Trident

[merseysider]

RENEW TRIDENT!

Hearing Labour backbenchers on Radio 4 saying that we should, in effect, implement unilateral nuclear disarmament, is like an old horror movie where an ancient mummy comes back to life, climbs out of its sarcophagus and starts walking around terrifying everybody.

It really pains me sometimes to see how, despite twelve years of New Labour and the Blair revolution, that the unreconstructed left still lives on. I can never understand why the electoral poison of early-1980s retropolitics holds such an enduring emotional appeal for so many people in our party.

It defies belief that when Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's Iran is tooling up with nuclear weapons, and when Pakistan (inherently unstable and a hotbed of Islamist militancy) has already got one, there are serious politicians in the UK saying that we should get rid of our nuclear deterrent.

I really despair of my party sometimes!

[merseysider]

Then leave "your" party.

And leave it in the hands of people like you? I don't think so!
How dare you question my commitment to the Labour party!

I have been a member of, and activist in, the Labour Party since I was sixteen (i.e. for thirteen years). I could never imagine ever being a member of any other party. The core of my political beliefs is that Government has a duty to work towards a more equal society and to guarantee access to quality public services for all, regardless of ability to pay. I could never be described as anything other than left-of-centre; I believe politics is ultimately about where you stand on the economy.

I love the Labour party, but I can get incredibly frustrated with it sometimes. It sometimes seems to value heroic failure over success (look at how the most successful leader in our 100+ year history is being hounded out of office).

I am angry at the way too many of our supporters have spent the last nine years whining and whingeing, rather than shouting from the rooftops about our successes in building a more prosperous Britain, spreading opportunity more widely and investing in public services.

I get frustrated with the way that too many people in the party instinctively see the interests of the providers and consumers of public services as being the same; and are taken in by the ideological veneer placed on vested interests and resistance to reform by some of the public sector unions.

There is also the fact that too many people on the left of politics, though they would never admit it openly, even to themselves, actually prefer being in opposition. It's more fun to march around with banners denouncing everyone and everything than to make difficult decisions and to say no to your supporters. By implicitly seeing ourselves as a movement of righteous protest we have let down those supporters too many times.