Green Knives Bide Their Time For Gordon Brown
So the Labour Party conference is over for another year and Gordon Brown has survived the attempts to remove him from office. How he managed this is a matter of exceptional luck, not political skill.
As the knives slide back into their sheaths wise old heads know this feat of double handed trickery cannot be repeated again. It’s only a matter of time, the mutterers continue to mutter.
However one rumour needs to be squashed right away: the one that this unrest is all about personality, not policy. Conference showed quite clearly that there are policy differences between Brown and his party, and their colour is Green.
Specifically, the debate about energy policy and whether a windfall tax should be imposed on the electricity companies showed clear divisions between the party leadership and those they claim to lead.
The party leadership argues that although these companies have made stonking profits because of the rising price of oil, and not their own business efficiency, they are too poor to pay a windfall tax.
“Piffle,” was the concise response of Michael Meacher, former Environment Minister and one-time party leadership candidate last year.
Derek Simpson, Joint General Secretary of the UK’s largest union UNITE, which recently agreed a merger with the North American United Steelworkers union, went one step further.
If these companies were so hard up, he wondered, surely the government was duty bound to renationalise them? “If it’s good enough for the banks then it’s good enough for the utilities!” he thundered.
All of which raises an interesting question: are the horny handed brothers of socialism about to raise their cudgels in a new and united (sorry) green movement?
It’s about as possible as the City Spiv Tories adopting a tree as their logo in order to toady up to green voters. What .. they did three years ago? Well …. wonders will never cease!
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