Polly Toynbee on Glasgow East

Amazing!

If Cameron wins the next election, poverty will deepen, as he warned Glaswegians to their face when he said that the poor have only themselves to blame: if only they knew right from wrong they would not be in this plight. Yet still Labour couldn't win.

Er, Polly? Hello? The Conservatives did better than last time, but actually, ZNL lost to the SNP. Just thought I'd point that out to you.

Apparently, she thinks that ZNL would not have lost Glasgow East if they'd been more forthcoming about all their achievements:

"Ungrateful buggers don't know what we've done for them," a Labour minister harrumphed after canvassing all day. Quite so, because Labour has utterly failed - on purpose - to say whose side it's on or what it believes, so the message never reached every corner of every place that stands to benefit.

... Labour doesn't get any credit for what it has done so invisibly.

What? You mean all those headlines about our money spent of social engineering, all those soundbites on BBC/Pravda, all those Labour Party billboards ... I was the only one who saw and heard them?

Anyway, even she's had enough of the Gorgon, albeit not his policies:

Two hundred Labour stalwarts gathered at the national policy forum yesterday after the shock of the byelection. They were briefed that Gordon Brown would have no text, and would walk and talk hands free; he needed to show that he can in extremis speak human and express feelings to an audience willing him to be the leader they yearn for. A loyal audience gave a dutiful ovation, but it was a dismally mechanical performance. If this was Gordon does Dave, the comparison was excruciating.

He could do it without notes because it was an autopilot compilation of the dullest parts of every speech he has made, mantra after clunking mantra, pacing up and down to the same old tropes. With oil and food prices rising by the day, his party in ruins, his future in jeopardy and the country about to fall to the Tories, out came the same old figures: a hundred new airports in China, a million new cars in India, globalisation, environmental technology, the manufacture of iPods. In time of economic meltdown, his boast that world-beating "Britain can be the best in the global economy" sounds not aspirational but delusional. Toe-curling homilies to "hard-working families" are as tin-eared as his politics-light paeans to "opportunity". He bypassed the by-election as if it simply hadn't happened.

This is what she thinks we need:

Here's their scenario: in early September Jack Straw, with authority as Brown's campaign manager, rallies together at least 10 cabinet members to tell him they will resign immediately unless he goes gracefully, and at once. However much some allies urge Brown to stay for fear of worse disaster, he could not survive a mass resignation and would go. An orderly leadership election would follow, the two views of the future fighting it out. The Blairite extremists would be seen off and either Alan Johnson or David Miliband would come through - whoever emerged as the stronger in open contest. Both would fight on a more radical agenda to win the party vote, and a general election would follow within months.

Why not start with that windfall of the oil companies' extra profits, using that £10bn to ease the pain of those on the lowest incomes? Let's see who dares support the bolder resolutions for the manifesto in Warwick this weekend, to put some fight back into Labour.

For fuck's sake, Polly, are you really that fucking stupid? Do you really think that by further fucking business confidence in Britain you're going to encourage businesses to stay here? Who the fuck do you think chips in the money that the Gorgon spends? Is your knowledge of economics really that weak?

Quite apart from the fact that the Gorgon has also made a rich haul out of the extra petrol prices, let's assume that the oil companies part with an extra £10 billion. Once this incompetent bunch of cock-sucking goat-felchers has processed it through the government machine, half of it will just be lost on the the process itself. So, what are you going to do with another £5 billion? It's not even twice what the Gorgon gave away to try and keep Crewe and Nantwich, and look how little that achieved for the poor.

Polly: socialism has been tried repeatedly. It has failed everywhere. Despite your passionate belief in the goodness of government, and your own wisdom, the evidence is everywhere, from Italy in the 30's to Britain in the 00's. Socialism is not the solution, it's the problem.

Why not try a truly new and radical experiment: "my life, my responsibility". Let the government do as little as possible and trust the people to do the right thing. Or does that not accord with your repulsive authoritarian instincts?