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Despairing of the hopeless political situation I howled into the dark with a tweet, "Please, please, please, please, please, please, please can we have a new labour leader? Please.†I was only venting of course. I know that the Labour party can not escape this death-spin and that members will continue to convince themselves that the problems are the fault of anyone but themselves (just as Trump’s supporters will never blame him, even if they are sitting in a radioactive hole). There is not even the hint of a thought that they might be wrong in the minds of the Corbyn fans that contacted me. I am not sure that I am right and in fact am hoping I am wrong, because the alternative is too depressing (which may be the impetus behind the blind faith of today’s political acolytes). But it seemed clear to me at the start that Labour was making a terrible error and so far the evidence bears that out.
I like Corbyn and agree with him about a lot of stuff, but I can’t see him ever being in a position to implement his policies (beyond a non-ballot box solution).
The narrative that all politicians are the same and that Hillary would have been as bad as Donald or Blair was just Tory-lite is a dangerous one. People seem to have embraced these simple ideas like a mantra (Blair is much more of an enemy in the tweets I got than Theresa May). But it’s not borne out by the facts. I liked Blair and had high hopes for him (not to the point that I would broke no criticism of him though) and of course was let down by him in many ways (not least by his caution when he had an overwhelming mandate for change). And I blame him for his mistakes. But he did plenty of good stuff too and was actually in a position to make stuff happen. All the Labour party is going is giving the Tories (with their tiny minority and huge potential to be ripped apart by differences over Europe) a free ride. This might not have mattered at a different time in history, but by the time that any proper opposition can form it will be too late. We need someone who can unite anti-Tory feeling across the Labour party and other centre, left and centre-right voters and Corbyn can not even unite his party or win seats that have been Labour for over 80 years in a by-election after one of the most contentious political decisions in living memory.
I don’t know who can do that, by the way. But if they don’t show up soon we’re all in a lot of trouble. Especially the people that Labour claims to care for. Principle is an admirable quality, but pragmatism and compromise are very important too. You might not get everything you want, but that’s life isn’t it? And better than being right, but having nothing.
Anyway, I accidentally seemed to manage to express that in a single tweet where most of the words were “please†and resonated at least with the echo chamber of Twitter. My wife was very excited when JK Rowling retweeted me, showing a respect for me that has up until now been missing from our relationship. I couldn’t tell her that I’d just got lucky. And just pretended that me and Joanne are like that and that she hangs on my every word and that she had turned to me when she was having trouble coming up with a book and I’d suggested trying something about boy wizards. And I never asked for a penny in return. And she never offered me a penny. The ungrateful snake.
Anyway the RTs did lead to getting a few tweets telling me about how bad Tony Blair was, but interestingly, even with the heat of Rowling’s 9 million followers there was a lot less dissent than a regular light-hearted comment about Corbyn would have got a year ago. The tide is turning, but I think too slowly.
Someone did tell me that all “mainstream†comedians seem to be hoodwinked by the MSM and toeing the line. But the thing is comedians are mainly clever and cynical and by their nature independent and call out shit when they see it. We should be consulted as the bullshit barometer in the face of the new fanaticism. A comedian’s job is basically to question stuff. Even the stuff that they believe in. Which is why Trump and Corbyn fans have a problem with us. The devotion they need requires them to never question anything, even as the opposing facts mount up.
We’re living in interesting times and perhaps democracy is strangling itself to death, with a little help from Putin. In America, Trump has begun banning the media he doesn’t like from his press conferences and a crazy man shot some Indians because he thought they were from the Middle East and should get out of his country. You’d think America would understand the whole immigrant thing a lot better than us, given that scarcely anyone can claim their family has been resident there for more than a couple of hundred years. But apparently America is their country. I don’t know who can have given them that idea.
I can’t see a good way out of all this. Just saying please a lot and requesting common sense takes hold and hoping that works is all I’ve got.
It won’t work.
