Go Forth Child of Marx and consider well: THE 2019 UK
ELECTION: THE HORNS OF A DILEMMA By Anthony Dougan
If the 2019 UK Election taught us anything about British Politics it
is that mutton is being continually dressed as lamb and the British system
leads to the unlikeliest of bedfellows.
We have four main political parties masquerading as two, with hollowed
out cores and sworn enemies on each wing.
Enemies within, enemies without.
Stewart Lee’s piece in The Guardian, ‘Only Aamon the demon is fit to
replace Jeremy Corbyn’ put it succinctly in terms of the current hybrid monstrosity
that is the Labour Party:…
“A Frankenstein assembled from leftover body parts attractive both to
the wine-quaffing, avocado-crushing, lentil-souffle-nibbling,
champagne-socialist hypocrites of Hackney and the chip-butty-gobbling,
fish-gut-snuffling, raw-offal-scoffing racist troglodytes of Hull will never
fly,…
And yet the Labour party thinks it needs to unite these two
incompatible, and quite frankly vile and unacceptable, stereotypes.”
For myself I might add the Frankenstinian equivalent on the Tory side
is the unholy unity of the monocled Rees-Moogian Borisian bum-boy self-entitled
fox-hunting Islam-hating public school-chumming Etonian bullingdon-clubbing
let-them-eat-grass neo-liberal nationalistic little-englander scum on the one
hand and the faintly desiccated hush puppy wearing technocratic opera-going
upper class twatting posh-lunching vile ancien-regime empire-longing
monarchy-loving hedge-funding arse-slapping aristos of the Soft Conservative
‘left’ that are also stitched together in a system bereft of intelligence and
howled on by a rabid audience of insult-spewing mutually-monsterising haters
twitterising their vile filth on their keyboards 12 hours a day. No wonder the
country can’t get anything done!
Frankly vile and unacceptable stereotypes indeed Stewart.
In politics never say never is a good slogan but, in truth, I can
never see a Socialist Government in power in the UK in my lifetime.
Let’s say I give myself twenty years?
The only really popular Labour government in recent years was that led
by Tony Blair with a Labour Party draped in the silk stockings of soft
Conservatism that continued the Thatcherite Project with swivel-eyed enthusiasm
and we now look back upon the antics of that War Criminal and his half-witted
crew of technocrats with cringing horror.
It may well be that popular socialism with its credo of public
ownership, collective action, strong state, high taxation, anti-monarchical,
Big-Unions and comprehensive education for all, belief-system, may be a thing
of the past. It may not be fit for the purposes of the 21st Century. Its vision
may be a historical curiosity.
And yet we tremble and resist letting go of treasured beliefs even
despite the continual evidence that they have become irrelevant.
The fact remains that the discounting of the leave vote was strategically
suicidal on the part of the Labour leadership and Keir Starmer, now mooted as
the new leader, had a role in forcing Corbyn to that artless strategy. Whatever our view on the brainless simplicity
of Cameron’s breathtakingly inept 2016 EU Referendum, it was a vote to leave
and it could not be discounted without significantly alienating a swathe of the
population, many in Labour’s heartlands.
But the question now, as we stand stunned, at the prospect of a
revitalised and supremely powerful Conservative Party, under the leadership of
an old Etonian Toff who offers no evidence that he possesses even the illusion
of moral character, or commitment to any service other than to himself, the
question surely, for all those supporters of Jeremy Corbyn must be-If I have got
it so wrong then what must this teach me? What do I need to reflect on? Is my
understanding sufficient to the times? Are the reasons why I present myself as
a leftwinger sufficiently coherent? Have I read and studied enough?
Have I reflected sufficiently on the views of those I profoundly
disagree with?
Do I understand Politics at all? Do I understand how Politics in the
UK intersects with International Relations?
And most fundamentally, what do I now do to serve my country and my
community and my own higher purpose?
Go forth Child of Marx and consider well.
And keep off Twitter!
1. Just as an aside Stewart Lee
also refers in his article to the summoning of Aamon the demon by Samuel Liddel
MacGregor Mathers, Head of the Golden Dawn, who is described as the acolyte of
Aleister Crowley, the infamous Thelemite Magician and drug addled clown. In fact it was Crowley who was the acolyte of
Mathers prior to their huge falling out.
Each then spent years attempting to obtain the others toenail clippings
and semen for the purposes of magical warfare.
It would make a fine film script.
