Wake up PLP and all those that
support your futile quest for ‘Similia Similibus Curantur’ – that is the theory
that "likes are cured by likes". Donald Trump’s election provides
ample evidence for the polar opposite.
Over the past 30/35 years the
Labour Party has deliberately moved further and further rightward to try to occupy
‘the middle ground’. Problem is the ‘middle ground’ became an ever rightward shifting
sand which was, ironically, actually helped along by the Labour Party’s slow
but absolute correlational abandonment of any semblance of any meaningful ‘red water’
opposition and tangible alternative solutions. In fact that rightward move has all too
often (far too often for me) been openly condoned and sometimes (unbelievably) even applauded by Labour in opposition and when in government.
By simple virtue of the fact that the majority of the PLP seem to have accepted wholeheartedly a perceived ‘need’ to move ever rightward and thus ever deeper into Tory territory they offered little or no opposition to the increasing neo-liberal lunacy so loved by a Tory Party that itself is moving into political territory that Oswald Mosley would recognise as a dream realised. However, that ‘shifting sand’ has become a quicksand and the Labour Party were sinking fast. Then came along Jeremy Corbyn and the revolt of a Labour Party membership long abandoned spiritually and democratically. They had finally had enough.
By simple virtue of the fact that the majority of the PLP seem to have accepted wholeheartedly a perceived ‘need’ to move ever rightward and thus ever deeper into Tory territory they offered little or no opposition to the increasing neo-liberal lunacy so loved by a Tory Party that itself is moving into political territory that Oswald Mosley would recognise as a dream realised. However, that ‘shifting sand’ has become a quicksand and the Labour Party were sinking fast. Then came along Jeremy Corbyn and the revolt of a Labour Party membership long abandoned spiritually and democratically. They had finally had enough.
If the global (not just American)
political scene that has been emerging for a few years now reveals nothing else
it is openly displaying the fact that people have had enough of the ‘same old
same old’. They want change and they want it now. It is an urgency born of desperation
that has seen the great American public being pushed to the unenviable and dangerous point where they
have elected what some would consider the lesser of two evils and a man that is unashamedly psychopathic, misogynistic, racist, and morally bankrupt to lead them for at least the next four years. People have simply had enough. They
can take no more. Please listen to their voices Blue Labour – they are telling
a very simple tale, and one that you need to listen to.
That increasing want for
alternatives; for change; for newness; and for some semblance of justice is
embodied, whether you like it or not, in Jeremy Corbyn and his huge and evolving
following. It’s not a ‘cult of Corbyn’ or a ‘Trotsky takeover’ and those
following his lead are definitely not "rabble" or “Nazi Stormtroopers”. They are people
desperate for ‘different’, for justice, for change, and change for the better.
It’s time to get behind him, and
not with knives to plant in his back any more. Even if you think he’s a
terrible Leader, or a mad man that lives in the past, or indeed, anything else
it really does not matter one single iota.
Not to him, his followers or the general public. They just don’t care
what you think of him. What they do care about is what’s happening to them and
their families that has been brought about by the gigantic injustices deliberately
built into the system that is neo-liberalism. An economic and political philosophy
that grips them tight in what they can clearly see as a nonsense, and flung at
them with the political claptrap - “no alternative”. It cannot; it must
not go on.
Same old same old won’t do any
more. If for nothing but your own sakes – PLEASE WAKE UP!
Graeme Beard.
