Jeremy Corbyn was back yesterday doing what he does best, or rather the only thing he likes to do, which is to speak to thousands of people who already agree with him and to pose for selfies with his cult following, this time at a pro NHS rally in London. And what a line up of speakers they had at Parliament Square, what with the unpleasant John McDonnell, the man who has single-handedly reduced the PCS union to rubble, Mark Serwotka, and, as you would expect at a meeting of the comrades, Billy Bragg, who doubtless sang a few tunes. So sorry to have missed that one. Not.
This can’t possibly be the same Jeremy Corbyn who instructed his MPs and Lords to support the hardest possible Brexit, just last week, which will, in all likelihood, lead to the wholesale privatisation of the NHS as Britain turns into a low paid, low regulation, low tax country, can it? Oh yes it can.
The job of the opposition is not merely to oppose, although that would be an improvement of the current sorry state of affairs where Theresa May can do exactly what she wants with the direct assistance of those who purport to oppose her. It is also to represent the very people for whom Labour was set up to represent. You know, the ones who will be trampled underfoot when the disastrous effects of Brexit become clear.
I have been unable to hide my contempt for Corbyn and his like since I joined the Labour Party back in the 1970s. Even back then, the aim of the hard left, including the likes of Tony Benn and especially the wreckers of the Militant tendency, was to seize control of the Labour Party machinery, rather than to improve the lives of the pesky working classes. The very same people, the grammar school, private school posh boys led the hard left, always knowing what was best for the workers, who seemed to be regarded as fodder for the comrades who would, eventually, come round to their point of view. Nothing has changed. Working class politics is led by the chattering classes, the affluent comrades who think they know what’s best for the lumpen proletariat if only they’d listen.
Let’s be honest about this: did the general public really pay any attention to yesterday’s NHS marches? Of course they didn’t unless they were delayed in traffic by hordes of middle class beardy-folk clutching SWP placards and shouting slogans before they returned to their hipster homes in the nicer areas? There was plenty of media coverage so the comrades can’t complain about that, but do they really think they made a difference? I doubt that they cared. Anyway, once Corbyn’s ego massaging is over, he can return to this day job, supporting Theresa May’s government, in the way he has always supported Tory governments.
Every day and in every way, Labour becomes more irrelevant than it did the day before and that’s far more worrying than merely being unpopular. Apart from Corbyn’s cult following, most people regard him as unimportant, and that too will be the way of the Labour Party.
Another day, another protest march, another crap Corbyn speech and another day nearer the post Brexit Tory free-for-all which will reduce the NHS to rubble and allow the friends of Donald Trump to pick at the carcass. Well done, Jeremy. That will be your legacy, “comrade”.
