Libertarian Alliance on Rightwing Entryism into Labour

Mike over at Vox Political suggested that just as the extreme Right and Left have a policy of entryism – infiltrating more moderate parties and organisations in order to take them over and radicalise, so some ostensible Labour party members with free market views were really Tories, who had similarly infiltrated Labour. He was particularly discussing Alan Milburn, the former Labour health secretary, who criticised Ed Miliband’s speech about expanding the NHS. During his period in office, Milburn was extremely active with Patricia Hewitt in promoting the introduction of private healthcare into the NHS and its piecemeal privatisation.

Connected to the New Labour project was the thinktank Demos. This was ostensibly left-wing, but in fact contained a number of extremely right-wing business leaders and academics. It has been described by one of the leaders of the Libertarian Alliance as

a cavalry of Trojan horses within the citadel of leftism. The intellectual agenda is served up in a left wing manner, laced with left wing clichés and verbal gestures, but underneath all the agenda is very nearly identical to that of the Thatcherites.

See the article ‘Demos’, by William Clark in Lobster 45, Summer 2003.

There you have it. The Libertarians themselves have more or less stated that the free marketeers in Labour are entryists. It’s high time support was shown to Miliband, and these Trojan horses put out to grass.

Tags: Alan Milburn, Conservatives, Demos, Ed Miliband, Labour Party, Libertarian Alliance, Lobster, Patricia Hewitt, Privatisation, Vox Political, William Clark