Rereading that 2001 BBC interview with Mark Oaten I linked to previously, some of the other bits are actually more revealing and important given the current context, than that silly Militant quote.
Here we see Mark the principled crusader for Lib-Lab cooperation:
He used to be a Lib-Lab “Project” man, but purely for instrumental purposes rather than out of any passion for former leader Paddy Ashdown’s vision of healing the breach between Britain’s two centre-left parties.
“It seemed the best show in town,” Oaten says. “It isn’t now.”
Here is Mark the principled One Nation Conservative:
The Winchester MP is something of an outrider for a new project now: moving his party into the space vacated by the Conservative shift to the right under Iain Duncan Smith… Oaten believes his party must start sounding more Tory, “rather than like a left-wing party”.
The problem is of course that with Cameron, the situation has changed yet again. Yet Oaten has yet to tell us (unlike the previous two occasions) what we should be doing now: start shouting about the need for coalition again, or try to squeeze between the tiny gap between New Labour and Cameron’s Cons?
The last thing we need right now is a political weathervane at the top of the party.
(I’ll stop going on about him soon, I promise. I just find the prospect of anyone actually voting for him too dangerous to bear).