The hard left, Corbyn supporting “comedian” Jeremy Hardy has urged people to vote Labour in today’s local election. Here’s his tweet:
“Here’s a thing. I’m not sectarian and there are great people in different political parties. But we need a Labour government more desperately than ever. And if Labour doesn’t do well on Thursday it will make that less likely. So, whatever’s going on locally, vote Labour.”
Three words stand out for me: “I’m not sectarian”. This, then, must be a very different Jeremy Hardy than the one I saw some years ago at a trade union social event who was the most sectarian hard left alleged comedian I had ever heard. Well, I am definitely not voting Labour today.
Mind you, the main reason I am not voting Labour today is because there are no elections taking place where I live. But if there were, for the first time ever in my voting life, I would not be voting Labour. So politically homeless am I, I would not be voting at all.
This country definitely does need a Labour government. Of that, I am in no doubt. Since I have been able to vote, we have had three Labour election wins, all three of them achieved by Tony Blair. I am really not interested in the whataboutery of “Yes, but what about Iraq?” I am interested in what those three Labour governments achieved for working people.
Having joined the Labour Party at a time when Tony Benn’s type of socialism, essentially simplistic sloganism and empty rhetoric, was taking hold of the party, even in my tender years I had worked out that this version of Labour would not win. In 1983, when Michael Foot was Labour leader, a manifesto described by the late Gerald Kaufman as the longest suicide note in history ensured Labour lost by a landslide to Margaret Thatcher’s hard right Conservatism, plunging this country into chaos and division. Until 1997, when Tony Blair’s New Labour captured the hearts and minds of the electorate. And what governments they were, saving the NHS, improving education, introducing equal marriage, Sure Start, the Minimum Wage and, until the worldwide financial crash, steadily rising living standards for everyone. They were not perfect governments, but the country was happier and more united. Does anyone really believe that’s the case under Theresa May?
If the country needs a Labour government, it doesn’t need one where the likes of Jeremy Corbyn, John McDonnell, Diane Abbott, Emily Thornberry and Richard Burgon are anywhere near the levers of power. They represent not so new kind of politics, but a reheated version of the nonsense Tony Benn perpetrated in the 1970s and 1980s. There is no suggestion that Labour’s so called leaders have the ability, talent and vision to make the country better and certainly, as the anti-Semitism fiasco proves, an idea how to unite the country.
Corbyn and the comrades support a damaging hard Brexit, Corbyn, a potential PM, is a pacifist who, if given chance, world disarm our nuclear deterrent. And if you think Corbyn really does represent a new kind of politics, look at his performance at yesterday’s PMQs where instead of ripping into Theresa May over her disgraceful role in the Windrush scandal, he chose to go for soundbites. He asked a series of unrelated questions to attract media headlines and to get on the news. People attacked New Labour for its clever use of the media. How is Seumas Milne’s cynical PR an improvement? Answer: it isn’t. If anything it’s worse. My view is that Labour wasted a golden opportunity not only to embarrass and humiliate Theresa May, they missed a chance to unseat her. In the interest of pure politicking.
Quite apart from Corbyn’s long history of supporting despots and terrorists, I simply do not believe a Labour government notionally led by him would make this country better. My view is that he would make such a mess of things, Labour might be so badly damaged it might never recover.
I cannot imagine how anyone who considers their politics to be mainstream Labour could support Corbyn and the posh boys as they seek to build hard left socialism in one country. But I can’t imagine how anyone who is mainstream Labour could vote for anyone else, either. Today, I say don’t vote at all. It only encourages them.
