Corbyn Says The ‘N’ Word

I don’t have a great deal of interest in the Labour leadership battle. It’s a bit like the Junior Championship at Wimbledon: maybe the stars of tomorrow, but you’re probably watching also-rans. Whoever wins the leadership is almost certainly only a steward until they have some semblance of a chance of winning. Some modern-day Neil Kinnock few will remember.

I started thinking about what we can expect to happen in the next election, because if you’re investing in a pension a ten year view is not really that long a time.

Labour is really two parties now. They haven’t come to that conclusion yet themselves, but they are. One is the grass roots Socialist Party that probably a minority would support, and the more widely supported New Labour, with its basically centre-right policies that typified Multi-Millionaire Socialist and untried war criminal Tony Blair’s government. Blair is encouraging Labour to do more of what he did, but I think he knew it was a one-off and he raped the Labour party in order to fulfil his narcissism.

The problem that Labour has now is that if they don’t split then they can’t possibly draw enough voters to win on a FPTP basis. If they split I’m not convinced they can either, at least not in 2020. Maybe in 2025 they might make more of a showing, but I still doubt they’ll win based on what we know now. Combined, a Socialist Labour and New Labour might come second.

With their two conflicting ideologies they just can’t win. They can only issue pronouncements that make people who were going to vote Labour anyway vote Labour. Perhaps they will use more of a flourish as they mark their ballot papers is all. If Labour moves more towards Corbyn’s camp they will disillusion those on the right of their supporters, and vice versa.

Corbyn said the ‘N’ word the other day. It was a while coming, but hardly a surprise when he said it. Nationalisation. There, now he’s made me say it. Why is it that people in politics are so reactionary? Where are the visionaries? We invented most of modern life in this country and yet all they can do is suggest we turn back the clock to reinstate things we know didn’t work. The ‘N’ word is exactly what the Big C wanted to hear. No threat to the Tories if the ‘N’ word is out there. And I don’t think there is any danger to them. Of course it may appeal to the younger voters because they don’t remember how utterly rubbish and over-priced BT were. Remember paying £1 a minute to call Australia? Do you think it would be 1p/min if there was still a monopoly?

So the point is we now have not a two-party system, but a de facto one-party system. I don’t see how the Tories can lose in the foreseeable future. It will take Labour at least ten years to be viable if they bite the bullet and split, otherwise who knows. The Greens will take a generation to get enough seats without PR. Same goes for any other parties. Someone said the LibDems are still around. I’m not sure I believe that! I certainly haven’t seen one lately.

So I’m assuming that things carry on as they are. The Tories in charge, which should mean a favourable climate for investors and none of our privatisation shares should be taken off us.

The Tories have a USP that Labour can’t offer. They offer hope to the aspirational voter. You can hope that in the future you will be more successful and will want a government that will help you succeed and prosper. Labour, by contrast offer hope to failures. I can’t think that’s compelling. “Oh, I’m going to vote Labour because I think I’m going to do really badly in the future”. Where’s the aspiration in that? They offer hope to the lazy, and unfair advantage at our expense to the unproductive, and most importantly, they reward the irresponsible.

The way to a stable economic and social future is a bigger and burgeoning middle class. Presently, only the Tories can offer that.