Aug 1, 2015

While others moan and rant, Jeremy Corbyn rocks

by Bryan Hemming

You’ve got to love Albert Einstein. Nutty professor personified, he invented the atom bomb by mistake. I wish I could do stuff like that by scribbling on blackboards. Not invent the atom bomb by mistake. Not much point in that, he already did it.

To be fair, Einstein also invented the theory of relativity. I’m still trying to work what it’s for. But they weren’t the only things he gifted humanity. As well as mad hair, and a face that easily fits in with the Marx Brothers, he was the author of many amusing quips. I particularly like: “the definition of insanity is doing something over and over again and expecting a different result.” Beat that Groucho!

Which brings me neatly round to the Labour Party leadership contest. Now, I know most people don’t automatically associate the Labour Party hierarchy with genius, or a burning desire to be identified with people named Marx, but there’s more than a few party supporters starting to question the party’s sanity. Especially when it comes to choosing party leaders.

Listening to Labour’s leading lights, you’d think the party had elected a string of leaders who went on to become prime minister. In the 115 years since the Labour Party was formed there have been six Labour prime ministers. Of those six, two didn’t lead the party into general elections. Over the same period the party appointed twenty different leaders. Out of four Labour leaders who became prime minister, as a direct result of general elections, just three achieved the position with overall majorities. As there have been 22 different prime ministers since 1900, it isn’t exactly a stunning number.

Not that you’d know any of that from the bilge spewing from Brewer’s Green HQ. Recent history reveals Labour have actually lost two elections in a row to one of the limpest candidates the Tories have ever fielded. You might’ve thought they’d have worked out it could’ve had something to do with the fact Labour’s candidates were so much limper.

But instead of thinking their habit of losing at the ballot box might have something to do with the uninspiring leaders they keep choosing; the Labour leadership has reached the conclusion the party appeals to the wrong sort of people. Seen through their eyes, the Tories attract a far better class of voter. The sort with loads of wedge MPs aren’t ashamed to be seen hanging about parliament bars with. Looking with jaundiced eyes at their own shabby legions of disenchanted core members and supporters, trampled down by years of austerity, they’ve concluded a large number drawn to the party are ‘morons’. I mean, not to sound snobbish, but most can’t even afford to get a round in. To nobody’s surprise many Tory supporters agree.

At this stage, some would argue who needs a Tory Party to defeat you when you have a Labour Party more than capable of defeating itself? Or should that be who needs a Labour Party?

Harriet Harman isn’t someone to be easily discouraged by the fact her party mainly attracts the kind of person most nice people regard as riff-raff. In order to deter their type, she’s decreed a purge. The plethora of applications for membership from lowlifes the party has received since Jeremy Corbyn was nominated as a candidate for leader, out of what can only be a case of misplaced sympathy, is about to be raked with a fine toothcomb. That should winnow the wheat from the chaff.

From this encouraging sign we can assume the selfless dedication normally attached to successful kamikaze pilots, has infused the party hierarchy with fresh idealism. Harman, and all the other candidates in competition with Jeremy Corbyn: Liz Kendall, Yvette Cooper and Andy Burnham, have chosen to ignore the will of the people, who buy their lunches, in favour of banishing the party to the wilderness of meaningless opposition for the rest of eternity. They are nailing their hopes on the next world, where the party elite will get to choose the right sort of voters in general elections, rather than the other way round. Even if you disagree with the logic, you have to admire their spirited determination.

I know there will those of you asking who exactly the real morons are by now. But that would be doing the average moron, trying to go about his business, a grave injustice.

So what is the best answer to an apparently insurmountable problem? One bright spark suggested that people, who follow their heart by voting Corbyn for leader, should have a heart transplant. Never known for his sharp wit, Tony Blair is regarded by most Labour voters as Satan’s emissary on Earth. That begs the question what sort of lunatics would think of appealing for support from a man whose face is pinned to dartboards all over Britain. Extremely desperate ones.

For only extremely desperate lunatics would remove the stake from the heart of Blairism by the dark of a moonless night. Yet in a suicidal display of reckless abandon, the Labour elite has offered its members yet another generation of limitless Blairism to counter Corbyn’s promise of an end to austerity. Anybody with even half a moron’s brain to transplant would realise was not the most sensible move to make in a crisis.

To demonstrate their unswerving loyalty to Beelzebub, a swivel-eyed Blair, visibly in need of yet more human blood, was wheeled out to tell us how bad an idea electing Corbyn would be. Doesn’t he understand most Labour voters are still trying to get over how bad an idea electing Tony Blair was?

It’s high time the Labour Party gave up playing the role of the mugs called in to clean up the mess after the Tory shit hits the fan, and started behaving like the socialist party the country needs. Shit sticks. Maybe some Labour members are morons, but they most likely comprise the right-leaning, centre-left-wing dither faction of the party, who tend to see Labour government as a brief rest from the sound thrashing they deserve from the Tories.

The reality is, if we take out closet Tory Blair – someone please do – the party’s record on choosing successful election winners is nothing worth boasting about. From such dismal results we can suppose the leading lights of Labour Party have evolved into masters of manipulating ballots that only lead to getting Tories into Downing Street.