BALLS!!!

Ed Balls, ex-Treasury Advisor, now MP and Economic Secretary working within the Treasury has asked for questions via the Labour's Youtube 'Labourvision' dumping ground for videos.

Poster 'karljt' asks what the chances of Balls becoming Chancellor are; perhaps they should seek out this video (usefully Youtube flags it as related).

Perhaps after watching this 'salader1' hits the mark better when asking "Is your name balls because thats what you talk?" I love the freedom of user generated content and the open forum. Anyone remember the Big Conversation?? How long will it be before Labourvision disappears as they find it is impossible to censor or control either the site, its links or public interaction?

Campbell's last master stroke?

Alastair Campbell, No 10 Spin Doctor, once dubbed the real Deputy PM, is to release his diaries but not until Tony resigns as, and I quote him, "I would consider it wrong to publish in a manner or at a time detrimental to the interests of the government or the party I served". This suggests sole focus will be on Blair and some material may be controversial, mind you the same was said of Lance Price's 'The Spin Doctor's Diary'.

However this is argued to be of greater concern for Brown. If we are to believe the media, Brown and Blair spent most of the 'Campbell years' in open warfare, Brown hated Blair only slightly less than he hated Campbell, and Campbell's role was to shore up Blair's position. If his diaries do reveal this backdrop it could seriously undermine Brown, particularly if Campbell biases his commentary, but think of the image it gives British politics. The PM and Chancellor were busy briefing against one another while god only knows what else was happening in the wider nation or world - there's something to encourage trust in government.

In the name of democracy?

Labour's former 'big beasts' are clamouring for a leadership contest, the media read this as being a Blairite coup to prevent their nemesis Gordon Brown sweeping away the old guard of Tony's cronies; but are there other readings?

How about that there was a negative reaction within the party and among voters when Michael Howard was given the Brutus role in the departure of Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith. The idea of the potential next prime minister being imposed was greeted with hostility, so what about the actual PM? Perhaps some in the Labour hierarchy may be thinking not of themselves but of democracy, that a contest is needed and that we need to see what the potential candidates may have to offer.

However I would go further with my demands, let us not let Labour decide, after all this will just extend patronage within camps, but let the country decide. This is Labour's leader, true! But this is to be our leader, should we not decide if we are a democratic nation? Or would this be against all the reasoning behind Clarke et al demanding a contest?

Symbolism, Rhetoric and Newness

New Labour, as a phrase, descriptor, perhaps even ideology, was largely a rhetorical device. Its purpose was made clear by Philip Gould in The Unfinished Revolution, the expose of how Labour was modernised into an election winning machine, it was created to delineate the Blair led party from that of his predecessors. It was a re-branding exercise, a marketing gimmick perhaps; fundamentally it was an outward representation of the fact that the party's policies were to be a fusion of the vague Third Way ideas emerging within the global socialist movement and the neo-liberalism established by Thatcher and Reagan during the 1980s. As such therefore New Labour in itself meant very little, only that it created another rhetorical device: 'Old Labour'.

But now we are told that New Labour has had its day, it is moribund, it will crawl up the curtain and join the choir invisible on the day that Blair leaves No10 for the last time. These are the ideas advocated by Welsh First Minister, Rhodri Morgan, the man Blair never wanted to be in that position and who, like Ken Livingstone, found himself facing all manner of tactics designed to hinder his election. Though reasonably quiet in his dissent it appears he now wishes to comment on Labour's future at this seemingly important juncture.

Interestingly he appears to invoke rhetoric familiar to many from beer adverts; that New Labour "reached parts that other Labour programmes and projects and political leaders have not been able to reach". He also likens it to the Venus di Milo "you have to gawp with admiration at its quality and brilliance, but it is indisputably incomplete and beginning to show more than a few signs of its age"; harsh words indeed. He also calls for a 21st Century socialism, though without offering too much detail on what this means. So what is this all about?

The answer is: nothing! Though deemed newsworthy it appears as nothing more than rhetoric on rhetoric about rhetoric. The purpose of New Labour as a phrase was achieved, it was probably moribund by June 1997. Its symbolic value is more in other rhetoric that has become attached to the phrase: 'best when at our boldest', 'New Britain', those phrases that demonstrate being of the modern and not of the traditional or out-dated or conservative. Therefore as an idea 'newness' remains at large, perhaps the point Morgan should make is that Brown can no longer aspire to this given that after 10 years New Labour is no longer new and neither is he.

But does the rhetorical and symbolic aspects of New Labour remain, I argue that they do. Not in the Labour Party, not in this vague idea of 21st Century socialism that is almost beyond definition; no the symbolism that thrust Blair into office in 1997 is alive and well and being exploited by Cameron's Conservative Party. They may not be calling themselves the 'New Conservatives' but they attempt to invoke that new image coupled with not representing themselves as the party not in power so an alternative to the Labour that people seem to be becoming tired of.

Rhetorically, the symbolic associations of new have long escaped from No10, slowly ebbed away by the familiarity that is unavoidable when in government. The clothes of New Labour are being borrowed and adapted to suit a new government in waiting, a new round of rhetoric begins as the Conservatives re-brand themselves in all ways but in name. Hence the fuzzy tree perhaps, though what this says rhetorically or symbolically is more than a little hard to grasp.