Anyone But Corbyn

I've made it clear since I moved to this part of Scotland that voting Labour is going to be a wasted vote. Dumfries and Galloway is firmly split between the sitting Tory MP and the SNP, whatever happened to Labour in Scotland after Gordon Brown and before Jeremy Corbyn has pretty much killed them in all but a handful of places.

But, at heart, I'm a socialist and even the SNP's brand of socialism is more palatable than voting for someone else, even if my heart isn't really in it.

In my social media bubble you'd think Labour will win a landslide election, but the reality is much different, because one thing stands in the way. The Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn is a most divisive of character, but if you can actually get 'floating' voters to tell you why they will vote for anyone but Corbyn, usually the answer is quite unfathomable or based on the kind of Chinese whispers you expect the right wing media to be right behind. After all, the right wing media turned people against the EU without using a shred of actual evidence, but by pressing all the buttons a disgruntled, confused public will get behind. The Tories and their media have branded Corbyn many things. He's a racist. He's a communist. He's anti-semitic. He's incompetent. He's stupid. I mean, if people said, he's old, he's got a beard, he's a bit scruffy, he's got an allotment, it has as much meaning, except much of it is absolutely true; all of the shallow, callow accusations aimed at him are essentially bollocks. But it doesn't matter; the press has done its job and people simply don't like him. In a world where we no longer really like being told what to do, a lot of people have been told what to do and they're in danger of doing it. Free will? In your dreams.

I don't expect anyone who reads this and isn't voting Labour will be swayed by anything I say, after all, it's just my opinion and there are far more cleverer people out there, who know what they're talking about. Except, I haven't got a vested interest. Life will, one way or another, continue for me as it will for everyone else as it did before on December 13th. That's, in a way, quite depressing because those people who won't 'vote Labour because' are throwing the baby out with the bath water.

Yeah, I know. You had to do it. 'Anyone but Corbyn' you'll cry without realising that you'll have been conned for a second time in 3 years, but that doesn't bother you because no one is going to tell you how you should vote; you're voting for what's best for Britain, while actually you're not... But it really doesn't matter what I say, you'll always come up with another reason. The sad thing is you might as well say, 'I don't want a bearded PM' because it's as logical as the reasons you give, but in many ways less more honest.

There's a few memes floating about, one preaching to the converted about only people over £82,000 a year will pay more in tax and that if an extra £20 is taken from these people, how will they survive? The other is how any working man can look at the promise of more services, a shorter working week and free wifi as somehow less important than ensuring the rich who don't pay any tax continue to pay no tax. Like it's a good thing that we have money hoarders and an even better thing is we have homeless children because, directly or indirectly, of these money hoarders. What kind of person will dismiss a manifesto geared at making as many ordinary people happy as possible as stupid, but think a PM who thinks maybe building actual bridges - like one from Northern Ireland to Scotland - might be better? Johnson calls Labour's plans 'crazy' and yet he wants to divorce us from our largest trading partners in the hope we'll get a better deal from Rwanda or Cambodia. We'll be all right for yams and noodles all year round!

I can't convince anyone that they're voting the wrong way, because it's your vote and you do it the way you see fit; but at least be honest with yourself. At least be comfortable with the fact you're okay and you don't really care about those who aren't.

What's that? Most people on benefits have only themselves to blame? They're all on the fiddle; they all play the system. Benefits fraud totalled £2.6billion in 2017 - that's a shit load of cash; you could save the NHS with that. It's an awful amount of money and one that needs to be addressed, in a fair way. However, and all these figures are available by searching the internet for reputable sources, were you aware that almost £60billion was not paid in taxes, the vast majority of which was by overseas companies, who treat their employees like Victorian slaves? Your Amazons, Facebooks and Microsoft pay less money in tax than someone on £150,000 a year.

Yes, but I could be poor and those dole scroungers are making it difficult if that happens.

Surely, you'd want it fixed so you can get what's entitled to you and people who fiddle don't? I would. I wouldn't punish everyone because some, probably a step or two ahead of the DSS Fraud squad, screw the system and I'm sure that most people would feel the same way; but maybe they wouldn't. You see the whole Leaving the EU thing has meant that hate is now out of the closet and is being allowed  to take centre stage. We have at least a third of the country despising politicians to the point where they will do all the hard work for them at the virtual hustings and then become the turkeys who voted for Christmas.

I know you won't, but ask yourself this: if you vote Conservative and help them win, will they really do what they can to help improve your life? Or will there be more cuts, more deaths as a result and less accountability? I know you don't care about that because the nasty things always happen to someone else or in those dirty stinky cities, with their metropolitan, pan-sexual weirdos and Somalians. But what if you're a working class person who votes Tory in the North East because you think they'll fix all the problems they started; do you really, honestly believe that? Will you be able to look at yourself in the mirror and feel clean. especially if someone you know or love suddenly becomes one of those 'statistics' you think is left wing bullshit?

You only have to look at places like the Financial Times - not a Labour paper by any stretch - and see the fiscal deficit now stands above a trillion pounds and is 86% of GDP and compare it to when Labour 'left us in a real mess' to see these Tories really can't be trusted with the economy. Look at it this way; if 1 million seconds equals 12 days and 1 billion seconds equals 31 years, what is a trillion seconds? Now apply that to money. A billion is a thousand million, a trillion is a thousand billion.

If you think Labour represents the unions and unions are bad things; remember that Thatcher removed the teeth of the unions and got it built into any EU (EEC) agreement that unions will not have the same power again. Also remember that without unions you wouldn't have 90% of the benefits you get working somewhere that has a union, or that life will be much different without those benefits. But most of all, remember that even if you despise unions with a passion and blame them for many things, you still get the same benefits if you weren't in a union, and without them? Good luck negotiating that 1% pay rise on your own.

If you think austerity was needed, but now complain that your bins aren't being emptied enough or the street lighting is poor, or the potholes on the roads are worse; that wasn't Corbyn's fault; just like it has never been Corbyn's fault that the Leaving the EU bill has never got through our viciously hung parliament; he's in opposition; it's his job to stop the party in power from damaging the country, even if a third of it thinks he's a traitor for doing so. If it was the other way around and Boris trying to do what he can to stop a bad Labour deal, how would you view it then? If Corbyn was trying to give you what you voted for but Boris, like he did with his own PM at the time, voted against it; how would that make you feel? Would Corbyn be so bad if he was doing all of this in power?

The problem with Corbyn is unless you're a tax dodger, or a Tory with vested interests in low taxes, no services and a lack of workers' rights, you're helping tar a human being with a brush loaded with lies. The other thing you're letting happen is turning a monumental decision into a popularity contest, or, as it seems, an unpopularity contest. The 'whataboutery' has been ramped up to 11. Boris won't tell people how many children he has, but what about Corbyn? He's been married three times and had an affair with a black woman. Boris lies and lies again; says whatever he thinks, even if it's rather distasteful and borderline racist/sexist, but Corbyn is promising the impossible. Or worse still, those people who now think that politicians are corrupt and that is now a good thing. In the 1980s, Cecil Parkinson lost his job on the Tory cabinet for having an affair that resulted in a child (one he was always going to look after if the need arose); 30 years later and we have an adulterous PM, with a questionable number of children and relationships; one who has the police called to his home because of fears of domestic violence and no one bats an eyelid.

Now, ask yourself this, if you dare; why is it safe to believe that attacks on Boris are left wing conspiracies that you believe almost without a doubt, but anything you hear about Corbyn must be true? Even if some of the stuff you hear about Corbyn was true, surely, by the law of averages, some of the accusations leveled at Johnson must also be true? Why do you have so much trouble believing a truth is a lie and a lie is a truth?

Why do you think this is some kind of Presidential race and that whoever wins will do all the work? I don't get this, anti-Corbyn people think that if JC was PM he would make all the decisions; he would be in sole charge and his cabinet would just be turning up for coffee and their wage cheque. That would be impossible to do, especially for a man of his age, and it's why we have a chancellor, a defence secretary, a housing minister, a leader of the House - they all have their jobs; they all have a certain amount of autonomy.

Ask yourself why Sajid Javid says he wants to bring a £10 minimum wage in by 2020 and Tory supporting newspapers say that economists reckon this is a great thing, yet ten days earlier, John McDonnell was saying the exact same thing and it was going to bankrupt the country? It's because they know that if you read a Tory supporting newspaper you'll believe any old shit they tell you and what's better is you'll convince all your mates who don't read the paper to think the same way. How many lefties reading this will nod if I suggest you've met people who don't read papers, don't watch the news, don't go to political rallies who all know that Corbyn is an evil stupid man? Ask them what it's based on and you get outbursts that would shame a 6 year old. The internet is full of people who stick their fingers in their ears and go la-la-la-la-la-la very loudly whenever you suggest otherwise. It's like people want to suffer; it's like subconsciously there are people out there who feel we should have extra pain; feel more injustice and widen that net to get even more victims of today's society.

Just be honest. Your opinion of Jeremy Corbyn is based on hearsay and what you've heard others say. If there's never smoke without fire, then apply that rule equally or you might as well take up golf so you can cheat at it every game.

This is too long and no one voting Tory will have got this far; so lets up the ante a bit. I know someone who won't read the Labour manifesto; wouldn't vote for Corbyn because he reminds him of Tom Hanks and he really can't stand Tom Hanks and doesn't care if his family starves as long as we leave the EU because the country is overrun with foreigners, says a man who claims to have a Pakistani Britain as a best friend and uses the Polish deli down the road, almost as much as he's in the bookies. He's also been one of the dole scroungers and if looked at in black and white would fit the profile of a pro-Remain Labour voter...

I know a man who won't vote Labour because his grandfather got screwed over by the unions in the 1970s and a friend who got screwed over by them in the 1980s. They both saw hardship as a result and for some reason that has stuck with them, despite living through 16% interest rates, British industry being sold off and a proliferation of food banks - just three of the things we can say the Tories gave us. It's like Labour (or their associates) can only fuck with us once; but the elite aristocracy, shit, they're allowed to do it repeatedly. I know my place.  And that is, in many ways, why this election should be about the PARTY that offers the most hope going forward; not one that is offering nothing and claiming everyone else is crazy. It might sound like the Tories are just advocating realism, until, that is, you factor in that these same people are the ones who were in power when all this madness began. If nothing else, let that fact sink in. You've done no good with them for 9 years, what evidence is there to think it won't be more of the same?

The voting landscape is inhabited by unpaid trolls sowing vague seeds of doubt - the most easy to germinate - and like collaborators during the wars, they live for the now. It's uncool to care; unhip to help; it's okay to be vile and hateful because you can hide behind an anonymous icon and think you're balancing the books. With politics there is no better place to do the bidding of the people who convince you that you're better off under them while doing nothing for them at all. It's probably why spam still exists; there's always some mug who'll fall for it, despite every warning under the sun.

Finally, why not 'anyone but Boris?' Why not 'What's to lose with trying something radical and different?' We can't sink any lower than we are and as the same people who say 'anyone but Corbyn' will remind you, we get a chance every four or five years (usually) to pick a new government; if Labour screw up then vote the Tories back in or their yellow buddies, but don't dismiss them before you've had a chance to see if their ideas work. Or are you that far beyond taking a calculated risk? Because if you think you have a better chance of surviving the coming storm with who have been in charge for the last 9 years, then you're already dead.