Is LabourList getting better?
A while ago I pledged to stop reading LabourList. I felt that they were just an arm of the Labour Party central machine as was evidenced by the extremely partisan and uncritical stance taken in almost all of the early posts. This seemed to be its raison d'etre under the stewardship of the partisan attack dog Derek Draper.
However I have noticed that since Draper was deposed (and I went back on my pledge and included them in my RSS feeds again - I thought I'd give them a second chance), some of the posts on LL have started to be less partisan and more constructive. Even, whisper it, critical of the Labour leadership.
This one yesterday from Brian Barder about the ridiculous stance Labour is taking on "Labour investment vs Tory cuts" is an excellent example of what a grassroots blog should be doing. Brian is a longstanding Labour member who has clearly had enough of the nonsense being spouted by Brown on this issue and is trying to get the leadership of his party to engage with what the real debate should be, i.e. where the cuts should fall.
So, whilst I was forthright in my criticism of LabourList in the past, I thought it was only fair to give them to credit for seeming to take on board comments like those I made and actually do something about it!
If they carry on like this, who knows it might even become properly reflective of the grassroots of the Labour party which would doubtless make for very uncomfortable reading for Brown et al.
I wonder what Derek Draper thinks about this...
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3 comments:
Declaration- I started writing for LL when Alex took over. I have been thoroughly impressed at his willingness to be independent. So please do give it a try again.
Just a point on your post. The primary issue with public spending cuts to my mind is not where. It's when. Too early and any recovery could be severely jeopardised.
Anthony
Not to mention that Nick Clegg recently made a post on there.
Anthony, agree with you on the timing of spending cuts. In fact, even when the recession is technically over (i.e. things like growth are back), economics says that unemployment tends to fall a bit behind any recovery, so it's important not cut spending as soon as the think tanks say the recession is over, but at least a couple of months later. Though the pressure from the media may be too much.
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