Following on from Keir's trip to the Movement for Change National Assembly on August 30th, a quick note to express disgust at the media coverage over the last two days.
How an event that brought together 1,000 people from all over the nation to express determination to strengthen our movement can be overshadowed by one comment from a man who was at the top of the party during a time when it left many members behind is beyond me.
Peter Mandelson did some amazing things for our party, and Keir respects and admires him greatly. And maybe top-down power was needed at the time. But our movement is finding it's meaning again and he should step aside. The future is here and he is well and truly the past.
It's an utter disgrace that 1,000 grassroots members were ignored by apparently "progressive" newspapers and, might I add, blogs. Check the posts on Liberal Conspiracy on the 30th and 31st August. Sunny Hundal tries to make himself out to be a progressive, liberal, bottom-up-power kind of guy. Yet on a day when 1,000 grassroots Labour people turn up to an event to hear each other speak much more than they hear politicians speak, he fails to mention it once. Hypocrisy, Keir says. No; fucking disgraceful hypocrisy.
The Guardian? That bastion of the centre-left. Liberal, progressive, well-fucking-meaning. Did The Guardian mention how the movement had reconvened after decades of dismantlement? Not a chance. No, the day after the largest event of the Labour leadership campaign The Guardian goes with an article about yet another snidey Mandelson remark about one of the candidates. The 1,000 people just get a paragraph at the bottom. Another disgrace.
There is a saving grace however and it of course comes from that source of all that can be powerful in the movement: the people. A blogpost here and there. A letter to the aforementioned holier-than-thou newspaper (scroll down to Clare Palmer's letter). A tweet. Or two. Or three. Or four. Regardless of the pitiful media coverage of such a momentous event in the context of modern politics, the people who were there are speaking. And as Gordon Brown said on May 3rd, "from one person, one candle, can be lit thousands of candles".
Because of this, because of the people, Keir doesn't think we've heard the last from this movement. Guardian or no fucking Guardian.
LetUsFaceTheFuture.
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