Dropped Catch...

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It strikes me as somewhat ironic and not a little sad that the model of political change that I've always espoused, and in which opinion I'm pretty sure I'm not remotely alone, was proposed over fifty years ago by one of our greatest parliamentarians, Barbara Castle. The 'traditional' left/right axis has, to be frank, atrophied - nay, ossified - for decades, and offers few ways forward for us in the twenty-first century: cf. our current shambolic administration, and to be frank, the rest of the world.

Her white paper, In Place of Strife, (1969) was an attempt to bring Socialism and union activity into the mainstream, and give it the legitimacy - that the prevailing schism between the establishment/media and the radical left belied - that it deserved, and which would have averted the mad rush into the political and economic dystopia that we inhabit currently. She was sidelined by the lot of 'em. Check out "The Death of Consensus: 100 Years of British Political Nightmares" by Phil Tinline, reviewed in this week's New Statesman by John Gray.

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