The gift of the gob, but hardly a gripping debut Horror, shock and impotence Labour's response to the Longbridge crisis has been to do nothing. He may have been right about his own class. But in the labour and trade union movement, the truth is the opposite.
Impotence tends to corrupt, and absolute impotence corrupts absolutely.
Contemporary proof can be found in the reaction to the decision of BMW to walk away from Rover, and throw the lives of some 50,000 people in and around Birmingham into turmoil. Long years ago, there was a tradition that Labour governments should do something about such catastrophes. In his diaries, Tony Benn describes a meeting soon after Labour won the February 1974 election and took office without a Commons majority. The leaders of the shipbuilding and engineering unions were worried about press reports that British Leyland, Rover's predecessor, was cutting back on investment. 170,000 people were involved and they thought that government intervention was inevitable.