I remember when New Labour got in. I was at Salford Tech studying drama, and everyone was jumping up and down, and I was so upset, I went to a phone box and called my granddad.
One of the characteristics of New Labour - and Miliband is irredeemably of that species - is that, in the guise of a new liberal language, it has adopted the age-old default mode of British foreign policy, namely military intervention.
When I am back in old Blighty, I am surrounded by the old and familiar concerns: New Labour, Europe, the Middle East and the rest. If you live in Britain, you will know what I mean - except you won't, because you will take it for granted that this is what the world is all about.
The most important lesson of New Labour is this: Every time we made progress we did it by challenging the conventional wisdom.
On the environment and climate change, I suspect that future generations will think there was too much timidity, too much fear of upsetting business. Basically, New Labour was very nervous about regulating business, or requiring it to do anything, even when there was a very clear social or environmental case for doing so.
Voting for New Labour is like helping an old lady across the road while screaming 'Get a move on!' Even the Tories, who you could once rely on to be completely heartless are pretending to care.
There has always been something less than wholesome about New Labour. But Blair for a long time had an easy ride. There was the whopping majority. There was the relief that the Tories were finally gone. There was the grand hyperbole.
I saw 'New Labour'conceived, watched it gestate, witnessed its birth and growth. Now I fervently hope I will be present at its death.
I find the whole Blairish idea more and more repugnant every day. 'New Labour': the term itself is so trashy. Kind of ersatz.
Tony Blair - good thing there are not parliamentary elections in this country.
Blair's support for the Americans should not be seen as an aberration; on the contrary, it is closely linked to the main contours of New Labour policy. This has been a government that has majored on hyperbole, but in fact, from the outset it was hugely timid and cravenly orthodox.
The American model was celebrated by Thatcherites and New Labour alike, California worshipped as the model of the future, 'Anglo-Saxon' embalmed as the fitting metaphor for the shared Anglo-American legacy, Europe denigrated and the rest of the world ignored.
For the first time perhaps since Margaret Thatcher, we will have at the head of the Conservative Party someone who is genuinely an equal match for Tony Blair.
I like Tony Blair.
British politics is more nuanced. Part of the problem with New Labour is that they are a moving target.
The New Labour political elite has long conspired to secure a so-called 'smooth transition' for Blair's successor. This would amount to little more than the imposition of a leader on the party and our supporters without any real democratic participation.
New Labour has systematically alienated section after section of our natural supporters - teachers, health workers, students, pensioners, public service workers, trade unionists and people committed to the environment, civil liberties and peace.
I remember being told after the 1992 general election that Labour could never win a majority in Britain ever again.
Blair - except at the edges - was a Thatcherite. Brown, in contrast, regarded Thatcherism as something that had to be taken on board while at the same time seeking to retain as much as possible of the Labour legacy, or 'Labour values,' as he would put it.
Britain has moved on. It is a radically different country from that which shaped New Labour.
When New Labour came to power, we got a Right-wing Conservative government. I came to realise that voting Labour wasn't in Scotland's interests any more. Any doubt I had about that was cast aside for ever when I saw Gordon Brown cosying up to Margaret Thatcher in Downing Street.
New Labour has created a society increasingly oppressed by the worry of personal debt.
I'm more socialist certainly than New Labour - I'm very old Labour, really.
When Blair was elected leader of the Labour Party, he said, "New Labour is a new political party" - that was the phrase he used, and I'm so glad he said it because he set up his own party and I'm not a member of it.
There was such a sense of relief on the left when New Labour came to power that certain orthodoxies could not be challenged. People became desperate to hang on to the ascendancy of left ideas without really questioning what they were about.
