Go Forth Child of Marx and consider well: THE 2019 UK ELECTION: THE HORNS OF A DILEMMA By Tony Dougan

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.