C laig …. ‘modernisers’ eh, this really one of your current buzz words, or have you had a bet with someone that you can use it in every post? Lol
Clearly Labour has had more than their fair (main party) political share of modernizing over the years, going back and forth. The ‘Old’ Labour last in power during the 1970’s seemingly became non electable, but then Labour became stonkingly electable under Blair’s ‘New’ Labour – winning a 1997 landslide majority of over 140 seats from a Conservatives government, arguably not doing too much wrong at the time.
Under Miliband, Labour have drifted back a little to ‘Old’ with State controls over this and that, appearing to believe that in order to seal the deal with Labour core voters, that was all he really needed to do for the 35% of votes in the 2015 general Election Labour needed, that would give him a decent majority - aided of course by the current dodgy electoral boundary lines.
Recent polls etc show Labour with a flatlining lead over the Conservatives of over 2-3%, which would give him a very good majority in parliament, and even though the Conservatives need a 7-8% LEAD in the polls to get a small parliamentary majority in 2015, Labour wonks are worried that their ‘Oldish’ Labour message is not resonating with voters.
So yesterday, Mr Miliband drifted back to ‘Newish’ Labour with clamp downs/reforms on benefits, which will not sit well with the grass roots activists knocking on doors, but he is clearly experimenting how far he has to go back to ‘New’, to ‘seal the 2015 deal’.
The short answer to your question (please feel free to skip to it) is WHO KNOWS how modern the parliamentary Labour Party is, it could drift back and forth until next May, THE QUESTION IMO is would that Labour Party as a whole dare standing in the way of a Blair Impeachment process – before individual Labour MP’s had to both call on their own conscience, and analyse what their personal decision could mean to retaining their individual constituency seat.
Any loyalty to Blair therefore would take third place in the decision process, behind saving their own political bottoms – and maybe, just maybe, he had a whiff of Impeachment and Blair’s recent defence of his Iraq actions, was at least partially aimed at current Labour MPs.