It was Twenty (Five) Years Ago Today...

...since Neil Kinnock, then new Labour leader, made his rallying cry for party unity after Labour's worst post-war electoral performance. "Remember how you felt on that dreadful morning of the 10th of June," opined Neil. "Just remember how you felt then, and think to yourselves: 'June the 9th, 1983, never ever again will we experience that.'

Clarke was reciting those lines ad nauseum in every TV news studio this morning. It's not so surprising Clarkey should recall that speech so clearly, as he wrote it. Its message should be considered just as relevant today, Clarke has argued, for Labour face "utter destruction" at the next General Election and the party are sleepwalking into disaster.

The irony is our local boy (Norwich South) Charlie's outburst in the middle of Gordon's fightback week, aims to cause just the kind of disunity and instability he was warning against in the early eighties. However, there was a certain frankness and stating the bleeding obvious about his interviews and the original Newstatesman article. The piece was really putting to bed any thoughts of a Blairist faction rising up against Gord, "there is no coherent Blairite ideaology...no Blairite plot." However, amongst Clarke's few supportive voices were, predictably, Stephen Byers and Alan Milburn who probably wish there were such a plot.

Charlie's intervention follows close behind Alistair Darling 'moment of clarity' when he conceded economic times were as bad as they had been for 60 years. "People are pissed off, " he added laconically. People actually started to warm to AD for the first time since the opinion polls went south last year. I particularly enjoyed his opinion of ex-Scottish leader Wendy Alexander, "not at all likeable." (Wendy is notoriously out of touch, in 1997 campaign she saw a constituent's mobile phone and asked where you put the money in).

But at last some senior figures in the party are make a stab at being honest with the public. Straight-talking would look more attractive than Cameron and Osbourne's fatuous faux-shock at every Government report. It won't last of course, No.10 machine will soon grind Darling's honest approach down and Clarke has already been painted as, "bitter and twisted." Clarke, even giving time to local news prog, Look East, responded in a suitably curt manner, "Bitter and twisted, I may be. But I'm also right."