The longest suicide note in history

"The longest suicide note in history" is an epithet originally used by United Kingdom Labour Party MP Gerald Kaufman[1] to describe his party's 1983 election manifesto, which emphasised socialist policies in a more profound manner than previous such documents.

The document

The New Hope for Britain[2] called for unilateral nuclear disarmament, higher personal taxation for the rich, withdrawal from the European Economic Community, abolition of the House of Lords, and the re-nationalisation of recently privatised industries like British Telecom, British Aerospace, and the British Shipbuilders Corporation.

The epithet referred not only to the orientation of the policies, but also to their marketing. Labour leader Michael Foot decided as a statement on internal democracy that the manifesto would consist of all resolutions arrived at its party conference.

The document's more left-wing policies, along with the popularity gained by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher over the Falklands War and the division of the opposition vote between the left-wing Labour Party and the centre-left Social Democratic Party – Liberal Alliance, contributed to a victory with a substantial majority in Parliament for the incumbent right-wing Conservative Party.[3] The defeat led to a turning point in the history of the party, which thereafter gradually moved to the centre under the leadership of Neil Kinnock and, under the leadership of Tony Blair presented itself as New Labour and a Third Way, leading to a landslide victory in the 1997 election.

Other uses of the phrase

It has subsequently been used by Peter Gutmann in his paper "A Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection" to describe the digital rights management schemes in the Windows Vista operating system.[4]

Dutch VVD politician Mark Rutte used the phrase in reference to the election programme of the Dutch Labour Party, during the May 2010 parliamentary election campaign, deliberately echoing Kaufman.[5]

Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer compared the 2012 Republican House Budget to the manifesto (in terms of comparable unpopularity) and then remarked about the House Budget, "At 37 footnotes, it might be the most annotated suicide note in history."[6]

Daily Beast writer David Frum would compare The Path to Prosperity proposed by congressman Paul Ryan in a similar light. "This is how a great political party was impelled to base a presidential campaign on the Ryan plan—a plan that has now replaced the 1983 manifesto of the British Labour Party as "the longest suicide note in history."[7]

Labour's decision in 2015 to engrave promises for the upcoming election on a large stone monument nicknamed the "EdStone" was within hours dubbed the "heaviest suicide note in history".[8]

See also

References

  1. ↑ Mann, Nyta (2003-07-14). "Foot's message of hope to left". BBC News. Retrieved 2008-09-13.
  2. ↑ "The New Hope for Britain: British Labour Party election manifesto, 1983". Keele University Political Science Resources. 1983. Retrieved 2008-09-13.
  3. ↑ "1983: Thatcher triumphs again". BBC Politics.
  4. ↑ Peter Gutmann (2006-12-26). "A Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection". Retrieved 2007-01-28.
  5. ↑ Jeroen Langelaar (2010-05-10). "'PvdA-programma langste zelfmoordbrief uit geschiedenis'". Retrieved 2010-05-10.
  6. ↑ Krauthammer, Charles (2011-04-07). "After Ryan's leap, a rush of deficit demagoguery". The Washington Post.
  7. ↑ Frum, David (2013-10-08). "Seven Habits of Highly Ineffective Political Parties". The Daily Beast.
  8. ↑ Holehouse, Matthew; Rothwell, James. "Ed Miliband's manifesto monolith 'is a Kinnock moment'". Daily Telegraph. Retrieved 31 October 2016.
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