Labor Party leadership
Dec. 3rd, 2003 04:08 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tcpipThis post is friends-only, as I would be expelled from the Labor Party if I made it public.
The Australian Labor Party, in an act of political suicide, has chosen Mark Latham as its leader for the next Federal election.
I'm seriously thinking of voting Liberal.
The empirical evidence to date suggests Mark Latham is disliked by a lot of people and liked by a few. In contrast, very few actively dislike Kim Beazley, and a lot of voters think kindly of him. But if these are general statements for the Australian public they are even more extreme within the Australian Labor Party itself.
Latham is simply despised by huge sections the Labor Party membership. Enormous numbers of ordinary members will simply refuse to staff the stalls, do the letter-boxing, hand out the 'how-to-vote' cards. Why is this? Because Latham is a evangelical economic rationalist. Take the following statement:
"I believe in an upwardly mobile society where people can climb the rungs of opportunity, climbing the ladder of opportunity to a better life for themselves and their family. I believe in hard work."
Now this is an extraordinary remark from a leader of Party which once advocated the democratic socialisation of the means of production, distribution and exchange, that once fought a referundum to nationalise trading banks, that introduced free tertiary education, and is supposedly based on overcoming class disparities. But you can only have the "upwardly mobile" with "rungs" in a non-egalitarian society divided by "haves" and "have-nots" - as that's the sort of world which Latham supports.
Let me spell it out in simple terms. Latham wants to abolish the welfare system.
Or, in words I couldn't express better myself, the conclusion of Robert Manne's article
If Latham takes the Labor leadership tomorrow the ALP will gradually abandon interest in Aboriginal reconciliation. It will demonstrate a growing contempt for what Latham calls the left-wing "rights agenda". It will seek to match or outbid the Coalition on questions like the threat of terrorism, "illegal immigration" and the war on crime. Just as Tony Blair transformed the British Labour Party by incorporating Margaret Thatcher's economic ideas, if Latham succeeds in winning the ALP leadership he will attempt to incorporate into Labor Howard's brand of populist, cultural conservatism. After Blair, Britons could say "we are all Thatcherites now". If Latham wins the Labor leadership Australians may soon be able to remark: "We are all Howardites now."
If Beazley was leader, Labor would have won the next Federal election (unless Howard managed to organize yet another war). More importantly Beazley, commanding respect across the entire Party would have been able to organize the fifty-thousand or so volunteers that make up the backbone of the ALP.
There is no chance of that with Latham. The champagne corks must be popping across conservative households tonight. Truly, as Kim Beazley Snr once remarked, the Labor Party once was led by the cream of the working-class. Now it is led by the dregs of the middle-class.
Nota bene for my Canadian and U.S. and other overseas readers: The Liberal Party in Australia is dominated by conservatives. They are politically closer to the Reagan/Thatcher era than political liberalism.
The Australian Labor Party, in an act of political suicide, has chosen Mark Latham as its leader for the next Federal election.
I'm seriously thinking of voting Liberal.
The empirical evidence to date suggests Mark Latham is disliked by a lot of people and liked by a few. In contrast, very few actively dislike Kim Beazley, and a lot of voters think kindly of him. But if these are general statements for the Australian public they are even more extreme within the Australian Labor Party itself.
Latham is simply despised by huge sections the Labor Party membership. Enormous numbers of ordinary members will simply refuse to staff the stalls, do the letter-boxing, hand out the 'how-to-vote' cards. Why is this? Because Latham is a evangelical economic rationalist. Take the following statement:
"I believe in an upwardly mobile society where people can climb the rungs of opportunity, climbing the ladder of opportunity to a better life for themselves and their family. I believe in hard work."
Now this is an extraordinary remark from a leader of Party which once advocated the democratic socialisation of the means of production, distribution and exchange, that once fought a referundum to nationalise trading banks, that introduced free tertiary education, and is supposedly based on overcoming class disparities. But you can only have the "upwardly mobile" with "rungs" in a non-egalitarian society divided by "haves" and "have-nots" - as that's the sort of world which Latham supports.
Let me spell it out in simple terms. Latham wants to abolish the welfare system.
Or, in words I couldn't express better myself, the conclusion of Robert Manne's article
If Latham takes the Labor leadership tomorrow the ALP will gradually abandon interest in Aboriginal reconciliation. It will demonstrate a growing contempt for what Latham calls the left-wing "rights agenda". It will seek to match or outbid the Coalition on questions like the threat of terrorism, "illegal immigration" and the war on crime. Just as Tony Blair transformed the British Labour Party by incorporating Margaret Thatcher's economic ideas, if Latham succeeds in winning the ALP leadership he will attempt to incorporate into Labor Howard's brand of populist, cultural conservatism. After Blair, Britons could say "we are all Thatcherites now". If Latham wins the Labor leadership Australians may soon be able to remark: "We are all Howardites now."
If Beazley was leader, Labor would have won the next Federal election (unless Howard managed to organize yet another war). More importantly Beazley, commanding respect across the entire Party would have been able to organize the fifty-thousand or so volunteers that make up the backbone of the ALP.
There is no chance of that with Latham. The champagne corks must be popping across conservative households tonight. Truly, as Kim Beazley Snr once remarked, the Labor Party once was led by the cream of the working-class. Now it is led by the dregs of the middle-class.
Nota bene for my Canadian and U.S. and other overseas readers: The Liberal Party in Australia is dominated by conservatives. They are politically closer to the Reagan/Thatcher era than political liberalism.
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no subject
Date: 2003-12-02 11:49 pm (UTC)Something very bad seemed to have happended to the Party post-Whitlam and during Hawke and Keating. This could be number of things.
1) The John Pilger conspiracy thesis: After the Whitlam government did a lot of thing to upset the United States and the CIA engaged in a campaign to discredit the ALP, once in opposition they've ensured that US political leaders have close relationships with young up and coming members of the ALP right to ensure that something like the Whitlam government never happens again.
2) The entrenchment of the factional system. Quite loose and fuzzy prior to mid-term Hawke, and certainly without binding internal caucus', factions ensure that all you need to become leader in the ALP is the biggest majority of the biggest majority. The fact that this may be a very unpopular minority is evidently irrelevant.
3) The adoption of privitisation and micro-economic "reform" strategies (like the rest of the world) in the 1980s which basically gutted any commitment to socialism. It was during this period that the Party also changed its national platform from the democratic socialisation of the means of production, distribution and exchange to "the extent necessary to stop anti-social activities" or some such crap.
4) The ALP-ACTU-Business Prices and Incomes Accord, which basically meant that unions forget the reason of their existence for thirteen years, were amalgamated into non-competitive "super unions" and the prospect of wage increases were deferred for tax cuts and social wages, many of which never arrived.