Electoropositive Commitmentality, Incentivisational Undisruptivity
Another rat has leapt overboard from the Good Ship Gordon; admittedly not a very big rat, being merely a parliamentary private secretary to a nonentity rather than a nonentity in itself, but nevertheless a deserter in time of crisis. The pretext for this latest evacuation is our mediocre showing in the Great Game in Afghanistan; and the fact that today is the seventieth anniversary of the spectacular victory by the Official Greatest Ever Number One Briton Ever over the appeasers whose work he had done so much to make necessary can hardly have salved the hurt.
Naturally, the rodent was at pains to make clear that its decision was based entirely on concern for the party's prospects at the next general election: apparently, despite everything it has done for Britain and the world, Labour will not win unless it gets a grip on defence. In a sort of stumbling, accidental, skidding-around-the-point-on-a-wheel-and-a-crutch-like-a-vehicle-out-of-Wacky Races way, this argument does have a certain merit. By no stretch of the imagination can a war waged half a planet away by a nuclear power against some of the poorest people in the world be considered defensive; therefore the case could be made that, having somehow attained the grip which has eluded it at least since the Visitation of God to the Reverend Tony at some time before 2003, New New Labour would do well to set a limit to its commitment in Afghanistan, viz. its commitment of British lives to the service of the United States, before the body count starts to arouse the sort of public emotion that normally follows the demise of a Big Brother contestant, a member of the royal family or any other soap opera character. Unfortunately, it is not immediately obvious that the departure of one political gofer with the same surname as Lord Haw Haw at what is, in the rodent's own estimation, the "least disruptive" time to flee squeaking for the lifeboats, constitutes a sufficiently traumatic stimulus for the said grip to be gained.
Naturally, the rodent was at pains to make clear that its decision was based entirely on concern for the party's prospects at the next general election: apparently, despite everything it has done for Britain and the world, Labour will not win unless it gets a grip on defence. In a sort of stumbling, accidental, skidding-around-the-point-on-a-wheel-and-a-crutch-like-a-vehicle-out-of-Wacky Races way, this argument does have a certain merit. By no stretch of the imagination can a war waged half a planet away by a nuclear power against some of the poorest people in the world be considered defensive; therefore the case could be made that, having somehow attained the grip which has eluded it at least since the Visitation of God to the Reverend Tony at some time before 2003, New New Labour would do well to set a limit to its commitment in Afghanistan, viz. its commitment of British lives to the service of the United States, before the body count starts to arouse the sort of public emotion that normally follows the demise of a Big Brother contestant, a member of the royal family or any other soap opera character. Unfortunately, it is not immediately obvious that the departure of one political gofer with the same surname as Lord Haw Haw at what is, in the rodent's own estimation, the "least disruptive" time to flee squeaking for the lifeboats, constitutes a sufficiently traumatic stimulus for the said grip to be gained.
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