There’s something slightly odd about the sensation of watching the British Labour party overseeing strike-breaking. Part of that’s obvious: a Labour Lord egging on the attempts to crush unionised labour is the sort of thing that could provoke not merely spinning in graves, but the rising of the dead. At what point, one wonders, does continuing to retain the Labour moniker become an act of gross dishonesty so barefaced that present generations of UK Labour pollies feels sufficiently embarrassed as to rename themselves?
The other part, though, is history: this is somewhat familiar. We don’t have a House of Lords, of course, but our own Labour party went there more than two decades ago, with “Mad Dog” Prebble in the role Mandelson presently occupies. The British Labour party ought to consider how long the New Zealand version spent in the wilderness after it abandoned its base so thoroughly.