John Reid: New Labour project must continue after Blair

I thought he'd been running (with Tony's unofficial blessing) since at least the summer. (Then, for the conference, Tony and Gordon temporarily became "friends", so the name of Reid disappeared).

That's what that whole August airport security/exploding hairgel thing was about, wasn't it - to make John Reid look good n' hard? According to a "Sun" poll at the time 70% of the Brit Pub wanted him as the next leader. Then there was some fuck-up in immigration and his numbers plummeted.

'Empowering individuals'
'Provision of opportunity'
'real choice'

Well at least he has the meaningless, vain, unquantifiable, hopelessly absurd advertising strap-lines down to a fine art. All he has to do now is claim he knows how to cure cancer, turn nukes into flowers, and turn al qaeda into a n organization for making childrens toys. Can't wait

New threads are emerging so fast it's hard to keep up. Slow down a bit Blair Watch. It's all great stuff, but too much of a good thing can cause a bit of rhetorical indigestion!

The sub-text of Reid's speech is easily reconstructed

Empowering individuals - More leverage for the mega rich corporate arsitocracy that fund our party.

Provison of opportunity - Business elites need to get much richer, even faster. No more regulation.

Real choice in public services - I'm flogging the lot to Capita and Halliburton, and privitizing the NHS. That'll break down the evil corporatist monopoly and rid us of all those bloated bureaucrats. As for sick people, well, they're all overweight chain smoking 'untermench' anyway. Fuck 'em.

It does increasingly look like Reid intends to stand. I'm wondering if there's any support for the idea of a "Stop the Reid Coalition"?

Of all the Blairite New Labour goons, he's the one I'd least like to see as Prime Minister. He's an unrepentant bully, is utterly shameless and has an even bigger authoritarian streak than Blair.

It's a measure of how bad Reid is when I can say I'd even rather have Brown.

John Reid is an aggressive and unstable character who thrives on confrontation and conspiracy. The thought of John Reid with his finger on the nuclear button is frankly terrifying.

This is the politician who thought it was appropriate to spend three days in a luxury hotel with Radovan Karadzic. He famously punched a House of Commons attendant in 1991 during his years as a violent alcoholic. But giving up the bottle didn't tame his temper. He nearly came to blows with the late Donald Dewar - no pugilist he - over the so-called "lobbygate affair" in 1999. The next first minister, Henry McLeish, described Reid as a "patronising bastard".

Personally I don't think Reid stands (hopefully) a chance in hell of taking over from Blair, "the devil you know" and all that..

Mind you, that's if Blair ever does step down, he said only the other day that he would "leave office before September" ... he didn't state which year though!

It seriously stuns me how people like this arsehole are able to rise to positions of power. However, thankfully, change is in the air and these guys should soon lose the privilidge of being the ruling government.

Some people may remember that when Margaret Thatcher was deposed and John Major instated, television interviewers persistently asked Conservative politicians if they would change any of Thatcher's policies or the general thrust of her ideas. It went on and on and became more and more embarrassing to watch their wrigglings and evasions as they dared not say a word against the leader they had stabbed in the back. Finally, Douglas Hurd said that Mrs Thatcher was no longer the leader and they could do what they liked. Hurrah!

It doesn't matter what John Reid, Gordon Brown or obviously Tony Blair may say. New Labour is thoroughly discredited and they will lose any elections in the near future. If they wanted to win, they should pretty quickly start saying they have jettisoned everything to do with Tony Blair. It is only by distancing themselves from his shabby leadership that people might listen to them.

If they promised to return to a proper Parliamentary democracy, rather than slipping legislation through the back door; to drop ID cards; to reinstate eroded civil liberties; to stop PPP initiatives and stop behaving as America's doormat, they might stand a chance.

Otherwise, RIP New Labour 1997-2007.

lifesastumblingblock is bang on, Reid is a deeply umpleasant thug. I suppose the optimistic approach says that if reid (I've decided not to capitalise the twat) becomes the blairite heir it will safely destroy that diseased legacy once and for all. I can't imagine that anyone working for him is looking forward to trying to sell Begbie as Hello Kitty.

There's another problem with Reid (other than him being a dangerous psycho).

As we all know the problem with Gordon Brown (aka Two Flags) is that he's Scottish, dour faced and charmless. So the alternative those famously smart New Labourites have come up with is John Reid?

John Reid, the belligerent self-opinionated MP for Airdrie and Shotts, joined the Communist Party just five years after the Red Army brutally crushed the Prague Spring. An event which did much to alienate Communism and its agenda not only from the mainstream but the margins too. Somewhat infamously Reid has commented on this era thus "I used to be a Communist, I used to believe in Santa Claus". It also needs to be born in mind that, like so many other career politicians, Reid has never actually held down a proper job. Directly after graduation he worked as a researcher for the labour party before entering politics big/full time. During the Bosnian war in the early nineties Reid struck up a friendship with Radavan Karadic, now (unlike Tony and Dubya) an indicted war criminal, spending three days with him at a luxury Geneva lakeside hotel in 1993. The man is singularly repulsive. The man is our current home secretary...

Physician - heal thyself. The problem is that the twat isn't actually a Doctor...

Reid, without a doubt, is that most dangerous of critters, the machine-politician with moxy, with a streak of selfrighteous chutzpah and a hard-eyed talent for ruthlessness.

On a happier note, here's some number crunching derived from the Electoral Reform Society website. As we all know, the turnout for the 2005 GElection was 61%: with a total electorate of 44,180,243, that means that Neu Labour's 22% (of the total electorate) works out at 9,719,653 ... which means that 34,460,590 voting-eligible adults either didn't vote NLabour or didn't vote at all.

AND...the 1997 election turnout was 10% higher at 71% - makes you wonder what will happen if the turnout rises significantly next time.

Vlad impales Casino operators, at the Trib, link at beginning of blogpage .

I couldn't find anything new to add on Reid, who richly deserves all the previous venom, but wondered where we're at on the casino-isation of Blairland ?

The Nu Labour Project providing opportunity to the poor to get hooked on gambling is just another sign of moral impoverishment, so I wonder where Reid and Brown stood on it ?

Jackie Ashley a coupla months back reckoned R had made a pact with Brown . A useful gauleiter, wot.

Our very own Sarkozy gauleiter is exposed by a whistleblowin ex-cop in this video & transcript in frog.

Older viewers from when skools taught useless fings like forrin languages will see some eeery similarities...

Off topic -
Time to take down the christmas decorations, guys.
Maybe replace the santa hat with a dunce cap?

Blair flys home urgently to sort a problem. Major sorted that quite a few years ago when David Trimble signed that DSD. fuck off Blair and HOON, the Bufoon

"Blair flys home urgently to sort a problem."

Forgot to take down the Christmas decorations.