The Loony Left.

You couldn't make it up.  You really couldn't.  The Night of the Long Knives has become the Day of the Long Pointy Sticks. The shadow cabinet has gone into meltdown and half of them have resigned, to make it easier to stab Jeremy Corbyn.  Not that they're bothering to stab him in the back.  It's a bit like the martyrdom of Saint Sebastian.  Corbyn is so full of arrows it's difficult to recognise him.  The only difference is that he isn't dead yet.  When I last looked the one sane player in this sorry game from what might be called the right of the party is Andy Burnham who has tweeted that he will not take part in this disgraceful assassination attempt.

Whatever you think of Corbyn, whether you agree with our soon to be ex-Prime Minister Dodgy Dave that he is a bit scruffy, which is certainly true, but also part of his appeal, you cannot deny that he is a thinker, and a man of honesty and compassion.  Politicians used to come in all shapes and sizes, like fruit and veg.  Now somebody has decided we need conformity.  Teflon coated, besuited clones are the order of the day.  Meet the new boss... etc.  Keir Hardy refused to conform to the dress code in parliament when he took up his seat.  I quote from Wikipedia: On taking his seat on 3 August 1892 Hardie refused to wear the "parliamentary uniform" of black frock coat, black silk top hat and starched wing collar that other working class MPs wore. Instead, Hardie wore a plain tweed suit, a red tie and a deerstalker. Although the deerstalker hat was the correct and matching apparel for his suit, he was nevertheless lambasted in the press, and was accused of wearing a flat cap, headgear associated with the common working man.  It was the same with Michael Foot and his supposed donkey jacket.  Individuality of any sort, especially among male politicians is looked on with deep suspicion by the more conservative members of society.

It's now Monday morning and nothing much has changed.  The knives are still out for Corbyn and he is still refusing to budge.  More resignations are expected from the shadow cabinet, amid denials that this is an orchestrated campaign.  Well the Telegraph predicted it in an article by Ben Riley-Smith published on the 16th June which makes me think it probably is and even if it is not it, it certainly represents the most shameful display of opportunistic bandwagon jumping I have ever seen.  Whether the jumpers turn out to be lemmings or the saviours of the party remains to be seen.  For the moment he is not going anywhere and for what it's worth he has my support.  I don't support him for his charisma and ability to produce sound bites.  I support him for his integrity, his honesty and especially for his vision of what this country could be if we start to move in a different direction. It has become a truism that socialism is a discredited form of government.  I reject that absolutely and counter it with the opinion that rampant capitalism has proved to be a disaster, especially for the ordinary person.  We may all have our iPhones and tablets, but we are also so deep in hock to our unelected masters, the banks and hedge funds, that most of us can only look on the prospect of retirement on a pension as a distant dream which might turn out to be just that.  A dream.  

The support network that socialism provided after the Second World War is being eroded at an alarming rate by those who don't need it and never will.  The NHS can scarcely cope, support for the unemployed is paltry and punitive, social services are stretched beyond belief, state pensions have become a distant prospect with a distressing propensity to move further away the closer you get, social housing has been sold off and not replaced, private rents have gone out of control.  Meanwhile the rich have become so rich we need to distinguish between those who are merely 'rich' and those who are 'super-rich'.  We have been distracted from this by the old Roman expedient of 'bread and circuses' or as it is now known 'pizza and X-Factor'. Alcohol is now so cheap that large swathes of the population can go on the lash ever more frequently, preloading on supermarket vodka then topping it up with Jager bombs and a kebab before leaving it all behind on the pavement where it will remain as a lasting testament to a good night out, because the street cleaning services have been put out to private tender and the streets are now only cleaned on the first Thursday of every second month.

When Jeremy Corbyn was elected leader of the Labour Party I at last thought that here was a man who understood how I felt, who shared my vision of how society could be.  It turned out that I was not the only one.  What is sad and slightly worrying is that most of our elected MPs do not share this vision, or anything remotely resembling it.  Well, you'd expect that from the Tories, they are Tories after all, although this current crop seem to have gone further and instigated a special system of punishment for those less fortunate than themselves:  Anti-socialism you might call it.  Maybe it's a new form of thought caused by the unwise use of the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. 

Whether Jeremy Corbyn is the right man to spearhead this movement for change in the long term is a matter of some debate within my own head, let alone the country.  How much longer will he want to put himself through the mill.  There are times when I want to shake him and say, 'Say that a bit more loudly.  Make them listen.' One thing is certain though and that is that none of the crop of naysayers in the PLP will do the job.  If they combined behind their leader, providing him with vocal and enthusiastic support then The Labour Party might be able to turn the country round and stop the rot.  Instead they have decided that now is the time to tear the party to shreds.  For that I despise them.

Enough about my own woes, let's have a look at those facing the entire nation.  Once again I woke to the Today Programme and its jaunty messages of fun.  It seems Boris wasn't playing cricket all weekend.  He actually took some time to write a piece for the Telegraph. Well to be fair they do pay him quite handsomely for writing for them so it's only right that he earn his money, having just (not quite) single-handedly plunged the entire nation into a political crisis the like of which I have never seen nor do I wish to see again.  There is a link to the article here if you would like to read it http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/06/26/i-cannot-stress-too-much-that-britain-is-part-of-europe--and-alw/ 

I must say that his mendacity quite took my breath away. Life on planet Boris is life Jim, but not as we know it.  I quote from the article: It is said that those who voted Leave were mainly driven by anxieties about immigration. I do not believe that is so. Really?  And why don't you believe it Boris?  Because if you deny it happened then you can ignore it and stuff it back under the carpet yet again.  You may be technically correct in that the majority of leave voters were driven by things other than immigration, but there is considerable evidence that many first time voters were persuaded to vote on this matter because they perceived immigration to be the cause of their woes.  These voters were clearly from traditional working class, Labour voting areas, their support for the Leave side was in all probability what gave it its majority, but as they are not from traditional Tory heartlands and would not vote for the Tories anyway, they can be ignored.  Be careful Boris.  Whatever a man soweth that shall he also reap.  You have tried to keep Farage out of the picture, and I don't feel he is a man who likes to be ignored. It was he who whipped up this anti-immigration feeling, and he has not gone away. 

In other Tory news the Boy Gideon has come out of hiding and made a statement designed to reassure us that everything is under control.  We are apparently facing the future 'from a position of strength'.  What?  Planet Gideon is as weird as Planet Boris. Beyond that he didn't have anything to say.  I wonder what he has been doing since Friday.

In late news JC has just announced his new shadow cabinet, I shall look at it and muse some more in the future. 

Until tomorrow.

Love Tim xx