"Brookmyre, Christopher - Boiling A Frog" - читать интересную книгу автора (Brookmyre Christopher)

They were both part of a faith, a philosophy and a way
of life, to which she had learned to be wholly dedicated.
For a long time in Scotland, the Labour Party had been
regarded as the Catholic Party; the Catholic Church the
Labour Party at prayer. These were the party and religion of
the oppressed minority, the Irish immigrant classes while
the Tories enjoyed the support of the dominant Scottish
Prods. With the vote thus divided along sectarian lines,
back in the Fifties, for instance, the Conservatives' share
of the ballot was higher in Scotland than anywhere else in
the UK.
Growing up, Elspeth had witnessed the broadening of
Labour's support as the Scottish vote began increasingly to
divide along class lines rather than denominational ones.
Times, politics and religion gradually changed. Her faith
and her loyalties did not.
Given her pedigree, she was also a Tory target for accusations of selling
out in endorsing Tony Blair's reforms.
She had become yet another New Labour robot, they said,
and had betrayed everything her father stood for simply to further her own
career. Yeah, sure, and the band
played 'Believe it if You Like'. Labour politicians had
always been accused of abandoning their principles in
pursuit of power, since long before Tony Blair appeared
on the scene. It was part of the Tories' time-served pincer-
movement strategy: if you took a hard line you were a
dangerous lefty out to wreck the economy; if you softened your position,
you were an unprincipled chancer
who'd do anything for a sniff of power. The Tories knew
they'd never face the same charge because they didn't
have any principles in the first place. How do you ideologically
compromise a stance built on greed, materialism
and xenophobia?
Consequently, she didn't mourn Clause Four's passing.
Holding on to it was a futile gesture of stubborn and
misguided faith, like wearing the medal of some mediaeval saint whose
canonisation had been rescinded. It was
an anachronism and an impossible dream, but far more
damaging, it was also a stick with which their enemies
had too often beaten them.
Compromise was always depicted as a political sin by
those in the grandstand. Those in the game knew that
politics is compromise. If you want a party that believes
in all the things you do, and with which you disagree on
nothing, you'll have to start it yourself, and the membership is extremely
unlikely ever to exceed single figures.
In binary.
It was much the same as religion. You couldn't pick and
choose which parts of Catholicism to believe in, like it
was some sort of ideological buffet. Whether it was the