From Cristina Odone’s column in the Observer yesterday. Odone resigned last week as deputy editor of the New Statesman, a lefty UK weekly with a circ of 25,000 (small by UK standards) that “punches above its weight.” (Where have we heard that one before?)
Odone was a “God-botherer” and “non-lefty” who was won over by Tony Blair during his “(brief) Christian-socialist phase,” and more importantly, by Peter Wilby, editor of the NS, whom she describes as a real socialist and a real gent.
Her column describes her “inquisition” by the neo-left: “men and women who pay lip service to socialism but don’t want to pay higher taxes, send their children to state schools or use the NHS…. They are Gap-dapper in dress, polished of manners, and generally much more presentable than the old left’s oily-tie brigade.”
She closes with this zinger: “But back-biting and envy have become the hallmark of the neo-left. They are not the reason I resigned – but what a joy it is to be shot of them.”