1: This election campaign won’t end with the counting of the votes. We now have a clear split in the Labour party and ironically, it is the self-proclaimed modernisers and progressives who wish to maintain the status quo.
2:
Andy Burnham cannot unite the party. Neither can Yvette Cooper. They
are too associated with the failure of the past 2 General Election
campaigns.
3: Liz Kendall should be in a different party.
4: The reaction of the Labour “big beasts” to the startling Corbyn phenomenon has borne a startling resemblance to the famous Kubler-Ross model of grief management. We have had the denial. In many ways the decision to let Corbyn
stand embodies that denial – an arrogant, patronising nod to those in
the party who felt there was nothing to divide the other candidates.
Then, as it became clear that this was a movement that wasn’t going to
just go away, we move into anger. Coups were openly threatened in the
papers. The
bargaining is already beginning. Burnham has started to say vaguely
socialist things. Depression will follow. Acceptance, I’m not so sure.
5:
The Tories won less than a quarter of the vote. A quarter of the
public didn’t vote at all. That there is as blatant a rejection of our
current politics as you could wish to see and still, Yvette and Andy and
Liz and Alan and all those tired old losers maintain that only more of
the same can see a return to power for Labour. It’s like watching your
straw house blow down and insisting that only another straw house will
keep the wolf from the door.
6:
When Blair won in 1997, it had precious little to do with a move to the
right. Any Labour leader would have won that election but a young,
confident, visionary one romped
it. That he turned out to be disastrously wrong about so many things is
water under the bridge, but his victory in 1997 was a rejection of the
right and his decreasing returns in 2001 and 2005 was as much a
rejection of him and that rightward movement as anything else.
7:
This is not a right wing country. It has a right wing media. It has
somehow ended up with a right wing government but all over the country,
not just on social media, there are millions like me who wonder how it
is we are in this mess. Despite the best efforts of large swathes of the media, the UKIP bubble burst and burst spectacularly in May. I don’t know anyone who
harbours a hatred for the poor or disabled. And yet this is the
government we have chosen. And Her Majesty’s Opposition are worse. They
have decided that the best way to win the electorate’s trust is not to
appeal to the electorate’s better nature, but to collude in the myth of
aspiration, blame and fear mongering.
8: I keep hearing that this is like 1983 all over again. The Telegraph think their aim of getting thousands of Tories to join Labour to vote Corbyn in is the wizardest of wheezes. They think Corbyn
is another Michael Foot. That getting him in to the Labour hot seat
guarantees a Tory reign of at least 20 years. But it’s bluster. The
sight of thousands of people across the country queuing to hear him
speak is worrying them. They don’t like it. People don’t turn out like
this to see Cameron. They never did, they never will. Popularity worries
them, scares them. What if people like what Corbyn has to say?
9: Corbyn
has at least gone out and said what his economic policy is and how it
would work. It’s been backed by credible economists and largely
influenced by a prominent expert on taxation in the UK. This isn’t back
of a stamp
stuff. And all you’ll hear is well, Amazon will just take their
business elsewhere if we don’t pay them to come here. Or well if the
minimum wage is £10 an hour, then thousands of businesses will have to
shut. I don’t see how either would materialise. We are giving money to
tax avoiders to ensure they stay here and pay no tax. Let’s replace two
words in that last sentence. We
are giving heroin to drug addicts to ensure they stay here and never
come off heroin. Okay, a clumsy analogy. But tax avoidance and drug
addiction are similar in the sense that they disproportionately affect the poor, and render its host incapable of functioning properly. The Treasury is a junkie. One look at Osborne would tell you that much.
10: Who is it exactly the Labour Party are supposed to represent
now? The poor, the vulnerable, the unemployed – they have lost their
traditional champion. And this, despite being elected time after time in
the constituencies where these
champions are needed most. Labour have become all they once feigned to
despise. A dynastic members club giving helping hands to the sons of
former stalwarts, step forward young Kinnock, unlucky young Straw. All
of them jumping on the gravy train and staining themselves with its
brown envelope. Look at Harriet Harman and her Peppa Pig eyes. She wants to get fat on directorships and chips. And Corbyn's going to ruin everything.
11: Andy Burnham tried to introduce ID Cards. Flowerpot Man faced prick.
12: Labour are a broad church. Most political organisations are.
Those of us on the left have been told time and time again that the
world has changed, we are the dinosaurs, we lost the argument and that
we must compromise. Now, the shoe is on the other foot and all those
careerist MPs don’t like it. People who saw that being Tory meant
carrying some sort of pariah status and joined a Labour party they saw
moving towards its own ruthless take on Thatcherism. There are thousands
of people joining the party each week and most of them because of Corbyn. Fuck all those John Spellars and Tristram Hunts. They would run a mile if they came within 500 feet of a dropped aitch. Things are changing. Good.
13: The SNP have proved that, north of the border, a grass roots movement can yield massive changes to the political landscape. It's highly unlikely that a Labour party could do so in England but unless people try, they
will never know. There are alliances to be made with the SNP, with
Plaid and the Greens – foreign alliances too so that the Amazons of this
world are made to pay their taxes wherever they set up.
14:
Nationalised railways, scrapped Trident, concerted efforts to pursue
tax avoiders. These are policies popular with the public, massively
popular, but Labour cant see the point of chasing votes by giving people
what they want. Not as long as being Tories with UB40 on their iPods is
still an option. And then they wonder why Corbyn is packing out venues and Liz Kendall couldn't get a lift busy.
15: The fight wont be fair. The press will tell you Corbyn killed Diana, that he high fived Bin Laden at a 9/11 themed disco funded by snuff movie sales. They will distract you with royal babies and gossip and football. They don’t want to discuss the facts, they never have.
16:
I voted Labour in May. Not because I was inspired by Ed Miliband but
because I would have done anything to keep those Tory shithouses out of
power. Now, I wonder what was the point. A Labour party that would have
matched every cruel and spiteful cut Cameron made. I wanted that to win?
Fuck that. I want a government that looks at the unemployed and says
"What can we do to give these people a sense of purpose?" not "We should
threaten these lazy people with starvation if they don’t work for free
at one of my party's key donors." I want a government unafraid to stand
up to big business, unafraid to confront bigotry and poverty. I want my
NHS back. I want a Labour Party at the forefront of a proper
investigation into the historical child abuse at Westminster AND
Rotherham AND anywhere else it happens. Most of all I want a leader that I can look at on telly and not think "He's one of them."
17: He's not one of them, is he? And I think that's what worries the others most.
