My dear old friend Andy Winter's late father was one of the reasons I have been a vehement supporter of the Labour party. I was from a family of Labour voters and when I met Roger for the first time I was a die-hard leftie. One of his key messages was that Britain should be a fair country with equality. He wasn't the first person to say this to me - one of Roger's bete noir's in the Labour Party and one of my (and Andy's) ex-bosses, former mayor of Northampton, John ("I'm not dead yet, honest") Rawlings did around the same time; but this was 1984 and Thatcher seemed to have been here forever. Where Roger was a bit left wing, John was more centre ground and he believed in slightly more liberal views - a proto-Blair perhaps (although John would baulk at that and Andy would probably laugh).
The thing was I have always been closer to the Winter's in my real politics than anyone else, so when Andy turned his back on Labour a few years ago I couldn't understand it, I mean, there was no viable alternative, so why throw away your vote? Well, he didn't, did he? Labour hasn't been elected for two General Elections and if you read the papers they don't look like they'll see a whiff of power again before I'm ash in a cannister on the mantelpiece.
Labour probably are in disarray and with hindsight they deserve it. Since Blair departed, Labour has turned it's back on the obvious and championed the idiotic. It elected an unelectable leader - Miliband and steadfastly stuck by him and even believed for a while he might win. as delusions go this is pretty grandiose. They bent over and took every accusation and every bit of blame for the previous world recession, despite actually not being responsible. Not once, during all those Cameron and Osborne lies did someone stand up and say 'You are wrong, stop lying or back this bullshit up with facts." But that note, left by Labour, stopped the party from regaining the truthful moral high ground and allowed the Tories to lie repeatedly. The failure to address this defamation was obvious every week. The Tories told a lie and people believed them, so Labour didn't tell the truth because they were scared no one would believe them. That is a spineless attitude and one that deserved to lose.
Now, we have a situation where for the first time since Roger Winter was alive there's a genuine left wing candidate with a chance of winning the right to govern his party - or in Jeremy Corbyn's case start to go to war with his own party. This is a man who put himself up for candidacy on the basis that someone from the left should go up against the Blair clones and started at 100-1 to win. He is now second favourite and actually looks like he could win the vote based on second choices of Labour voters. This should make people happy, but what it has done is set the press and politics into a frenzy of vitriol and recriminations - there's an odd kind of visible panic.
The Daily Telegraph, a paper that occasionally belies its fascist roots, started the ball rolling by urging Tories to register as Labour voters to ensure Corbyn is elected, that way Labour would never get re-elected ever again. Then we had a couple of Blairite idiots stating if Corbyn is elected they and 56 other MPs will force a motion to have him removed - a vote of no confidence before a word has been spoken. Now we have Mr Warmonger himself wading in and telling people that labour needs to be more central, like he was. He was a Tory who had no hope of succeeding in his own party, so became a Labour MP and turned Labour into a kind of caring conservative party (small 'c' deliberate).
Do you know what this says to me and must be saying to every other casual observer? This says people are frightened of Corbyn and not just because he represents part of the party long thought of as extinct, but because he's now setting the agenda on the hustings; he's got people talking; he's like a male ageing bearded Nicola Sturgeon - people are listening to him and going, "You know, he might be on to something..."
The press and mainstream Labour are screaming that this is a bad thing; but are they protesting too much? Apparently left wing politics is a poison chalice and no one in their right mind believes in it any more. Being left wing is being anachronistic to current needs and concerns. Except, the Scottish National Party is socialist and they destroyed the opposition in Scotland. Plaid Cymru is left wing and they stole a lot of Labour votes, again. And here's a weird one, many working class Labour supporters think UKIP is more left wing than Labour and this is based on the fact that once upon a time Labour didn't want us in Europe. One of my neighbours voted UKIP and his reasoning was that they reminded him of the Labour party when he was younger.
Forget the scary part of that and extrapolate the information. Owen Jones - highly respected left wing commentator suggested that Labour, or the left (to be more accurate), should organise a thoughtful and specifically targeted European Exit - campaign for us leaving the EU because the EU is about a democratic as ISIS and advocates economic Nazism and oppression of people in favour of profit. I think, as a standalone issue, this has deeply concerned a lot of people sitting on the In/Out fence; suddenly Europe looks as evil as Farage has been saying for years. If Cameron holds his referendum then Labour should either abstain from the debate or set the agenda by suggesting we don't need to be part of a club that bullies and kicks dirt in the face of its poorest members and then expects them to starve to death just so a bank doesn't lose profits. Steal that ground from UKIP, because there is approaching 50%, at least, of the population who are leaning towards a Brexit at the moment.
But I digress. If a left wing Labour is so abhorrent and a guaranteed vote loser, then how come Wales, Scotland and even Northern Ireland have strong left wing parties? How come these countries are beginning to embrace fairness and equality, yet in England it is regarded as anathema? Maybe because it's not. Maybe it's the right wing press and the right leaning Labour people who are worried, because Greece elected a bunch of commies (and look at the hassle they're causing); Spain might do the same, so might Portugal. The Left is rising because the Right no longer cares about individuals, it only cares about profit and sometimes that's too much.
Ask yourself this - if Jeremy Corbyn is so bad, why has his stock risen faster than a teenager's penis at an orgy? How come he's gone from the token leftie to almost the heir apparent? It's not been the media; so perhaps what he's saying is appealing to Labour voters. Perhaps Labour supporters do not want to go central; do not want to embrace this ideology that Osborne is pushing through. Perhaps die-hard Labour people believe that the welfare state is there because it is needed not because its a hindrance. We all accept the welfare state needs some kind of reform, it doesn't need destroying.
Perhaps Corbyn scares people because he will emphasise the difference between the welfare budget - £1.2billion in total excluding pensions - against the £10trillion (that's 100 times greater) lost in tax evasion, deals done by ministers that prevent companies from being responsible for when they cock up and deals for their mates. No one in Labour for five years has even bothered to go there, believing it to be too toxic a discussion - or maybe a topic that they just don't want to do anything about.
We're told every day that the people voted for this kind of change; I don't think that's the case. By voting intentions alone we saw people doing what they did in 1992 - they opted to stick with the devil they knew; it had nothing to do with policies and all to do with personality and failure to focus on the issues that mattered. Miliband was a car crash waiting to happen from the moment the centre of the party decided he was a better bet than his brother.
Corbyn talks the talk for someone like me. yes, he's 66 and that alone smacks in the face of politics needing young, fresh faces to attract people who don't vote. This is also bullshit; people don't vote because they don't feel inclined to. Voting should be compulsory and punishable with community service if you don't exercise that right, but you can't do that if people argue that they didn't vote because none of the parties represent them. If nothing else Corbyn is trying to bring topics to the discussion that his three rivals don't want to talk about and perhaps this is why he's having such an impact. If people are worried about him they're worried because he's saying new things, or things no one else talks about - things that mean something to disaffected voters.
I decided yesterday that I was no longer a Labour supporter, but if Jeremy Corbyn wins then he'll get my support (or until he starts kowtowing to the powers that be). He'll do this because I think he's talking sense in a contest that seems to want to elect a Tory-lite candidate when the country doesn't want another one. If Burnham or Cooper win (and I was a huge advocate of Cooper for years until recently) then I have two choices - become like so many others who don't vote, or move to Scotland or Wales where I can vote with a clear conscience for a party that believes in fairness and equality; because at the moment there isn't a party that offers this in England that stands even a remotely possible chance of being elected.
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