Does disgust with New Labour rule out revival?
Our procedure is based on the idea that Marxists develop and redevelop their expectations of what will or can happen within the frame of the big shaping objective events. When the economic, social, and political framework shifts, then we must reassess everything, including, here, the prospects for change in the union-Labour relationship. We try to map out the economic, social, and political framework of our “prediction”. We combine reasonable extrapolation of present trends and postulated changes in them as a result of the big “framing” factors. We know that there are strict limits to our ability to predict, and we make “predictions” with the proper tentativeness. We spell out possible variations, and then adjust empirically to the way things shape up. It cannot make sense to insist that “subjectively” driven hatred of New Labour is now so strong that it will not change or be affected in any important way by the changes in the “objective” economic, social, and political framework. (Or,
