Saturday 20 July 2019

Be On Your Revolutionary Guard

They always balked at Iran. Even they were not that far removed from sanity. But these are different times. These days, they are.

Against this background, John McDonnell announces the insourcing revolution. Time was when politics used to be about things like that. But the "wrong" people always won the arguments, even if not the parliamentary votes.

Then along came the wars, and the discussion ceased. That was not exactly intentional. But it was more than a mere coincidence.

Still, different times, and all that. It is four years today since Labour whipped an abstention on the Welfare Bill, unwittingly guaranteeing that the only Leadership candidate to vote against, Jeremy Corbyn, would storm to victory among the disgusted members. The rest is history.

And so today, we see an Official Opposition that might oppose a war outright, while at the same time it announces a plan to end the privatisation of public services. Neither of those things would have happened if Corbyn had not been broken that whip to abstain, and then ridden his having done so all the way to 59.5 per cent of the vote for Leader.

A thoroughly spooked Conservative Government is offering significant increases in public sector pay, while Boris Johnson and Jeremy Hunt both propose huge increases in expenditure, in Johnson's case by means of infrastructure projects that are pretty much copied directly from those of McDonnell, whom Johnson affects to hate and fear with a particular passion as a "Marxist". Whereas he calls Corbyn a "semi-Marxist", whatever that may be.

Alas, though, most Labour MPs are, and will remain, economically well to the right of Johnson or even of Hunt. Another hung Parliament is coming, however, and we need our people to hold the balance of power in it. A new party is now in the process of registration.

I will stand for Parliament here at North West Durham even if I can raise only the deposit, which I could do by going pretty overdrawn, although that was not how I was brought up. I would still prefer to raise the £10,000 necessary to mount a serious campaign, but I am no longer making my candidacy conditional on having done so. In any event, please email davidaslindsay@hotmail.com. Very many thanks.

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