WELL IT WAS A HANDSOME VICTORY with nearly 60 per cent of
the vote. The second preferences did not matter. Jeremy Corbyn, the dishevelled
antidote to the plastic creations of media stylists, and coaches that all the
three main parties employ to brush over their lack of substance, passes Corbyn
by; his indifference is admirable and I hope infectious among other
politicians. These Mandelsonian practices deserve an early burial: tarting-up
before dissembling to the media and the public has been at the centre Peter
Mandelson's Machiavellian art; and was the interior designer of New Labour during
the Blair years and was taken up by New Conservatism under Cameron.
But
this is as far as I will go in agreeing with Corbyn (except, that is, upon the
small matter of our leaving the European Union; which he may yet prove to be
more of a hindrance than a help to that noble cause): those who support this
character repeat time after time that he represents what they refer to as the new politics. You can gain the nature of
his support from the caravans of supporters who follow him about; the
demographic appears to comprise of young, in the main students, or Lefty
baby-boomer's like myself (only during the 1960s and 1970s) who have lived long
enough, and know that there is nothing 'new' in the kind of politics Corbyn is
preaching: while others are probably public sector workers.
I do
not support Corbyn but those of my age (I am 65) who do so are sad figures who
after being shown throughout their lives the failure not only in terms of
socialist economics; but in the suffering and deaths it unleashes upon the
society it governs (which surpasses even those that have died under capitalism),
they still persist in believing there to be fairies at the bottom of the
garden; as will in time, those impressionable young and naive idealists who
voted for Corbyn as the next Labour Party leader.
It is
only the young and naive idealistic students whose lack of awareness or knowledge
of the history of Marxist and democratic socialism; and the ruin it wrought
upon whatever society, usually through revolution it emerged; they are
profoundly ignorant of. There is nothing 'new' about Corbyn's politics.
Ideologically speaking, his socialism has a dark and brutal history. This
Myshkin-like figure that has now been anointed is like all innocents ignorant
of the ways of human nature, sure to add to the sum total of human misery.
Corbyn is not a bad man. His intentions, he believes, will improve (like Hugo
Chavez in Venezuela) the conditions of the common man (once known as the
working class by socialists).
We can
always forgive the young for their ill-mapped views. They are, after all,
young; and because of this we treat them with kid gloves. But I have lived long
enough – long enough to have been a Marxist in my youth who was a member of the
Communist Party of Great Britain; who was emotionally, rather than
intellectually driven by the idea of revolution – although I read copiously
Marxist literature. Historical materialism and the dialectics of nature,
described laughingly by Marx himself as 'scientific' socialism; I absorbed it
like the romantic revolutionary I was. I read such Marxist directed novels as
Sartre's three volumes, Age of Reason,
Jack London's The Iron Heel, and of
course that old Marxist working class favourite, The Ragged Trouser Philanthropist, with its simplistic antidote to
Edwardian capitalism.
JEREMY CORBYN is artlessness writ large.
His ingenuousness has caught the imagination of his supporters who believe,
rightly, that he says what he thinks, and he thinks what he says. Well I would
agree. Corbyn cannot believe where he is: from back-biting his own party
leaders from his own back benches, whether in opposition or in power: he has
now been promoted to a position that could make him prime minister.
Corbyn
has always been the back-bench heckler in the game of politics: at 66 he now
has to become the decision maker rather than the critic of decisions made. His
life will change dramatically from the leisurely existence on the back benches
as an occasional critic of his own party in government. He will now have to put
in many exhaustive hours as leader of his party if he wishes to give his party
any chance of winning the next election. He will become the enemy of 90 percent
of the media whom he made continued critical references to in his victory
speech. If he thinks he can win an election without the support of any part of the
media he had better prepare his party for opposition after the next election.
Even the Guardian refused to back
him. He represents only the gilded 'children of the revolution'[1].
His
speech today was Bennite and could have been presented on any university campus
in the 1960's. There were no new politics; but an attempt by socialism, after Blair's
New Labour, to reassert itself once more with the usual damage that will accompany
it.
As far
as politics are concerned I have never in my 65 years come across a young
generation so ignorant of the nefarious practices of socialism. In its mildest
form, which is within a competitive democracy, where it has to sublimate its
socialist ambition to the will of the people, socialism has had to squander its
social imperiousness to become a mere actor on the democratic stage - thus was
born social democracy. Corbyn is no social democrat or he would have left his
party to join the Social Democratic Party that resulted from the Labour schism
in the 1980s.
Corbyn
is no social-democrat. To him it would be like watering down the socialist
beer; a flavour he believes unsurpassable in taste as far as a true socialist
party is concerned. Corbyn has the true socialist grit – with him you get the
real thing. Corbynomics is fantasy and can drag the country further into ruin
(and at the moment, there is little further to drop).
Jeremy Corbyn, if he ever gains power in this country; then we will need a Cromwell to halt his digression of the UK into the arms of the third world. I do not think for one moment that he will govern this nation unless the Tories fowl up spectacularly. But if through some at first ill-perceived likelihood, he manages the task. Then the UK people will be at war with
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