Gordon Brown's Red Tory Party? Historical Perspective

Scott2006 · Gordon Brown's Red Tory Party? Historical Perspective

On another forum I came across a different term used to describe what's left of the Labour Party. They no longer speak in comparative socialist-model terms and there are no thinkers or voices that are quoted by the top ranks of the Labour Party nowadays that explains their intellectual trajectory or ideals or touchstones that explain what is at the heart of the party.
I think a chapter has closed in their history. For many years Labour was stuck in a mindset that only started to be questioned after the Michael Foot Labour Party manifesto of 1983 - most of that could have been fought at every post-world-war-II election up until then. Neil Kinnock was marking time as the Communist system in Eastern Europe was going through terminal melt-down... best illustrated by Chernobyl... even in 1992 his party was out of step with the wider world and the corrupting influence of inept Anglocentric Tory myopia prevailed.
Tony Blair took the party in his middle-class hands and shook the pseudo-socialist apeing of bankrupt communism - the old order in the world no longer held - it was no longer cool to describe a successful socialist state and how Britain could do what they did but under the British Socialists they would do it better.
When too many things change in rapid succession they look for someone to be their rock their leader... so get a committed christian with a stable family life... enter John Smith but the strain of party leadership probably hasten his untimely death.
rapid change is still the watchword of the day... so get a committed christian with a stable family life... enter the committed christian Tony Blair (before the committed christian Gordon Brown)

New Labour is really a term for the positioning of Labour lurching to the right as the fall of communism in Europe stopped any pretense of central planning by socialists aiming for a utopian communist system.

Socialism in the sense that it has been used in a British and European setting as a means to describe a largely working class section of society with a tier of middle class inclusionists acting to alieviate poverty and raise basic living standards through class solidarity and using the levers of the state to effect change has past.

The Labour Party has had its problems with Trotskyist entryism over the period from 1918-1990, that is the groups dedicated to pushing Labour onto an alternative path to a more pure form of communism. Under Neil Kinnock they started to realign the party - only when Russian RED communism was on its deathbed.
Tony Blair and the Clause 4 removal campaign effectively modernised Labour by boiling away the failings of socialism. 72 years of Labour expressing themselves in relation to other forms of socialism became redundant. Tony Blair's New Labour is a party led by Careerist politicians where once a large part of them would have been idealists.
Tony Blair has gone from office and his party of opportunists have a much more limited sense of what they can achieve for the country.
Where once Labour spoke for the lower working class and progressive upper working class and took their lead in industrial relations from the TUC and powerful union barons - they now take the money from the unions and pay lip service to them while trying to cosy up to the CBI.

Gordon Brown's Labour Party is tory-lite in where they position themselves in the idealogical political spectrum.
Gordon Brown himself has moved from a seemingly left-wing position when a young idealist - when his reading of history and biblical learning was telling him a Christian Socialism cherry picking from the communistic state apparatus model was on the rise.

Give a decade or two for realism to kick in and Gordon Brown with his new reading of history and biblical learning - has positioned himself as a seemingly right-wing Christian post-Socialism cherry picking from the capitalistic-market state apparatus model.

Tony Blair's party was New Labour.

Gordon Brown's party is the Red Tories.

Gordon Brown is chasing the middle-England votes of upper working class and worried lower middle-class.

There are no Reds under the bed anymore.
Red is now just another shade of Blue.

Gordon Brown and his Red Tory Party.