Every time I write about Jeremy Corbyn I get way way more readers. I should monetise it. He'd love that - if I turned my dislike for him into a small business. Capitalism wins! Can't be doing that though can I? I'm already worried that I'm becoming the sort of blinkered obsessive cultist I decry his supporters for being in my ability to go on and on and on about the man. I've only written a couple of blog posts to be fair but you should see the inside of my head. It thinks of nothing else. Maybe I actually love him. I doth protest too much, right? Yep, that's it - hand me a Socialist Workers banner and a bottle of coconut water and bus me to the next Momentum rally.
I've given up thinking I can persuade firm Corbyn supporters. If the fact he earned £20,000 propagandising for Iranian State Television arouses not the slightest bit of concern in you then one more pithy blog isn't going do it. That's not a 'smear' by the way. It's a fact. Having said that, maybe I've earned money from Iranian State Television. Is it possible that one of the £2.87 royalty payments I get from time to time is down to my appearance on Jonathan Creek being broadcast in Iran? Perhaps. Hypocrite!
How are we going to get out of this? There's a group of people who love him, a group who don't and a much much larger group of people who Do. Not. Give. A. Shit. No one's changing their mind are they? Doesn't feel like it.
So here's what I think is going to happen - he wins the leadership election by a smallish margin - 55/45. Jubilation amongst his supporters. A small group of MPs (20?) break away and either join the Lib Dems or, more likely form their own new party. The rest stay to see it out. Many 'disloyal' Labour MPs who didn't support Corbyn are deselected by their Constituency Labour Parties and replaced with Corbyn loyalists. Gradually, anti Corbyn Labour party members like me drift away to either the new party or become disillusioned with politics altogether and take up squash.
There is an election. Both Labour and the new party which has foolishly named itself the Red Tory Party are butchered. Corbyn's enormous fanbase is not deterred - of course Corbyn was going to lose they say, his MPs and the hostile media let him down - and they'd have a bit of a point. Not a great one I'd argue but a point nonetheless.
Meanwhile the enthusiastic socialist movement Corbyn has inspired feels like it's going somewhere. There are enormous anti austerity and anti Brexit marches as big as the anti Iraq War ones. And there is a lot to protest. With a gigantic Tory majority, rhetoric about the privatisation of large portions of the NHS and education system is becoming a reality. But just like the Iraq War protests they don't change policy because protest alone rarely does. I never saw those 'God Hates Fags' placards encourage anyone to cross the street and join the Westboro Baptist Church. And now I've just compared the Corbyn movement to the Westboro Baptist Church and belittled the idea of protest - like I said, I've given up on persuasion.
Still, the polls don't look good at all for Labour and Corbyn is getting old and tired so he retires to his allotment, safe in the knowledge that he will always be loved by many. If he's lucky he may even become a Che Guevara style t-shirt star.
And now Labour has a new leader. A white bloke probably, in another example of how the left has become better at talking about equal opportunities than enacting them. This leader is a little more organised - you don't get the feeling, like you do with Corbyn, that he keeps meaning to check if he has a PPI claim. But the Labour brand is tarnished and the majority of its supporters are still arguing amongst themselves. This leader makes some headway but still loses the next two elections - let's call him Kinnock 2.
Now we're into the 2030s and the last few years have been as been bat shit fucking mental as a turn of the century documentary about Michael Jackson. Many of those who drove the Corbyn movement are hitting their mid 40s. Some have mortgages and 'would it be so bad to send our kids to private school? I mean, we'd still keep their feet on the ground' and 'ooh, wouldn't it be nice to have a little place in Umbria?'. Finally, when confronted with the advantages of an off shore tax savings account, they find themselves easing off on the old radical socialism. So, suddenly, they find themselves voting for and in many cases leading something that looks an awful lot like Blairism. Most of Blair's cabinet were flirting with Communism in the 70s. So that's what we have - a decade or so of a 2030s version of Blairism led by the very people who, at the age of 22, fought to destroy it. This only ends when their children leave private school and decide that mum and dad are evil and the only way to get back at them is to take over the Labour party and turn it into a radical socialist movement.
Decades and decades of the comfortable middle classes fucking around with dog shit ideologies, supposedly in service of the working classes, but then abandoning them when it inflicts on their own lifestyles.
My predictions are usually wrong (I have never won a bet on football) but that was fun.
I've given up thinking I can persuade firm Corbyn supporters. If the fact he earned £20,000 propagandising for Iranian State Television arouses not the slightest bit of concern in you then one more pithy blog isn't going do it. That's not a 'smear' by the way. It's a fact. Having said that, maybe I've earned money from Iranian State Television. Is it possible that one of the £2.87 royalty payments I get from time to time is down to my appearance on Jonathan Creek being broadcast in Iran? Perhaps. Hypocrite!
How are we going to get out of this? There's a group of people who love him, a group who don't and a much much larger group of people who Do. Not. Give. A. Shit. No one's changing their mind are they? Doesn't feel like it.
So here's what I think is going to happen - he wins the leadership election by a smallish margin - 55/45. Jubilation amongst his supporters. A small group of MPs (20?) break away and either join the Lib Dems or, more likely form their own new party. The rest stay to see it out. Many 'disloyal' Labour MPs who didn't support Corbyn are deselected by their Constituency Labour Parties and replaced with Corbyn loyalists. Gradually, anti Corbyn Labour party members like me drift away to either the new party or become disillusioned with politics altogether and take up squash.
There is an election. Both Labour and the new party which has foolishly named itself the Red Tory Party are butchered. Corbyn's enormous fanbase is not deterred - of course Corbyn was going to lose they say, his MPs and the hostile media let him down - and they'd have a bit of a point. Not a great one I'd argue but a point nonetheless.
Meanwhile the enthusiastic socialist movement Corbyn has inspired feels like it's going somewhere. There are enormous anti austerity and anti Brexit marches as big as the anti Iraq War ones. And there is a lot to protest. With a gigantic Tory majority, rhetoric about the privatisation of large portions of the NHS and education system is becoming a reality. But just like the Iraq War protests they don't change policy because protest alone rarely does. I never saw those 'God Hates Fags' placards encourage anyone to cross the street and join the Westboro Baptist Church. And now I've just compared the Corbyn movement to the Westboro Baptist Church and belittled the idea of protest - like I said, I've given up on persuasion.
Still, the polls don't look good at all for Labour and Corbyn is getting old and tired so he retires to his allotment, safe in the knowledge that he will always be loved by many. If he's lucky he may even become a Che Guevara style t-shirt star.
And now Labour has a new leader. A white bloke probably, in another example of how the left has become better at talking about equal opportunities than enacting them. This leader is a little more organised - you don't get the feeling, like you do with Corbyn, that he keeps meaning to check if he has a PPI claim. But the Labour brand is tarnished and the majority of its supporters are still arguing amongst themselves. This leader makes some headway but still loses the next two elections - let's call him Kinnock 2.
Now we're into the 2030s and the last few years have been as been bat shit fucking mental as a turn of the century documentary about Michael Jackson. Many of those who drove the Corbyn movement are hitting their mid 40s. Some have mortgages and 'would it be so bad to send our kids to private school? I mean, we'd still keep their feet on the ground' and 'ooh, wouldn't it be nice to have a little place in Umbria?'. Finally, when confronted with the advantages of an off shore tax savings account, they find themselves easing off on the old radical socialism. So, suddenly, they find themselves voting for and in many cases leading something that looks an awful lot like Blairism. Most of Blair's cabinet were flirting with Communism in the 70s. So that's what we have - a decade or so of a 2030s version of Blairism led by the very people who, at the age of 22, fought to destroy it. This only ends when their children leave private school and decide that mum and dad are evil and the only way to get back at them is to take over the Labour party and turn it into a radical socialist movement.
Decades and decades of the comfortable middle classes fucking around with dog shit ideologies, supposedly in service of the working classes, but then abandoning them when it inflicts on their own lifestyles.
My predictions are usually wrong (I have never won a bet on football) but that was fun.
No comments:
Post a Comment