Prophets and Loss

Most people that know me, know that I'm interested in politics, but, by my own admission, I'm no expert and I'm often shown things that I was ignorant of or that flies in the face of my beliefs. Recently I've been accused of being a 'blind Corbyn supporter' because I refuse to see the damage he's doing to the Labour Party - internally. But like many other slightly disgruntled people, I look at the man I see and not the Machiavellian machinations that are obviously going on with or without his blessing and then I'm mocked for either being too naive or too altruistic or deluded because I refuse to see the wider picture. I do see the wider picture and what I see has been commented on in these pages many times - career politicians putting their own interests ahead of the people and therefore not acting in my best interests, despite representing the party I've supported all of my life.

Like right wing leaning people, I tend to stick with my 'tribe' and therefore spend a lot of time preaching to the converted and have probably been labelled a 'loony leftie' by many of my more moderate friends and relatives, who sometimes view my politics as 'harmful' and 'non-negotiable', but I hope they will at least recognise my commitment to my beliefs. However, in this very narcissistic world we live in now, I can't help but want to get a big massive trumpet out and start blowing it loudly from the hills.

Talking to an equally 'radical' friend the other night, I made the rather modest (highly unusual for me) statement that I must be some kind of prophet. After the hilarity of the statement dissipated, I quantified my statement: Since I resurrected this blog last year, I've focused a lot on the Brexit issue and the turmoil in British politics. I've made lots of forecasts, based on my feelings rather than the biased press and media, and an incredibly huge amount of them have come true. With hindsight, some of the observations I made seem more lucid and realistic now than they possibly did when I was sounding like a conspiracy theorist on steroids and many of the things I said weren't echoed in the press - ever; many of the questions I asked ended up being asked when it was too late and while I have no doubt many other bloggers sensed the real feeling around the country, I didn't see the politicians, the media and all of their assorted bandwagons have the same kind of handle on the 'mood' as I did from dog walks, work and general conversations with people.

How can someone so politically naive, with no formal qualifications in the subject, and an interest generated more through suspicion than through faith in politicians have got it right so many times and yet people who get paid loads of money failed to see, or more importantly, listen to the people outside of their front doors? Is his more evidence of a media agenda or are these people simply not as astute, as expert, as we like to believe?

Politicians really need to have a good hard look, not just at themselves but at the 60-odd million people living here (there's that famous altruism shining through). If nothing else people have made it clear that they no longer trust politicians of any kind - the left despise the right and vice versa and there hasn't really ever been a middle ground, despite whatever heights the Libdems reached, all that was was the first signs of a disgruntled nations starting to grow tired of the same old same old.

Look at Farage. Honestly, I'm not as obsessed with the man in real life, but in political terms I consider him to have had more impact on a nation than very few politicians in the last 50 years, possibly Thatcher being the exception. The incredible thing about him is his ability to turn repeated failures into some kind of perverse victory (all aided and abetted by our hard right media); like some kind of carcinogenic Eddie the Eagle his resilience is a thing to behold; Oswald Moseley probably would have seen him as a future PM. Yet there is no arguing with how he has single-handedly turned UKIP into the third largest party in the country (by vote share).

The real shame of UKIP is they have inadvertently tapped into the general malaise of the average working man, something one of the other parties should have done - knowingly. Historically this is probably totally inaccurate, but UKIP appeared to be a semi-respectable face of British Nationalism when it started; almost like they realised there was a hot bed of xenophobes and casual racists out there all ignorant enough to want to blame anything foreign for their ills and woes. The problem is, that party is a disorganised shambles, even compared to the Labour Party, if they had a collective brain they could be very dangerous.

In 2001, a good friend of mine said to me in a pub in Nottingham, "Do you know what we should do? We should join the Conservative Party." I stared at him in utter disbelief. "No, wait, hear me out. They are such a disorganised rabble at the moment that anyone with a half decent idea can walk into that party and change it. Until they get proper people running it again they'll never get elected." Obviously we never joined and even if we had, I'm sure there was someone somewhere in CCO planning a future that didn't involve two 'socialist' men just about to turn 40; but the point is UKIP by and large seems like a party with no real reason to exist, except maybe to steal votes from the disgruntled, diluting voter share even more and giving the Tories an easier path to complete dominance. What better way to win an election than by duping former die-hard Labour voters to vote for a party that politically is further to the right than the party they claim to despise. Oh the irony. The point is with proper 21st century politicians running it, UKIP could be a serious threat. We should be thankful for small mercies.

I've often heard the phrase 'the government is out of touch with its people' and, to be honest, I've often felt that was a throwaway comment; I've never felt governments have ever really been in touch with the people. However, for the first time in my 50-odd years, I believe that statement is more pertinent now than ever before, except it isn't the government who is out of touch, it's the entire political machine. Do you know why Jeremy Corbyn is probably perceived as more of a threat to the status quo than him just being a mad Trot? Because he did something last year that has stopped happening with our politicians - he went out and talked to people. I remember general elections when I was growing up and right up until about 2007 with politicians doing what we want them to, engaging with the voters, on doorsteps, at rallies, on market squares, with soapbox in hand; listening to the people and trying to reflect that in their politics. But something happened and media took over and more and more people grew to dislike politicians and it was no longer safe for many politicians to walk the streets of their constituencies; the more Westminster lost touch with the real people, the more real people grew to hate them.

The death of Jo Cox was systematic of what has happened and how people are no longer connected to their representatives, even the ones like Cox who was more engaging than others. Obviously this incident isn't going to have the MPs flooding onto the streets to gauge opinion and engage with their voters and Cox's death might also have signalled the death of any true links MPs will have to local non-political communities. There is now no way people aren't going to view them all as aloof, privileged and not reflecting what they'd like to believe.

Former Labour MP for Northampton South and now Green councillor for the County Council, Tony Clarke, won his seat in 1997, despite traditionally it always being a Tory seat, because he got out and knocked on doors, talked to people, won over their trust, even if they weren't Labour voters and he was regarded as the left of a then newly-modernised and centre New Labour. Yet, he used the swell of opinion mixed with actual hard work to win his seat and then just about retain it later. That doesn't happen any more or if it does prospective MPs and incumbents tend to pick and choose the areas they canvas - therefore are probably preaching to the converted and those who will probably vote anyhow.

The sad thing is that my forecasts weren't intended to be scaremongering, they were intended to highlight what might or would probably happen, from my perspective, and almost as if I scripted it personally, everything from Cameron to Johnson to Eagle's resignations to the economic instability has come true; even my reluctance to believe that Leave would probably win in the two weeks leading up to the vote...

So what does the self-proclaimed new guru of political forecasting believe will happen now? Well, returning to my radical friend and our sage-like weekly conversations about the state of the nation; he believes Theresa May should call a general election in November, because if Labour is in civil war and looking totally unelectable, then she'd be stupid not to. My response to that is 'too risky'. The media might be telling us one thing, and for sure Labour is valiantly trying to destroy itself, but I think there's a definite feeling within the Tory party that people don't want more politics thrust upon them and now we've had one monumental protest vote - with repercussions for decades likely - in this decade of crazy shit happening, the last thing is for a cocky Tory party to go back to the country and end up being in a coalition again. Or worse still, a turn out of less than 40% would not make any mandate legitimate in the majority's eyes. Tories want a few years of crisis managing the economy and trying to be as anodyne as possible to the masses.

On Thursday of last week, I was convinced that the Labour Party coup was going to blow itself out and some kind of uneasy truce will have been found that could have at least taken the party forward, but sadly events escalated again and the civil war is actually getting uglier and unbelievably harmful to democracy in this country. I said in another blog that this is no longer a battle to oust Corbyn but a movement to shut down his wing of the party. The PLP want the left eradicated from the party completely, and not because they've read the mood of the public and seen the future, but because they've seen the future and their careers are at stake.

So technically speaking, May doesn't need to call an election because, at the moment, the Tories have no effective opposition; their majority might as well be 100.

As a Corbyn supporter, how do I feel about what has been happening? This was a question I was asked just the other day and my answer was tempered by my current bemusement with life in general. This is how I see it; a year ago, feeling wounded by a really disappointing election campaign with a leader less electable than Neil Kinnock and left wondering just what the Labour had to do to make itself more popular than a government that was very unpopular, but still won? Despite my interest in politics, I didn't know Jeremy Corbyn from a hole in the ground and like many people indoctrinated by the media, I thought he was the sacrificial left-wing lamb to show some range of democracy in a relatively anodyne leadership contest. Then, like many others, I started to see this groundswell of support for a reasonable man, unruffled by the hyperbole of 21st century politics, talking sense in a crazy political world. The opposition towards him started before he even won and I forecast the tensions ahead of him, without realising just how low it could sink.

I cannot deny Corbyn represents a wing of the Labour Party that the establishment dislikes and is prone to being labelled extremists and like the far right, the extreme left attracts its own kind of loonies. I saw Corbyn's win as a genuine protest by the voters who care about Labour, for it to return to its grass roots and that has constantly been ignored by the majority of the MPs who cannot accept Corbyn's victory and therefore are not going to listen to the people they supposedly represent.

Whatever accusations are made at Momentum or at Labour, then as many accusations have to be levelled at the rest of the PLP for their own Machiavellian schemes, acted out in their own interests and with scant disregard to the enormous amounts of people who have started to follow Corbyn's beliefs.

Honestly? I think what he's doing will ultimately be destructive, but unfortunately if he acquiesces or is forced out of the party by High Courts and breaches of democracy then the party will also destroy itself, because whoever replaces Corbyn will be seen to have won it in a bloody coup, in an undemocratic fashion that will alienate a large percentage of their core vote. Lose/Lose.

If I was Corbyn faced with hostility from all sides, I would do one of two things. I'd either come out fighting - properly. And I'd start with the press; I wouldn't pander to their whims and when I'm asked pointless personality or personal questions, I would simply turn it round and ask them why they're asking unimportant questions when they should be focusing on all the things that the public should be made aware of. Since he's shown no inclination to be anything but frosty, then the other option would be to sit down with Tom Watson and try to work out a logical successor, who can in some way continue to move Labour back towards its roots as a socialist party rather than a pink Tory party, while offering proper opposition and continuing to attract the people that Jeremy has so far recruited into the fold. Because Owen Smith isn't that man; he's a faceless bureaucrat with a questionable history who to anyone with half a brain sees a token candidate put up to do as much damage as possible.

What I'd like to see is for the 150 plus MPs who are so disillusioned with Corbyn to decide to break away - which is what they want to do but with the Labour name as their own - and form another political party; force 150+ by-elections and see how well they all do. It may well force the UK into looking at socialist coalitions as the way forward to defeat the Tories, or it might simply spell out to these 150+ MPs just how out of touch with their voters they really are. Perhaps this is what is needed; to make the comfortable 'elite' MPs realise that we put them there and therefore they should be representing us and not their own self-interests. The problem with this is MPs are insecure creatures at the best of times; they'd rather try an undemocratic route than an honest plebiscite. Destroy and rebuild from within, because the public has a short memory. Unfortunately betrayal tends to root itself deep.