Today is the seventy-first birthday of Jeremy Corbyn. Exactly the same people as have lately raised the hackles of Dominic Cummings and his supporters subjected Corbyn to a much more intense version of the same treatment day in and day out for four years. They have still not entirely given up. They never will.
They also screamed the most hysterical abuse at anyone who expressed even the most critical support of him, in my case so critical that I ended up standing against Laura Pidcock at the last General Election. Again, they still do. Again, they always will.
All told, it took them four and a half years to install someone like Keir Starmer as Labour Leader. And now, they have four and half years in which to make him Prime Minister. Not that the zeal of their persecution would be tamed by that. Although the point does need to be reiterated that they are going about it far more gently than they went about the destruction of Corbyn.
The people who are crying like babies about "scum media", now that it is their Leader who is the Blue Tick Brigade's number one target, are the people who wailed for years, and years, and years, again mostly in the Telegraph, after the Countryside March of 2002.
They had been confronted with the most watered down form ever served of the policing of even the slightest expression of dissent in this country. Many of them have still never quite got over the shock. Their only previous experience of the Police had been of men who had functioned as their estate staff, but with the full powers of the State that helpfully paid them.
Hitherto, that has also been pretty much their only experience of the media. But the policing, such as it was, of the Countryside March did not toughen them up. Instead, they just retreated back to the places where life made sense to them, and where it must be said that there has never been the slightest effort to enforce the hunting ban, for which I have never much cared, but which is the law.
This time, though, that option does not present itself. They are never going to get what Diane Abbott got, and still does get. But they have no idea what is about to hit them, and hit them for the rest of their lives.
All told, it took them four and a half years to install someone like Keir Starmer as Labour Leader. And now, they have four and half years in which to make him Prime Minister. Not that the zeal of their persecution would be tamed by that. Although the point does need to be reiterated that they are going about it far more gently than they went about the destruction of Corbyn.
The people who are crying like babies about "scum media", now that it is their Leader who is the Blue Tick Brigade's number one target, are the people who wailed for years, and years, and years, again mostly in the Telegraph, after the Countryside March of 2002.
They had been confronted with the most watered down form ever served of the policing of even the slightest expression of dissent in this country. Many of them have still never quite got over the shock. Their only previous experience of the Police had been of men who had functioned as their estate staff, but with the full powers of the State that helpfully paid them.
Hitherto, that has also been pretty much their only experience of the media. But the policing, such as it was, of the Countryside March did not toughen them up. Instead, they just retreated back to the places where life made sense to them, and where it must be said that there has never been the slightest effort to enforce the hunting ban, for which I have never much cared, but which is the law.
This time, though, that option does not present itself. They are never going to get what Diane Abbott got, and still does get. But they have no idea what is about to hit them, and hit them for the rest of their lives.
No comments:
Post a Comment