From: The Unit
To: GB
Subject: Christmas vision
So Happy Christmas, etc! Real feeling here and at the festive Cinnamon Club lunch with Ed, Ed, Dougie and Damian that we might have turned the corner. Big stories are finally coming in to refocus the agenda. Iraq, children, and in particular Canoe Guy - who, if we could give out honours, we'd make a duke or similar for his services to government news management.
The residual issue from the past few weeks is party funding. Think we need to have a massive hard think about this. Ecclestone, Hindujas, and now Abrahams have shown how surprisingly complicated it can be to raise very large sums of money with nothing offered in return. What everyone expects us to do, and indeed what we should probably do, is something clever that screws the Tories while leaving us golden.
But what about a different route? A bold move that would weaken the party's very basis, almost threaten its survival, undermine its traditional support and cause major internal ructions? Sounds promising, doesn't it? This radical vision is our ideological Christmas present to you. Chew it over with the turkey. Spit it out. See how it looks in the morning. Give it another chew. We think it has a hell of a lot to recommend it.
It would be outblairing Blair. A Clause Four moment to call our own. But much, much more radical than abandoning Clause Four, which really (and without being rude to those involved) was not such a stupid or radical endeavour when you look back at it.
What we are suggesting is:
One: outlaw donations in such a way as to include those we receive from unions - giving us an immediate and very public funding crisis. Catharsis one!
But then, not only end the link with the unions (which was obviously an occasional TB prick-tease), but launch a legislative assault on the very existence of the trade union movement that would circumscribe its areas of activity to such an extent it became practically illegal. Now who's radical?? Catharsis two!
The civil war that would ensue would obviously be hideous. But also the best Christmas present you could ever receive. It would remake the political weather totally for weeks - possibly, according to our calculations, for as much as three months.
Now, obviously there are no stronger supporters of trade unionism than us here at the Unit (for complicated historical reasons we are actually members of the rump NUM). However, we really feel the short-term advantage gained by destroying the labour movement would outweigh the longer-term implications, which, to be honest, are so difficult to predict that they are not worth thinking about.
Your place in history would be assured. Tories outflanked. Probable challenge from Europe under human rights legislation. Funding turned on its head and bracingly unsustainable. It really would be letting a thousand flowers bloom!
Let us know your thoughts.
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