Unsocialist realism

摘要

The news from Germany was welcome in Blackpool. Labour greeted Gerhard Schroeder's victory, and the addition of the SPD to the growing band of centre-left governments in Europe, as further evidence that history is on its side. But as Tony Blair, demonstrated in a dazzling speech, he is himself not quite a member of this family. In fact he stands well to the right not only of these continental socialist parties, but of his own. And he seems determined to make the distance larger still. The party knows this. Many of the delegates in Blackpool disliked what the prime minister had to say. Some are professional loathers of the Blairite project, who see betrayal of class and cause in every speech that fails—as Mr Blair's invariably do—to bang on about the good old socialism. It is a telling fact of Labour life that this remains a party in which the mischievous delegate can earn a raucous cheer simply by daring to utter from the rostrum an off-message word such as "comrade", like a schoolboy using a naughty word in the presence of a prefect.