The cynical somersaults, hypocritical hyperbole, naively illiberal actions and factual illiteracy of the contemporary Labour movement represent – for those of us still opposed to the unkind and uncaring Sociopathic Society – a sorry tale of the Party’s descent into Doom. The Slog examines why the Ideologues have only themselves to blame.
Almost exactly six years ago this weekend, I posted this piece about Labour’s future, or lack of it. It was a few months after the 2010 Election was handed to the ConLib Coalition by the idiot God Brown and his personal idiot on earth, Ed Balls:
In the absence of anything else beyond mediocrity in the Party’s upper ranks, its close chum the TUC ensured that Ed Miliband became “leader”, and he in turn – to ensure no further damaging splits – chose Ed Balls as his Shadow Chancellor. The 2015 election was Miliband’s to lose, but he managed it comfortably. Ed Balls’ latest job was doing the splits on the appalling Strictly Come Dancing. Ed Miliband tweets about LGBTs occasionally. What inspired choices they were.
By around the beginning of 2012, like many millions of other Brits, I had come to accept four premises:
- The EU’s unelected policy machine the EC had turned psychopathic, and Britain badly needed to get out
- The UK’s political structures were unsalvageable, and in dire need of new, more directly democratic ones with the lobbying corruption removed
- Devolution down to City level and lower – with hugely reduced Whiteminster powers – would be best for the greatest number of citizens
- The two major Parties and their stagnant ideologies had to go or be massively reconfigured.
From the end of 2011, The Slog campaigned week in, week out for Labour to dump its Two Eds and get back to real, majority issues rather than Metrolabour salon bollocks. This was a fast and effective way to get the Labour clergy activists jumping all over one’s head in every social medium and comment thread.
As early as October 2010, I dismissed Nigel Farage’s leadership of UKIP as “an unmitigated electoral disaster” but warned Labour that – based on my soundings – vast swathes of increasingly poor loyalist voters were defecting to UKIP. There was more jumping up and down with jackboots, but this time in the crotch. The soon-to-be familiar words ‘scum’, ‘Tory bigot’ and ‘racist’ began to appear.
It was during the 2012-15 period that I began to doubt whether ‘active’ Labour supporters really had any kind or caring instincts left at all. An example will suffice: I was blogging occasionally about dental problems, and the frustrating business of trying to find an effective solution for loose teeth in my lower jaw. A senior member of the Dorset Labour Party left a comment thread on one of these posts, telling me what a fascist ball of bile I was – and how grinding my teeth was behind their failure; so as the condition was self-inflicted, he had no sympathy with me.
I pointed out that in fact, my teeth were smashed up in the Paddington rail disaster….a failure of privatised railway management. No hint of an apology was forthcoming from this gargoyle – whose unpleasant remarks were based on zero evidence, and no knowledge of me. I remember at the time thinking, ‘Do I know anyone nasty enough to make such a comment?’ And then ‘this man is allegedly opposed to the Nasty Party‘.
The Labour Party lost the 2015 election (and Ed split-Balls his seat) because of defection – on a massive scale – of former Party heartlands to UKIP and the SNP. UKIP failed (thanks to the creaking electoral system that props up the two Ugly Sisters) to turn its popular vote into seats. And Farage himself failed – for the 7th time – to be elected to the Commons. Rather than accept the reasons for its defeat – which were, for anyone genuinely interested in the Truth – statistically obvious, Labour’s twattering classes now went after every angle they could to accuse the Conservatives of cheating.
I don’t doubt some of it was true, but this has become the way with the contemporary British Leftlib community: rather than brainstorming where they’d gone wrong, they indulged themselves in an orgy of blamestorming opponents. Their Londoncentric trendy minority issues had alienated Scottish and older working class English voters. But no, it was down to “the Towrees” cheating. There was no mention of ballot-stuffing in Labour urban strongholds where cultural minorities have been known to follow the maxim of ‘vote early and often’.
By this stage, a Left Alliance in Greece – Syriza – had swept to power under the charismatic leadership of Alexis Tsipras. It was an alliance vowing to tackle EC, ECB and bondholder cheating in the process of rendering the ordinary people of Greece destitute. It was an elected uprising based on engagement with other groups, and it was about the vulnerable gaining power to take on the unelected mighty in Brussels and Frankfurt.
In short, it served to unite the Greeks against a common enemy….something the Labour Party has failed to do for seventy years. (The Party that achieved it in 1997 was about as much a Labour Party as the local Rotary Club).
Over a nine month period of lies, bullying, illegal use of banking pressure and overt determination to crush the popular will, the new EC Troika brought Syriza to its knees and humiliated Tsipras.
Similar austerity policies were in turn visited upon Italy, Spain and Portugal – with disastrous results.
Throughout this perversion of democracy and the Rule of Law, the British Labour Party sat on its hands, looking studiously in the opposite direction. Because – the Party Line decreed – Brussels is our friend. And verily shall we not poo upon our friends, even if they be didactically delusional….like us.
The Labour Party campaigned relentlessly against UK austerity and the position of bankers above any meaningful Law. But faced with a European Union doing the same to fellow-Left Parties fighting for the rights of the vulnerable in ClubMed, UK Labour – in all its forms – said and did absolutely nothing.
Greater hypocrisy hath no Party than it desert the People in support of an insane system.
While all the bourgeois Muswell Hillbillies flounced off in a sulk, one man and a few fellow Bolsheviks saw their chance for a Muscovite populist revival. Harriet Harman, Ed Miliband, Andy Burnham, Yvette Cooper and other nonentities either retired to their socialist piles with multiple kitchens, or began to see themselves as the obvious successor “to unite the Party” and heal all the past zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
But time wounds all heels, and while others were casually totting up MP support, Jeremy Corbyn and his shock-troops made an appeal over the heads of Westminster. More members and the promise of full-blooded command socialism was the way ahead, said the Corbynistas. Mr Corbyn swept into the leadership by trouncing all other players from Day One.
I was glad. I was glad because Constitutionally Britain badly need a real Opposition. Harman, Brown, Balls, Benn the younger and a dozen other trimmers had failed to land a telling punch on perhaps the most rigid, vicious and misguided Administration in UK political history.
What’s more, Corbyn had a long and honourable history of deep suspicion about the real nature of the European Union.
He obviously wasn’t the solution, but he did seem to be grounded in people rather than systemic piffle.
My admiration for the bloke was short-lived.
And so the EU Referendum arrived. The abject, intrinsic failure of both the euro and Berlin-driven federalisation to produce anything beyond chaos had not permeated the Labour Party: what passed for its minds were closed. Now its ranks closed too -even turning Jeremy Corbyn himself, albeit it unconvincingly.
The shields behind which those ranks huddled allowed Labour’s mob to spit venom at anyone able to see life beyond a fascist superstate. It was the worst thing they could’ve done, but predictably they did it.
Everyone voting to Leave was ignorant (Tony Blair), a Little Englander (Polly Toynbee), or a UKIP fascistracistbigot (Labour) or right-wing diehard Tory scum (also Labour). The reality that Labour workers were in bed with the neocon Whiteminster Establishment did not appear on any Red radar: it was the bright future of European Human Rights progressive liberty versus the reactionary forces of capitalist scumbigots. Nor did the Leftlib élites ponder too much about the effect of insulting vast numbers of its traditional voters.
But it was enough to convince me – once and for all – that Labour preferred suicidal blind man’s buff to facts. In the Kingdom of the Blind, the one woman who can see is Queen; which is why Labour stalwart Kate Hoey kicked off the Leave campaign with the simple observation, “This is about the People versus the Establishment”. She was dead right….and her Party of record was on the other side.
The Party Labour alleged to be “on the other side” swanned into the campaign brimming over with the same misplaced confidence. But as the campaign proceeded, the few contacts I still had in market research began to talk about anti-Europe ‘underclaiming’…with growing unrest among non-activist Labour and Tory grass roots workers. The professionals’ feeling was that the Remain team were losing ground.
The opinion polls at last began to reflect this, until with three weeks to go, the Leave campaign surprised even itself by going eight points clear.
Then the Yorkshire MP Jo Cox was murdered, and everything changed.
The Leftlib mindset refuses to accept this, but Jo Cox did actually die for her cause. One has to conclude this, because the opinion polls gap immediately closed to 5 then 3 then 2%.
To say that Remain strategists – especially on the stump, where it was clearly led by Labour hooligans – used Cox’s death opportunistically is to understate their behaviour. On the streets and in the media, they milked the death, blaming Nigel Farage and UKIP for it: with a breathtaking disregard for the facts, they went to disgusting lengths in a cynical attempt to accuse every Leave voter and canvasser of murder.
Labour supporters still flatly deny this charge, but many of us experienced it personally or watched it on mobile phone footage. And it obviously had a massive effect on the result….entirely in the Remaindeers’ favour.
But then, Labour denied every empirically documented reality surrounding the killing, the result, and the aftermath.
- The result was invalid because the Leave campaign told lies. (So did the Remain camp)
- The result was invalid because the margin was under 2%. (The word is ‘unsatisfactory’ not invalid…but without the Cox murder, it would been higher. Remain was the sole beneficiary of her pointless death)
- 48% are entitled to a further say. (Perhaps – but not as much as the 52%)
- The result has “ruined the future for our children”. (How exactly, given we have a trade deficit with the EU?)
- UK Human Rights will disappear. (They are very probably right, but 1. the EU certainly won’t be any help on that score and 2. if Labour hadn’t so totally screwed up since 2007, we wouldn’t have a Tory Government full of constitutional vandals)
- All the experts around the world say this will be a disaster for Britain. (They don’t actually – only the neocon media, Wall Street, Washington and Brussels said that: and neither the new boy in Washington nor the old boy in the Kremlin think that. So guys, all those nasty capitalists and dictators you affect to hate….ooh look, you’re on the same side as them. Again. Dear me.)
- We lost because Corbyn and his entourage didn’t try hard enough. (Just when you thought it couldn’t get any more ‘heads we win tails you lose’)
But that last nonsense gave the Labour fatties the chance for a comeback. The same Hillary Benn who spoke passionately in favour of bombing the bombs already sending Syria back to the Stone Age said Corbyn had to go because he was “out of touch”. So Corbyn was challenged by a shadowy technocrat with all the credibility of Tony Blair. And Corbyn trounced him too.
It is a defining feature of the contemporary Labour Party big beasts that they feel it to be their duty not to reflect the voters, not to allow free speech, not to let democratic decisions stand, not to provide help for the victims of rampant Toryism, and not to mount any halfway decent resistance to it.
Instead, they’d rather bicker about power, and whether the Party should return to 1887, 1945 or 1997.
In short – all negatives and no new ambitions.
There are myriad profound problems with Labour – an inability to add up or critique infantile economics alongside an addicition to spin – are two of the more damaging ones; but by far the most dangerous (for it and us) is the preference for debating ideological catechism rather than adapting to the future.
There are, in reality, seven Labour schisms: MandelBlairism, Menshevik Brownism, Metroism, Clothcapism, Causism, Corbynism and – in the extra-Parliamentary sense – Activism. It says a lot about the Labour movement that it represents a complete rainbow of ideologies….all of which rain on the ordinary citizen. That, readers, is a unique achievement that will never be beaten.
And so we arrive at last night on Twitter, when I dared to suggest that a number of mysteries, missing motives, in camera evidence and meaningless Judicial summing up leave me with questions in relation to why Thomas Mair was tried as a terrorist, why he denied the charge, why he chose to defend himself, and what drove him to commit the ghastly deed. I add the last there because the evidence is mountainously in favour of Mair being guilty: but the number of loose ends make the Warren Commission look full and frank by comparison.
Had a member of Momentum stabbed Nigel Farage to death, you can be certain that the Leftlib tendency would be currying a million conspiracy theories and demanding the Judge’s head. But that’s just them and their infinite capacity for risible bias.
This is me, the unaligned radical with three perfectly logical requests for more clarity on:
- Could we see all the police interview transcriptions please, and what Mair said in Court?
- Was he really fit to plead, and on what/whose ‘expert’ opinion was that fitness decision based?
- If you the State have nothing to hide, why the secrecy in the first place?
At this stage, I make no accusations – I leave that playground straw-grabbing desperation to the likes of Eoin Clarke and his spineless ilk. I just don’t want the Rule of Law perverted any more than it has been. The process and nature of this Court case is another giant arse over tit pratfall down the slippery slope to Room 101. If you can’t see that, well….you must be one of the band of Ides who retweeted the Twitter attacks on me last night.
Beware the Ides of Labour: for they are the Ideologically Delusional Extreme Suckers.
The good news, however, is that Labour will never again achieve elected power. 180,000 Corbynistas do not make him and the wooden John McDonnell electable. In fact, the entire PLP is unelectable: Hoey and Skinner are too old (sadly) and the rest are mad in a variety of ways – energy muddle, feminist fantasy, command economics, mediocrity, cynical power desires or robotic stupidity.
I tried for six years to get engaged with these people. But it is the pig and singing syndrome again. Like the pc Democrats in the US, the English Leftlib “progressive” movement simply gets progressively more intolerant with every month. They now enjoy exactly equal status in my eyes and mind with the Tories: myopic about the typhoon of change about to blow them away, they are history. They are doomed. They are dead ducks waddling. But they could still be dangerous.
The Slog 