Is there anyone in the Labour Party who is going to offer even the most threadbare opposition to Theresa May’s useless Conservative Party? Of course there isn’t, so I’m going to make a small suggestion: get out there on the media and start opposing.
Ed Miliband allowed George Osborne’s “we’re all in it together” and “long term economic plan” to dominate the media, virtually unchallenged. Every time a Tory was wheeled out, he would always refer to the “long term economic plan”, whatever the subject was at the time. “What do you think of Coronation Street?” “It fits in with our long term economic plan.”
Theresa May’s spinners have cottoned on to two distinct and utterly meaningless soundbites which every Tory MP must parrot. Justine Greening, the education secretary, was in the process of a “major speech” about bringing back Grammar schools. Why? Because we needed “a country that works for everyone”. Everyone? Yes, everyone, especially “ordinary working families”. My loyal reader will be well aware that I constantly rail against the term “ordinary working families” because most working families I know are anything but ordinary. Every time I hear some Tory on the TV use the phrase, I feel my blood pressure begin to rise. What the hell are they trying to say? That people who are working people are “ordinary”? “Ordinary” police officers? “Ordinary” nurses? According to my dictionary ordinary means “with no special or distinctive features; normal.” Normal? What’s normal? Straight? White? Two-legged? When a Tory calls something ordinary I get suspicious.
Does May get up in the morning and look down on her serfs and think, “My god, they are so ordinary, whereas look at me: I’m extraordinary.” I’m ordinary, presumably, because I work for an internationally recognised humanitarian organisation which does, as a matter of course, work that I would not call ordinary. I earn next to fuck all but I choose to do that because I want to do something worthwhile. I am not as special as some wealthy businessman like ‘Sir’ Philip Green, then.
And “a country that works for everyone?” What on earth are you on about you stupid woman. This means absolutely nothing. We have tiers of privilege at all levels in Britain today and Mrs May is not remotely interesting in changing a thing. For example, her obsession with Grammar schools will make things worse for far many more children than it benefits. Not everyone can go to Grammar schools and with school spending being slashed, guess which group of people will suffer the most? It’s those bloody “ordinary working people” yet again.
Jeremy Corbyn and your utterly useless top team: wake up. If you repeat a lie often enough, it sticks. The Tories banged on for years how Labour had crashed the world economy which was palpably not the truth. But because they kept saying it and it became lodged in the public consciousness. That was Ed Miliband’s fault and now Corbyn, a pygmy of a politician even compared to Miliband, is going the same way.
If Labour cannot even counter empty rhetoric, never mind hold the government to account, then what is it for? The answer is under Jeremy Corbyn, absolutely nothing.
