Gordon Brown

Crawled out of bed at about lunchtime today.

Wasn't expecting Jesus H Christ to play much of a role in the rest of the day, but find he has Come, anyway.

Gordon Brown's cabinet, as most of you will probably know, contains a number of career Jesus freaks - Ruth Kelly and Des Browne are the main offenders, and there are a couple of others whose names and point in life escape me for the moment... anyway, Ruthie and her fellow holy-rollers want Gordon to make it right for Catholics in parliament who are planning to vote against aspects of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill.

The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill is dear to our hearts here, not least because we're trying to stop followers of the Lord amend the Abortion Act through it. Now Ruthie and pals are taking issue with the aspect of the bill that will allow children to be born by IVF without a father's involvement - ie, that will permit lesbians to produce a child, indoctrinate it in their strange and hairy ways, bring it up without a father, and turn it into a Gay.

Government banning peaceful protest?

We think not.

We work in the Westminster area, so will certainly be off to Parliament on Monday to lend support to the Stop the War protest.

Many thanks to Gordon Brown and the Met for motivating everyone to spread the word about this protest btw. They're almost as good at the online campaign scene as Schillings.

Up yours, Gordon. 

And so Gordon was crowned. Bet he was very nasty to anybody who suggested they were going to support John McDonnell.

The hell with Gordon, anyway. His party has no money and no members. Ha ha. Gordon's toadies need to understand that this situation is not just going to self-correct. Ah well. They'll have at least ten years on the opposition benches to sort it out.

TOSSPOTS.

Congratulations to John McDonnell, though. He got thousands of people to his campaign meetings and he would have got a lot of votes if Gordon had been man enough for a contest. Which he wasn't.

Finding the old press' new love affair with Gordon B majestically nauseating.

Have interviewed heaps of Labour party members over the last year re: the future of the party and the importance of a leadership contest. Have barely managed to find a single party member who thinks Gordon should be crowned leader. We want a leadership contest, say Labour party members. If we don't take this chance to discuss why we've lost nearly all of our members and most our money, they say, we won't win an election again for many sad, long years.

And they're right.

You can start reading the interviews here - you'll find the rest of them queued in the right-hand menu on that page. They're all headed up 'Saving Labour.' If Gordon is elected leader unopposed, we will do more interviews with Labour party members as what is left of that tatty party rides towards political oblivion.

For those who are interested in the news (let's assume it's true) that John McDonnell may now get on the ballot paper and challenge Gordon Brown for the Labour party leadership, here is a link to all the stories we've done from the campaign since last year, and the interviews we're published here and on the newstatesman.com site with Labour party members about a party leadership contest.

We don't always agree with John's politics, but we know that old Gordie must be pretty worried about a contest, because the facts are that John has been getting very big crowds at his campaign meetings. We weren't really expecting to find this when we started going along, but we did. 

Photo: John McDonnell speaks to a PCS meeting

Private companies should never be allowed to run the welfare benefits system. The whole idea is disturbing.

Here's another interview with someone on a sickness benefit
You can read earlier interviews with people on benefits here
 

It's about two in the afternoon and Paul Thomas, 40, is sitting just outside the front door of the petrol station on Shoreditch High Street, begging away. He does this for several hours most afternoons.

He gets about £40 a week by way of the sickness benefit that he's been on for about a year. Unfortunately, his bills at home come to about £80 a week (he's lived in the same council flat in Bethnal Green for 16 years): thus the daily efforts outside the petrol station. Thomas, who is very articulate , possibly black, and fully political, says that his present way of life just sort of evolved for him after he was made redundant from a maintenance job about 18 months ago.

He is interested to hear there are people who think that scrounging for coins on the pavement on Shoreditch High Street is a lucrative lifestyle choice.

'It's humiliating. I've got two children - one 22 and one 18. They are always asking for money. Money, money, money. I do this, because I can't live on £40 a week. I'm not going to go around robbing other people.'

Other people rob him, though.

Will the long-term jobless really benefit from a private sector presence in welfare?

Surely people who live like this deserve sympathy, education and support, rather than corporate rape:

For Natalie Langford and her partner Kelvin, this month's primary unpleasantness will be the formal loss of their ten-month-old daughter. She was taken away from them just after she was born, and will shortly be adopted out by social services. Such are the joys of life as a junkie, says Natalie.

'So, my daughter was taken off me and I never get to see her again. I only get photos,' Natalie says. 'I won't see her now until she is 16 and [if she] wants contact. I was nicked for shoplifting (just after the baby was born) and I was taken to Holloway for two months. They didn't give me a chance to look after the baby. All I have is letterbox contact now, because I was on methadone. I stopped taking drugs and everything. I was trying to go into detox, but I couldn't get into detox, because they didn't have funding and all that shit, so like, it weren't happening. So, my daughter was taken off me and I never get to see her again.'

It is a story that calls, Kelvin says, for a drink. He and Natalie and five or six of their friends are already working their way through the beers. They're drinking at the top end of Deptford High Street. They all look pretty horrific. Natalie is only 35 and she is personable, eloquent and political, but you'd be pushing the romance if you said she was something to look at. She's got thinning hair, bleached-looking irises and the pale, pimply skin of a user. Her skin is so inflamed in places that her face looks misshapen. Kelvin, who says he's ex-Army, could be anywhere between 35 and 60. He's grey-haired and sallow, and also has the faded irises.

Another wee interview with a Labour party member on the importance of a leadership contest...

You can read interviews with other party members here

Dan Paskins likes to imagine a Labour leadership contest that starts with Gordon Brown, John McDonnell and Alan Milburn, and ends with Alan Milburn getting a total hiding. Paskins is not too crazy about Milburn - he's pretty sure that Milburn's brilliant ideas for modernising Labour played the fatal role in destroying the party's membership.

Paskins, who is a constituency party organiser and was until recently an Oxford City councillor, will settle for a contest between Brown and McDonnell, though, or Brown, McDonnell and anybody. It would be nice to see Milburn mashed like the wee turd he is, but we may all have to wait for that one. 'I think it will be weird if there isn't a contest,' Paskins says. 'It will be Gordon Brown wandering around on his own.'

Paskins wasn't particularly impressed with the idea of McDonnell in the first instance - 'I was against him' - but says that in recent times, McDonnell has started to make a certain amount of sense. 'This portrayal of him as an extremist is wrong.'

We continue our interviews with Labour party members about the party's future at a time of falling membership, undecided leadership and confused policy direction.

There are interviews with party socialists here
There are interviews with party moderates here
There are interviews with party Blairites here

Party members Nick Parrott, Max Freedman, Omar Salem and Mazher Hussain are as clear as most of us on the key to saving party's future: re-train Labour's straying focus on the domestic agenda, and aim policy at those constituents Labour was meant for.

'Blair maybe put too much of the focus on Worcester Woman and Mondeo Man,' Freedman admits. Re-engaging with Labour's traditional, and presently very sad, supporters will also go some way to keeping that smiley wanker David Cameron in his box. Everybody knows that Cameron will rat the masses out, particularly in areas like housing - everybody is already all too aware of the large and nasty gap that yawns between Cameron's warming, right-on hippie rhetoric and the evil social policies that his Conservative activists, especially in local authorities, are developing and implementing on the ground as we speak.

Hammersmith and Fulham is an excellent example: less than a year has passed since the Conservatives took that council from Labour, and they've already washed their flabby white hands of the needy and the not-so-fabulously rich. Schools are being earmarked for sale to developers and housing centres for closure, housing staff are being made redundant and the Council's committees section is no longer quite staffed. A similar rape of services that are desperately required by the beleaguered poor is underway at the Lib Dem-Conservative Camden council. The Conservatives are not here to make friends.

Are you a member of the Labour party? We want to interview you about the direction you think the party should take. Contact us and we'll call you.

You can read Labour young socialists' views on the Labour party's future here
You can read Labour young moderates' views on the Labour party's future here

The young Blairites. More interviews to come on all

Legendary online Blairite Shamik Das, 27, thinks a contest for the Labour party leadership is vital for the party, but implies that no sane man toys with the notion that John McDonnell will be anywhere near it. 'Arrrrgh,' he laughs, placing a hand on a pained forehead. 'Arrrrggh. Arrrrrrrgh. No.'

Das would prefer the debate about the party's future to take place at the deputy-leadership level, with the centre-left's Jon Cruddas at the plate for party members of a socialist bent, and Hilary Benn doing whatever it is that he does for the right. Das will support Benn, but he thinks he can probably stand Cruddas, at least for the duration of a contest. It's true, Das says, that Cruddas has made a few socialist noises in his campaign, but he's so far steered clear of serious fruitcake rhetoric. 'He [Cruddas] is not as barking as some of them are,' Das laughs. 'His [voting] record is quite sound from my point of view.'