It's the end of an era in many ways. Ever since this blog was set up in 2006, around 50% of the posts, at least, have been about the Labour party, from a broadly sympathetic perspective.
So why stop? Quite simple really: at some point earlier this year I realised that the Labour party had deteriorated so far politically that, even if it were able to win the next election (which I doubt), the difference between a 2015-20 Labour administration and a 2015-20 Tory (or ConDem) administration will be so limited as to make voting or campaigning for Labour pointless.
Most of my friends on the left realised this some time ago and it's only really my belief in Ed Miliband as a potentially transformative figure that stopped me coming to the same conclusion as them a couple of years ago.
Ed Miliband may still be a potentially transformative figure but I think that's all he'll ever be. Tragically unrealised potential. If Labour forms a government in 2015 in its present state, I don't think they've done the policy thinking to make a success of it, and I think internal divisions between the Blairites and everyone else would soon come to the fore in any casewe could be looking at a Tory landslide in 2020, god help us. The guy who is quoted in this excellent John Harris article thinks the same way I do:
A month or so ago, I was discussing the increasingly uncertain outcome of the 2015 general election with a friend whose involvement with the Labour party stretches back more than three decades. "I'm scared of what will happen if we lose," he said. "And I'm scared of what will happen if we win."
Ed's policy stance - if you can find it, that is - seems to combine the lunacy of Ed Balls's pro-City light touch economic policy with the barking-mad social policies of the Blairite right (tough on immigrants and "scroungers" etc), with very little of Ed Miliband's own vision running through any of it.
In a way this post is just my blogging catching up with my own political activity: I haven't been a member of the Labour party since 1992, and I've been a member of the Green Party since 2010, although I'm starting to feel that the Greens are in their own way, not even half way radical enough for the current challenges that we face.
This means that political blogging on the Hello Underground Typewriter site will be mainly focused on the Green Party and alternatives situated further to the left such as Left Unity and Counterfire. I don't anticipate political blogging accounting for more than about 20 percent of posts as I really want to get back into music blogging - music is mainly what's occupying my spare time these days.
In a way it feels a huge relief to be shot of Labour and just able to get on with the interesting stuff. The future awaits.
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