and the infusion of new blood it looked as if the party was steadying itself again.

But was this too optimistic a hope?

While it is true that the internet, as a new instrument of communication, invites a rush of blood to the head of the blogger or tweeter, this hardly explains the fulsome language. 

This would have been put down to bad manners in the old days, ungentlemanly conduct, but anything, unfortun­ately, goes today.

Language aside, it is possible that behind the raging and the storm lies political differences. But if they exist they are buried so deeply that only a team of political scientists would be able to make some sort of sense of them. 

A rupture often leads to new beginnings. Following the blood-letting, let us hope the Labour group will turn the corner. Their ­responsibility is more to the people of this borough than it is to each other.

NHS ‘pause’

A FLYING hush-hush visit by a government health minister to the Royal Free this week may give the impression that the government is seriously “pausing” its NHS reforms in order to test the opinion of the medics and hospital staff.

We believe, however, that it is merely a cosmetic exercise and that the “pause” is more like a temporary ceasefire in a war that will soon start up again.