I Know I'm Paranoid

I'm now at the scrawling graffiti stage.

Last night we had the poll. Today it's all been about Tony Blair's intervention. Basically, he's published a report where he's said Labour need to be more based. Focus on the economy, put rejoining the EU on the backburner, ditch some of the net zero stuff. Lots of juicy red meat for people on the right. Along with some criticism of Labour's lurch towards the left.

And now the leadership hopefuls are hitting back.

Meanwhile, I'm in full conspiracist mode. My reading of all this is as follows.

• Burnham is the planned Labour saviour.
• (If something goes wrong in Makerfield, they'll have to make do with Wes Streeting.)
• Blair's intervention is basically a call for the Labour Party to pivot towards policies more appealing to the general public.
• The spat with 'the leftist hopefuls' gives them an allure of representing something new.
• However, once Burnham (or Streeting) is installed he'll adopt the Blair manifesto, and reposition towards the middle.
• By this time the rest of the party (at least the cabinet level types) will have been primed by this Blair push to know which way the wind is blowing.
• Then it's election time.

Further more.

• This puts them closer to alignment with the Tory Party repositioning on such issues.
• After the election, if it's a messy hung parliament, the possibility of Labour and Tories working together (purely in the national interest, of course) becomes an option.

This last one is very conspiracist. In fact, I call it the unthinkable. As it is unthinkable to most people. It's like Cowboys and Indians working together. They're just on different sides. That's how the movies work. Even though people now use the phrase 'uniparty,' the outward duopoly of it - the unwritten rule of the theatre - remains sacrosanct. Though I have seen the possibility mentioned a tiny, tiny bit recently.

I'm out on a limb, but I just feel the uniparty will do anything to keep Reform out.

People reading may opine, "But Reform are the Tories! Look at all the bloody Tories in there!!"

However, they're the Brexiting Tories. The faction that got pushed out with Boris. You need to ignore the label and sort the individuals by vibe. The "I agree with Nick," uniparty types don't really like the brexity types. This is not to say that some uniparty types haven't genuinely shifted opinion on some issues. It's perfectly possible that Blair himself has came around to the idea that Britain needs to get a grip on the border and start digging energy out of the ground. The pivot may not just be cynical. After all, we all swim in the same social currents. However, the fundamental differences must surely remain. It wouldn't have taken them this long to get to these positions otherwise.

Again, I'm being very suspicious in my thinking. Perhaps I'm just underestimating how messy and truly factional politics is. Maybe this current split in the Labour Party is as genuine as the split over the EU was in the Tory Party. The timing is so convenient though.

I guess only time will tell.

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Actually, a little addendum to my earlier post about Restore looking clownish. I've seen a lot of that today as well. For instance, Steve Laws - who kind of plays the, "I'm the most openly racist person," role in UK politics - is publicly associating with Restore. Which suggests Restore do have the unelectable clown role. Though I guess you could read it in other ways. Maybe if they're just stealing votes to hurt Reform looking edgily racist is enough?

I'm returning to my uncertainty of earlier now, aren't I. Again, time will tell. We'll see what happens.

Now I'm going to watch a few episodes of The X-Files before I go to bed (fittingly). Actually, maybe just one, I've spent far too long typing this nonsense.