Skip to main content

No Corbyns allowed.


As the labour leadership contest winds (thankfully) towards its conclusion, it is reasonably safe to say that you’d have had long odds on a Corbyn win at the start (They were 200-1 to be precise, fact fans). I mention the odds as some bookies have already started paying out. The Cooper and Burnham camps are privately conceding defeat. The Kendall camp freely admits they never had a cat in hell’s chance in the first place, and Jez glides serenely on. All of which begs the question, if this is goignto be such a landslide, if this is overwhelmingly the voice of the labour membership, why is it as disastrous as all the commentariat make out?

You have to go a long way to find a pro-Corbyn media voice (with the exception of Owen Jones). Now, in the interests of full disclosure, I should point out that I don’t count myself a Corbynista. I like quite a lot of what he has to say, but I find a lot infuriatingly vague. That said, I certainly don’t endorse the witch-hunt, even the usually rational Andrew Rawnsley, over in the Observer, is launching apocalyptic hatchet-jobs. Furthermore it seems to me that prophecies of doom have a nasty habit of becoming self-fulfilling, a Corbyn leadership would be hobbled from the start by all the sniping and trash talk which preceded it, and therefore would lack effectiveness as energies were expended on getting the party into line. I’m reminded of the dog days of the Major regime, where the tories expended so much energy fighting each other they had none left to fight an election.

But I am curious about the unanimity of disapproval, it seems massively counterintuitive when set against the projected scale of the win. It speaks to a disconnect between the media and the voting classes. In this light, the political commentary seems almost peevish, how dare you vote for this man, when we keep telling you what a disaster he’d be? Mutterings about the three pound registration fee seem churlish. The Labour party should be amazed with its success in interesting people, getting the numbers signing up. You complain for years about people not engaging with the process, then, when they do, they’re not engaging properly.

All of this leads me to believe that a Corbyn leadership will, if nothing else, be vastly entertaining. The sheer number of noses being put out of joint, the sourness of the grapes, the blanket media anti-Corbyn agenda; all of these force you to ask why? What exactly is everyone so worried about? Well, okay, Blair’s worried he’s going to be indicted for war crimes, but beyond that, lots of people have voted for this man. Why, precisely, is that a disaster? Isn’t the voting kind of the whole point?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Inedible

"He says it's inedible" said my front of house manager, as she laid the half-eaten fish and chips in front of me, and instantly I relaxed.  Clearly, I observed, it was edible to some degree. I comped it, because I can't be arsed arguing the toss, and I want to make my front of house's lives as simple as possible. The haddock had been delivered that morning. The fryers had been cleaned that morning. The batter had been made that morning (and it's very good batter, ask me nicely and I'll give you the recipe some time). The fish and chips was identical to the other 27 portions I'd sent out on that lunch service, all of which had come back more or less hoovered up, we have have a (justified, if I do say so myself) very good reputation for our chips. But it was, apparently, "inedible". When it comes to complaints, less is more. If you use a hyperbolic word like that, I'll switch off, you've marked yourself as a rube, a chump, I'm not g...
Post a Comment
Read more

To all intents and purposes, a bloody great weed.

I absolutely love trees, and I get quite irate when they get cut down. One of the aspects of life with which I most often find myself most at odds with my fellow man is that I'm not really a fan of the tidy garden. I like to see a bit of biodiversity knocking about the gaff, and to that end I welcome the somewhat overgrown hedge, am pro the bit of lawn left to run riot, and, most of all, very anti cutting down trees. I love the things, habitat, provider of shade, easy on the eye, home to the songbirds that delight the ear at dawn, the best alarm clock of all. To me, cutting a naturally growing tree down is an act of errant vandalism, as well as monumental entitlement, it's been around longer than you. So, this being the case, let me say this. The public outcry over the felling of the tree at Sycamore Gap is sentimental, overblown nonsense, and the fact that the two men found guilty of it have been given a custodial sentence is completely insane. Prison? For cutting down a Sycam...
Post a Comment
Read more

What is happening?

An unpleasant, but in the grand scheme of things quite minor, incident occurred at a local school yesterday. Two lads entered the premises looking for another kid they wanted to assault. The school followed protocols and was locked down until the situation was resolved. Grim enough in and of itself, but not exactly a massive piece of news. Except, of course, on local Facebook pages, where a cast of many hang around visibly thirsting for events like this. This isn't a post about them, however. There is something desperately sad about a million posts on the same subject, everyone breathlessly recycling the same story without checking whether it might have already been covered. It speaks to an unfulfilled existence. Nor is this a post about Facebook and it's local pages, though they are a weird and interesting ecosystem. Were it not for running the pub, my Meta presence would be minimal, I need to be on there for work, and stuff like this is a necessary accoutrement. No, what depr...
Post a Comment
Read more