Colin MacCabe is tearing up his Labour party card

Colin MacCabe of the Observer is leaving the Labour party, along with many many others. Mr MacCabe's reasons for leaving Labour seem rather simple, he doesn't like the totalitarian party that Labour have morphed into since becoming New Labour.

Political parties are institutions which allow debate to be turned into action; they allow people from different class backgrounds, from different regions, from different races to debate policy knowing that the conclusion of the debate will be the determination of a particular course of action. There are no debates now because there is no question about what action will be taken.

He talks about what New Labour does, it's massive waste (which despite assurances has not changed since the election) paying for bloated beaurocracy filled via patronage.

Old Labour used to run deficits to employ low-paid workers in the unproductive old public sector; New Labour runs deficits to employ highly-paid consultants in the even more unproductive new public sector. In the only industry that I know at first hand, the scale of government handouts is jawdropping. New Labour has created a new film body, the Film Council, whose overheads now exceed the production budgets of the very efficient bodies that it replaced. There is enormously wasteful duplication of government resources. Friends from every sector report the same story.

It is true that your news management is breathtakingly effective but I do not think this is cause for congratulation. You have produced systems of Treasury funding in which there's always a government nark in the room and you have backed it up with a relentless use of patronage which would make an 18th-century Whig blush. No one dares to complain about the Film Council, for example, because they know it will prejudice their next funding application.

The political landscape is changing. The main axis of disagreement used to the the left/right economic split but the right has won now everybody agrees that markets are the best way of running an economy. Now the liberal/authoritarian split is becoming increasingly the battle ground, with New Labour firmly planted in the authoritarian camp. But who will take up the Liberal cause, none of the current parties they still think that the argument is over economics.