Refounding Labour  

An e mail comes winging in from Peter Hain telling me the Labour Party is going to open up and close the gap between people and politics. This is good news that makes me feel optimistic albeit in a “fingers-crossed” kind of way. After all, political parties that are crushed in the polls have a habit of promising to reform themselves by listening and learning from mistakes. But, too often, little of substance changes. Maybe it will be different this time. I hope so. Broon was a spectacularly dysfunctional Prime Minister, leading Labour to its second worst defeat since 1918. The cascade of memoirs from Jonathan Powell’s “The New Machiavelli” to Alistair Darling’s “Back from the Brink” show how temperamentally unsuited he was for the top job. As for Blair, he saw himself as a swashbuckling visionary, taking on and defeating his own Party. This had...