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Breaking News: Unelectable politician wins second landslide
with improved majority.
Labour MPs are predictably shit at predicting
elections.
Labour party members would have voted for Boris Johnson if he
was the only alternative was Tony Blair’s preferred candidate.
MPs who were asking for more public engagement in mainstream
politics are remembering that language is creative and will be more careful
what they wish for.
The reporting of the Labour leadership election has been so
predictable and boring it’s hard to stay awake through it (maybe that’s the
point…)
Perhaps when choosing between the favourite of MPs who don’t
know that the last ten years happened and one who did, Labour members chose
someone with a calendar.
If the papers spent as much time on the content of Corbyn’s
speeches as on him sitting on the floor on a train, we might have a public
debate about public policy.
WHICH IS WHY THEY DON’T. Politics is none of your business.
#proprietorialcontrol
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Perhaps Labour Party members like an underdog; perhaps when
choosing between the preferred candidate of Tony Blair and the right-wing press,
Labour members decided that Tony Blair can get to fuck, along with the
right-wing press and the others who have been warning that Jeremy Corbyn is a
disaster. They’re not really saying
Jeremy Corbyn is a disaster – they liked him when he was a backbench MP voting
against all the worst things they wanted to do; they fear him when he
represents a constituency of people (you know, like all MPs are supposed to) who
would rather spend public money on public health than a nuclear submarine.
“Blairite” and “entryist” are now the two worst slurs in
mainstream politics, and the Labour Party is having a good old right-left proxy
war as a preparation for a general election where there might be a vote between
left and right policies. (Or a
protracted media war based on image and anecdote and unashamedly biased towards
neoliberal policies. Or both.)
Remember the 1980s?
Everyone goes on about how shit it was, but there was The Smiths,
Pixies, Public Enemy, Run DMC, Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit, The Unbearable
Lightness Of Being….loads of good stuff.
But then, Parliament was an utter fucking pigsty and the Prime Minister
was a megalomaniacal anti-human. And the
papers were disgusting. Swings and
roundabouts, really.
The mainstream news always push the personality narrative
hard: he’s a nice guy but he’ll never win, does he have the “personal
qualities” to be a leader? Would you
like to have a beer with this guy, or the other one? US elections have been framed in these terms
for many years, and we are watching the consequences of that play out in the
presidential election. From behind the
sofa. Through our quivering
fingers. Feeling quite sick.
There are
compelling reasons for them to do so; supporters of the leader are “loyal”, the
leader is he will “assert his authority”.
In the context of these supporters, “loyal to the leader” means “a
credible threat to” the political and media establishment – not because said
leader is a particularly special politician (which doesn’t matter much), but
because it is the result of a grassroots, democratic movement attempting to
change the political culture. And it’s
working. It could work whether or not
the leader had won the leadership election, and it will make a difference
whether or not Labour win the next general election.
What we can be more sure of is that what the political
establishment fear and hate more than anything else is just this kind of broad,
democratic movement which might actually effect policy – in parliament, or
anywhere else. It’s easier to keep that
force out of Parliament and the mainstream media, but it can’t be stopped if it
refuses to be stopped. That’s why the
papers and TV news are desperately trying to portray Corbyn as a loser. That’s why they are ridiculing and hating on
the leader (and all of us)…THEY ARE SCARED OF US. Let’s give them good reason to be.
If we knew
how powerful we are, we might use that power, and if we did it would clearly
threaten currently powerful interests.
And that’s the reason so much money and effort is spent on PR,
advertising and propaganda. And it’s the
reason TV is so full of frivolous shite.
And it’s the reason the papers are more concerned with what famous women
wear in public than public policy.
Still, there
are legitimate concerns that the Party won’t win the election, and many people
voicing those concerns are journalists who have made a career out of
criticising the Labour Party, sometimes constructively. That doesn’t invalidate their opinions, but
it might well shape them.
Still, there are legitimate concerns that: the world is on
fire, and to ask for moderation now is like asking the world to sit calmly and
wait for fire engines that will not come; that there is more to all this than
elections and that while losing an election would be terrible, it would be
neither the end nor the end of the beginning; that shifting public discourse
towards some kind of sanity/humanity is worth doing, whether it leads to more
tangible gains or not. And that it
probably will lead to tangible gains.
Everything we do matters.
We just don’t know how much, or what the consequences will be. There is no reliable way to predict the
future, and there are too many variables to look at history and determine that
a led to b and that was that.
‘And, in other news’ Tweets…
I would love to shoot down the helicopter hovering above my
flat. Noisy bastards.
Motorbikes, in an urban conurbation, are an anti-social
nuisance. Noisy bastards.
@Steve’Bananaman’McManaman re: Celtic’s potential
“inferiority complex”. Add this to the superiority complex of every English
commentator ever and shove the whole lot up your arse. Ta.
Celtic, whatever team they put out, are still a massive club
#footballwithoutfansisnothing
The Great British Bake-Off has run its course. That’s all, folks.
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