MONTHS AFTER THE general election and the spectacle of the Labour Party leadership contest the political circus has still not left town. In fact it seems to have set up a fairly permanent residence. This is mainly down to Labour and the obviously increasing derangement of many of its supporters (mirrored by the despair of others). The conference season brought out the best in its ranks. Best in the Orwellian sense, as in worst.
People walking into the recent Conservative Party conference were met with hostility by “anti-austerity” protestors who shouted abuse, threw various missiles and spat. It wasn’t just politicians who received abuse, it was also Tory party supporters, and journalists. I suspect the minor media furore that followed was down to the fact that the journos themselves had been targeted as the enemy.
Thus it was a journalist, naturally, who provided the best, ie the worst, comment on the spitfest. Zoe Williams of the Guardian says she had “no problem” with it, deploying a variation of the standard leftist argument that we need to understand why people are behaving like this (something to do with exclusion from the debate, or something like that, despite the fact everyone with the vote had a chance to engage decisively in the “debate” known as the general election). When a progressive asks you to understand someone’s actions, they’re asking you to condone them.
When a progressive asks you to understand someone’s actions, they’re asking you to condone them.
Spitting at people who hold differing political views from your own, then, is OK, as is shouting abuse and throwing eggs. OK, that is, if you are on the same side as the protestors (and even if you receive some of that abuse yourself inadvertently, the mob not being very clever at identifying its targets).
Williams has proved great value recently, because in another programme she also expressed her belief that there was indeed a magic “money tree” from which all governments (though most notably Labour) can source the cash for their policies. The money tree being the Bank of England, who can just print more of the stuff when required. As Wilson said of Tony Benn, “he immatures with age”, so the same could be said of our Zoe.
While Williams and associated Corbynites march further down the rabbit hole of happy delusion others find themselves sinking into a void of depression. Dan Hodges believes Corbyn has turned the Labour party into a laughing stock (Corbyn’s first leader’s speech was truly dire), and Nick Cohen says he’s finally given up on the left now that the “half-educated fanatics” are in control.
When any slight deviation from the new dogma earns you the epithet of “Tory scum” from your comrades, you know the situation has turned into a Monty Python sketch, with splitters to the right and spitters to the left.
No wonder people like John Harris are pondering where the movement can go: “In the conference centre, the Conservatives were staking a claim to the future. Outside, the chants went: “We hate Tories.” We know that. What now?”
If you‘re a follower of Corbyn and of a like mind with Williams, you’re on your way to the nuclear-free, borderless republic of the Magic Money Tree where everyone’s much kinder to each other (with the exception of the spitters, possibly).
Or marching further down the rabbit hole of oblivion and unelectability, as the rest of us can see.
