Stuart Hall: Letter Of The Week

I trust Ed Miliband is taking to heart the advice he is receiving from the Blairite creepy-crawlies whom his lack of leadership, political ideas or strategic intelligence have brought scurrying to the surface. The aim is not to bury but to complete the New Labour project. The realignment of Labour with centre-right neoliberalism is the future. Anyway, it is impossible to distinguish "productive" from "predatory" capitalism. Since shadow ministers do not understand its underlying principles, Labour must embrace, not only the hollowing-out but the winding-up of the welfare state.
And since speedy action is required, he should instruct his MPs and party activists to take to the streets to explain to every social constituency which has suffered from the cuts that they can expect nothing from a Labour government. To support their cause would be "dishonest populism" since the only winners will be "the squeezed middle". He should also try to persuade professors of politics who teach that democracy is some sort of brake on the total rule of society by capital to revise their lecture notes. The death wish is unstoppable.
Stuart Hall
London 


Letter to The Guardian.

• Stuart Hall's totes amazeballs essay 'The March Of The Neoliberals'.