I remember visiting his grave on Iona not long after. Seems like yesterday.
In terms of policy he wasn’t that different to Blair or Brown, however I think he would have been a better PM than either.
I remember that day so clearly. I found out just before my sixth year studies biology oral exam. I was gutted. I think he had a moral integrity that hasn’t been seen since and appears to have disappeared from politics.
Reminds me of walking up Leith Street past John Lewis (I think it was in the morning so think that means it would have been the next day) and I got stopped for a vox pop by someone with a tape deck and a microphone.
I hadn’t heard the news and I just heard them say something like “What do you think about the news about John Smith? ”
So I just start saying that he seems like a decent chap and I hope he becomes PM at the next election.
I honestly can’t recall what happened after that. I think they told me he’d died and then I probably mumbled some sort of apology and walked away.
I was in 4th year at school when this happened – was pretty sad as my family were very political – we’d even watched the party conference together – not something I can imagine doing with my own sons, but there you go.
I was already pretty bummed out as Kurt Cobain had just recently died and I was fully into my teenage moody/political phase, so this was another big character who I admired that was just gone.
It’s hard to be sure, but had he lived I think we’d have not gone into Iraq with Bush. Maybe I might not have become as completely dissolusioned with politics as I did after marching in the streets against the government I’d voted for 2 years previously.
He was just another neoliberal unionist politician. In 1997 anyone standing as leader of the Labour party would have won the election after 18 years of Tory misrule. Much the same as it is now!
I’m not convinced he would have beaten John Major, or at least it would have been a closer race than Blair’s landslide. There were local elections held in England alongside the 1997 GE and the Tories actually did rather well in those.
It was Tony Blair that won the election, not Labour.
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The day The Labour Party died.
I remember visiting his grave on Iona not long after. Seems like yesterday.
In terms of policy he wasn’t that different to Blair or Brown, however I think he would have been a better PM than either.
I remember that day so clearly. I found out just before my sixth year studies biology oral exam. I was gutted. I think he had a moral integrity that hasn’t been seen since and appears to have disappeared from politics.
Reminds me of walking up Leith Street past John Lewis (I think it was in the morning so think that means it would have been the next day) and I got stopped for a vox pop by someone with a tape deck and a microphone.
I hadn’t heard the news and I just heard them say something like “What do you think about the news about John Smith? ”
So I just start saying that he seems like a decent chap and I hope he becomes PM at the next election.
I honestly can’t recall what happened after that. I think they told me he’d died and then I probably mumbled some sort of apology and walked away.
I was in 4th year at school when this happened – was pretty sad as my family were very political – we’d even watched the party conference together – not something I can imagine doing with my own sons, but there you go.
I was already pretty bummed out as Kurt Cobain had just recently died and I was fully into my teenage moody/political phase, so this was another big character who I admired that was just gone.
It’s hard to be sure, but had he lived I think we’d have not gone into Iraq with Bush. Maybe I might not have become as completely dissolusioned with politics as I did after marching in the streets against the government I’d voted for 2 years previously.
He was just another neoliberal unionist politician. In 1997 anyone standing as leader of the Labour party would have won the election after 18 years of Tory misrule. Much the same as it is now!
I’m not convinced he would have beaten John Major, or at least it would have been a closer race than Blair’s landslide. There were local elections held in England alongside the 1997 GE and the Tories actually did rather well in those.
It was Tony Blair that won the election, not Labour.