Without egalitarianism, what is the point of Labour?

In a speech to the Fabian Society (a Labour think-tank) last week, Communities Secretary John Denham said that the party must abandon..

"...the purely needs-based approach to fairness, and inequality which has dominated much left-liberal thinking since the 1960s...The left needs to stop holding up egalitarianism as the ideal. If we continue to believe that the egalitarian approach is really the right one, and we, somehow, have to find more cunning ways of getting there, we will fail."

I only came across this speech having seen it reported in the Manchester Evening News. Their political commentator Andrew Grimes (whose 'Opinions you can't ignore') gushingly agreed, claiming that 'egalitarianism discriminates against common sense. It prescribes largesse for the idle, paid for by the diligent'. This, of course, assumes that the poor are not only idle, but that the rich are diligent. Perhaps more often than not it is the other way round.

Grimes goes on, perhaps much further that Denham would be able to stomach...'But the political notion of equality is an absolutist notion (!?), and it always has been. It its extremist modern manifestation, Pol Pot murdered millions in the killing fields of Combodia because they wore spectacles, read books, dressed nicely, earned more than paddy field labourers, or just fearlessly argued back against the egalitatian goons.'

This is sensationalist reporting at its best/worst (?) Grimes clings to the right, and in order to smear the left, like Tebbit, he will liken their current ideas with the most despicable moments in the history of the left (Tebbit, like I said in an earlier post, goes one step further by saying that the National Socialist Party of 1919-1945 in Germany was 'left wing')

What's perhaps most disturbing, however (I'm not bothered about what Grimes has to say - were he any good as a writer he wouldn't be commenting in a free paper)is that a Labour cabinet minister has come out against egalitarianism. A very good friend of mine argues against clinging tirelessly to old left-right arguments. To a large extent I agree with him. What I cannot do, however, is disassociate the Labour party from egalitarianism. The two go hand in hand - like day and night, fish and chips..whichever analogy you which to pursue. In the last 20 years much of the ideological baggage has been stripped away from the Labour party. This was necessary in order to fight the Militant Tendency and make Labour electable again. It is no longer committed to public ownership as a means to achieving equality - today is it an ideal to which the party strives rather than a policy goal. To take away this ideal removes Labour's raison d'etre. The post Clause IV period has seen Labour become a candidate for the 'Trades Discription Act' - take away egalitarianism and the party will have no reason to exist.