Selling Souls in Kentish Town

I’m glad to hear that the Labour candidate in the Kentish Town by-election recycles and rides a bike (Ham+High 30 Nov). Everyone wanting to play up their eco-credentials for political benefit has to start somewhere. However I’m less happy to hear that he thinks that the previous Labour administration was strong on recycling. It was not.

What the Camden Labour Group did was tick boxes. Central government said you must recycle so they tried every trick in the book to increase the tonnage of material recycled. But because of the energy used, very little of it made sense. Everyone knows the example of the recycling that was sent to China. That’s why the new Liberal Democrat-led administration has launched a comprehensive audit of all our recycling practices - because we’re concerned that many of the things the previous Labour administration did actually caused more harm than good in terms of the battle against climate change.

Tony Blair’s main solution to global warming is nuclear power. I wonder if the Labour candidate in the Kentish Town by-election supports that. I doubt it. Yet another reason why I believe the Labour Party is morally bankrupt.

This week I knocked on doors in Kentish Town where I saw a Labour poster in the window and I asked why they were in the Labour Party and what they supported. Not one of them could think of anything progressive or laudable this government has done since 2001. And they all rejected Tony Blair (and Gordon Brown’s) simplistic, centralist and authoritarian answers for the future – Iraq, more nuclear power, ID cards, detention without trial, more jails, a replacement for Trident. It’s a long list of unpleasant policies. The Labour Party has sold its soul to the devil. I wonder if the Labour candidate in Kentish Town has too.