Good Old Boy #22

"It can be a real danger in the Labour Party that because it can be such good fun abusing each other, we devote a vast amount of time to the sport. No one on the other side would waste so much time on whether the Duke of Norfolk should be removed or punished for upsetting the Tory leadership in some House of Lords division. They prefer to surge on and smash the next trade union they can lay their hands on. We have to work out what the really big prizes are and go for them. There is nobody who is so perfect in their political record that you can say you support them one hundred percent."

"Once the Left experiences defeat, it turns on itself, becomes introverted and looks for betrayals in its own ranks. Granted that all of us make an endless number of mistakes and errors, the structure of the Left is such that before you've really had a chance to think through that you've made a mistake, admit it to yourself and then to others, you've been denounced in the most bitter fashion."

Ken Livingstone, 1984.