Posted 1:22 AM by Paul
What's in a Name?

During the 1980s people on the Looney Left warned that the Labour Party had a secret plan. They were going to turn themselves into a British Democratic Party. This didn't worry me too much, providing that it was the right part, that's the Left, of the Democrats. But the Lefties were wrong. The plan was to turn Labour into the Republican Party. You have got to hand it to them. It's an audacious plan.

Peter Hain, a big hitter in the Labour Party and spoken in some circles as a future leader had a clear message for voters yesterday when he was interviewed on the radio.

You will be safe under Labour. The Liberals and Conservatives oppose our plans to fight terrorism and crime.

Not so much a warning as a threat. Vote Liberal Democrat and you may die. Setting aside the fact that fears of getting mugged on your way home from Safeways and blown to smithereens by a hi-jacked plane are different issues, Hain's claim is startling. Startling because it is straight out of the Karl Rove playbook.

I met Peter Hain years ago when I was a Labour councuillor. He spoke passionately and eloquently at a public meeting I organised in opposition to the proposed privatisation of the Post Office. It was the last year of the Conservative Government and I thought,

" Great. We are in good shape with democratic socialists like him who speak common sense coming to positions of power. We can sleep easy in our beds. There will be no total sell-out when we get elected. "

Now Hain is very much in power, the Post Office is about to be privatised and he is using the rhetoric of Condoleeza Rice.

But maybe none of this should worry us. Party alliances are in flux across the world. . The Left .v. Right face off that dates from the French Revolution does not really hold any more. New fault lines are opening up. It has happend in othe parts of the world already.

In the late 80s I went to Nicaragua to act as an interpreter for a group of Labour Members of the European Parlimrent. I was intested to discover that the Liberals were a far right party with the Red Flag as its symbol and the Conservatives were moderate Social Demcorats who had supported the Sandinistas. The Communist Party of Nicaragua hated the Sandinistas and had joined the CIA financed co-alition to succesfully oust them from power.

So what's in a name? Nothing.

Freeing ourselves form the old party labels might even be liberating.