The two main news stories at two o'clock were the Fall of Sangin and the revision downwards of the economic growth figures. Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell have been doubly right all along.
The very existence of the Stop the War Coalition owes as much to Corbyn as to any other single individual, and that of the Labour Representation Committee owes more to McDonnell than to anyone else at all.
Yet the Stop the War Coalition bizarrely marched on the Labour Party's headquarters, of all places, when Corbyn announced a free vote on the Syria airstrikes.
Meanwhile, the Labour Representation Committee is now in open opposition to McDonnell's call on Labour councils not to set illegal budgets, a strategy that he knows from experience does not work.
All in all, the space is opening up to the left of Labour's moderate Leadership, matching the open space to the Leadership's right.
That latter is a faded fantasy world of overpromoted MPs and faintly batty old generals, who are looking to move into rather more lucrative employment, but who see the NHS privatisation beneficiaries and the Gulf-loving arms companies threatened by the prospect of real political choice for the first time in a generation.
They are curiously convinced that they are well-liked, so enclosed is the world that they inhabit, a world defined by embarrassments and defeats that they are certain that everyone regards as famous victories.
But can you imagine a book (whether of fact or of fiction), or a play, or a documentary, or a television drama, or a film, that featured a positive depiction of New Labour, or of the Thirty Years' War that ended in British Army's total surrender to the Provisional Army Council, or even of the Falklands War?
Never mind such a depiction of the war in Afghanistan, or in Iraq, or in Libya? There has been a BBC Three sitcom set in the Army in Afghanistan. But that was all that it was, a sitcom, and aimed at a very young audience. Since that demographic is no longer bound up in that lost war, then do not expect anything more about it, probably ever. It is as embarrassing as Northern Ireland.
Otherwise, such a thing is no more likely than a book (whether of fact or of fiction), or a play, or a documentary, or a television drama, or a film, that featured a positive depiction of very much the same people's role in the Miners' Strike, the miners' side of which is now an integral part of the nation's defining mythology, in very stark contrast to the striking cultural absence of the Falklands War.
The people who would favour the other view do not even read books, and they do not even watch the better sorts of play, documentary, television drama, or film. They certainly do not write such things.
If they do, then where are they? Those people have all the economic, social and, for now, political clout to have as much cultural impact as they wanted. They have Sky.
It took the BBC 19 years merely to stage The Falklands Play, and I am not aware that that has ever been repeated, another 13 years later. If it has been, then no one seems to have noticed. It could not even be written now. Written by whom?
They are curiously convinced that they are well-liked, so enclosed is the world that they inhabit, a world defined by embarrassments and defeats that they are certain that everyone regards as famous victories.
But can you imagine a book (whether of fact or of fiction), or a play, or a documentary, or a television drama, or a film, that featured a positive depiction of New Labour, or of the Thirty Years' War that ended in British Army's total surrender to the Provisional Army Council, or even of the Falklands War?
Never mind such a depiction of the war in Afghanistan, or in Iraq, or in Libya? There has been a BBC Three sitcom set in the Army in Afghanistan. But that was all that it was, a sitcom, and aimed at a very young audience. Since that demographic is no longer bound up in that lost war, then do not expect anything more about it, probably ever. It is as embarrassing as Northern Ireland.
Otherwise, such a thing is no more likely than a book (whether of fact or of fiction), or a play, or a documentary, or a television drama, or a film, that featured a positive depiction of very much the same people's role in the Miners' Strike, the miners' side of which is now an integral part of the nation's defining mythology, in very stark contrast to the striking cultural absence of the Falklands War.
The people who would favour the other view do not even read books, and they do not even watch the better sorts of play, documentary, television drama, or film. They certainly do not write such things.
If they do, then where are they? Those people have all the economic, social and, for now, political clout to have as much cultural impact as they wanted. They have Sky.
It took the BBC 19 years merely to stage The Falklands Play, and I am not aware that that has ever been repeated, another 13 years later. If it has been, then no one seems to have noticed. It could not even be written now. Written by whom?
Tom Hamilton is retweeting @JeremyCorbyn4PM as if it were a parody account; of course, I realise that he knows that it is not.
But in fact, from its base only a few yards from the student house that Tom and I used to share, that account, with its accompanying Facebook page, is far better-connected to the present Leadership than most of the party's staff can now make any claim to be.
They must find the new order thoroughly discombobulating.
They must find the new order thoroughly discombobulating.
As another leading figure in that order put it to me yesterday, "Neil Fleming is not the sharpest knife in the drawer, is he?" Fleming was, apparently, "promoted far beyond his natural abilities in the first place."
Thus speaks the owner of one of the first numbers that the Leader would and does call in order to find out anything in the North East and beyond, Durham in particular being very much one of his national citadels.
Merry Christmas.
If there were to be an Argentine invasion of the Falklands, we know which side Corbyn would be on. It wouldn't be our side. Just as we know which side he was on last time round.
ReplyDeleteJust like we know which side he was on when the IRA was blowing up innocent British subjects,
In 1982, our "anti imperialist" Left astonishingly supported General Galtieri over the islanders.
Corbyn-and the anti British Left in general-always remind one of George Orwell's description of the treacherous Left during World War Two in "Notes on Nationalism."
The Left, Orwell wrote, was ""trying to spread an outlook that was sometimes squashily pacifist, sometimes violently pro-Russian, but always anti-British. ""
Corbyn and his kind summed up in one sentence.
Silly little boy.
DeleteGosh, but you are a very, very, very bitter lot. Jolly good.
A legitimate view not particularly bitter. And very silly of you to call it " silly"
DeleteI too once supported the Argies. Well, I was there when they, or rather their obviously British-trained special units invaded South Georgia.
I was invited to the Casa Rosada that evening by my Argentian friend and cheered with the others, having got carried away by the excitement - until I remembered what side I was on!
It is not a matter of "supporting the Argies". It is just daft to bring up a war from before Corbyn was an MP, and he has been an MP a long time, the circumstances that gave rise to which could never arise today.
DeleteThe Thatcherites' great god, Reagan's America, supported Galtieri, as the American Republic by its origins was always bound to do, same as it was always bound to support Irish Republicanism and it did.
ReplyDeleteYou do have to laugh at anyone who thinks normal people spend their time worrying about the Falkland Islands or wishing there had been no deal in Northern Ireland, a deal supported by as good as everybody who lives there. It was always wanted by most people in London, which was where most of the IRA's bombs went off.
Jeremy and John were a bit too inclusive of the Trots over the summer, but you are right it is as a good thing the Trots have turned against them. Obviously that was always going to happen.