On Christmas eve, silently, almost unnoticed, came the news that the government’s joined up thinking Respect unit was being wound up with the high ranking civil servant at its head redeployed to community policing at the Cabinet Office http://politics.guardian.co.uk/print/0,,331883218-110251,00.html Unlike the death knell for the supercasino or troops out of Iraq there was no fanfare this time. It is reported that Labour’s favourite think-tank the Institute For Public Policy Research are recommending that the once totemic ASBOs should not be issued to under 12s. Given that the UK has one of the world’s highest ages of criminal responsibility (10) and that government statistics themselves have shown that half of all ASBOs were being breached as they had become a “badge of honour”, this shift should be welcomed. Rather than reacting with outrage the Tories should applaud the ditching of the tacky politics of soundbite, substituting Brown’s seriousness for the razzle-dazzle politics of his predecessor.

The other ex-Labour MP and frequent flyer to the middle-east who catapulted “Respect” into the public eye was George Galloway. His pet vanity project, the Oona King slaying Respect party is no more. It’s been diluted into two:  Respect Renewal (the now bearded Galloway and pals from East London mosque) and Real Respect (four Tower Hamlets councillors elected as Respect and SWP chums). After topping his cat-imitating eviction from the Big Brother house with suspension from the Commons Talksport presenter Galloway rounded off the year with a dodgy donation controversy of his own - although the Respect staffer who accepted $10,000 from a Dubai construction company has since defected to the rival Respect http://www.guardian.co.uk/crime/article/0,,1937030,00.html Curiously for a party that grew out of the “Stop the War” movement the ex-Respect’s two “sides” clearly hate each other as has been splurged all over the net http://eastlondonadvertiser.co.uk/search/story.aspx?brand=ELAOnline&category=trialbyjeory&it emid=WeED28%20Nov%202007%2018:17:57:463&tBrand=ELAOnline&tCategory=search Their unholy alliance of fundamentalist Islamists and unreconstructed trots was always an arranged marriage too far. Following his promise to be a one-election wonder in Bethnal Green and Bow the man commonly joked of as the “honourable member for Baghdad East” now wants to be London Mayor and MP for Canning Town and Poplar. http://socialistunity.com/?p=1409

The puncturing of the gorgeous one’s ego is part of a pattern. As the Guardian has shown at the other end of the extremist spectrum the BNP has too fissured into two http://guardian.co.uk/print/0,,331878935-103685,00.htm Fellow Scottish socialist firebrand turned DJ Tommy Sheridan has also meanwhile been in a spot of bother recently. Minutes after hanging up his headphones after a Talk 107 FM discussion on whether Scots should vote for Liam on X Fact solely because he is a Scot, Sheridan was apprehended by three plain clothes officers as he was leaving the studio to be charged with perjury http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/law/article3060233.ece You couldn’t make it up.

“Respect” always sounded like a word more suited to an Ali G monologue than a serious political agenda. Today it is a thoroughly discredited term. Like flared trousers, Take That and the mini cooper it may well experience a revival but for now it looks like a prize turkey.

Rupa Huq is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at Kingston University and was Labour candidate in the safe Conservative seat of Chesham and Amersham at the 2005 General Election.

An abridged version of this with comments is at

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/rupa_huq/2008/01/goodbye_to_respect.html

www.rupahuq.co.uk