Some random thoughts on the Compass Conference
The overall consensus of the people at the conference, although it was never elucidated in this manner, was that whilst the Labour party should always be aiming for the centre ground to ensure power, it should also be moving to win the arguments and force the middle ground to move to the left. Some guy from The Independent made the point well, he argued that we should not be content to talk of the tax "burden", we need to change the language and terms of the debate to match a left of centre perspective. The right does this amazingly well- consider the "right to life" and how tax cuts always comes down to the pie growing larger and everyone's absolute amount increasing(bollocks- but convincing to someone not really thinking).
One final rant. Does anyone else think Denis MacShane is the most obnoxious cock to grace the planet? He delivered a speech in favour of nuclear power which completely failed to address the issues at hand- we all know it doesn't produce greenhouse gases, it was the economic feasibility and nuclear waste the other speaker was objecting to, you idiot. However, the real reason he got my blood boiling was how, when he was sitting in the audience of some event later he kept on talking loudly into his mobile phone in the worst "Yeah, I'm at the Compass conference" style. This despite everyone around him staring daggers and him being politely asked to refrain by one of my friends whom he completely ignored.
The day was interesting in parts, but on the whole very samey- most of the time you always knew what everyone was going to say. The coverage in the media also seemed to be too keen to portray it as a bunch of lefty nutters looking for trouble with Blair. The BBC Website coverage gave the impression that random questions from the floor were serious policies Compass were expounding, e.g. scrapping the Monarchy. In the end we left before the end to an air conditioned bar in Covent Garden to start the real political discourse and escape the boring, unthinkingness of Kitty Usher types.
PS. Excuse the rantiness of this post, its more just to get a bit of discussion going!


