During the Second World War, and the years of recovery afterwards, much of the world endured privations which, today, are almost unimaginable.  In pre-war UK society it was the norm for families to be ‘nuclear’, with one main source of income.  Post-war many families were without a breadwinner.  Children slept in the drawers of furniture, some went shoeless.  There was severe rationing.  Many were, quite literally, homeless having been ‘bombed out’.  Ordinary people experienced restrictions on their lives and aspirations which make our present use of the term “austerity”, to describe a deliberate political policy, an insult.  I am reminded of Hans Christian Anderson’s tale “The Emperor’s New Clothes”.  In case you don’t know the story, the Emperor is ‘conned’ into paying for, and then actually ‘wearing’, a non-existant suit of clothes during a public parade.  His subjects are cowed into believing the fiction but, eventually, someone takes courage and shouts from the crowd that “the Emperor has no clothes!”

The major difference between post-war austerity and now is that the general population had a clear, in many cases very personal, cause for the pain and a reason to endure it.  During the war the economy was directed, it was not a free market economy, and it was directed to one purpose: winning the war.  The only people who made any money were the arms dealers and black market spivs, and the latter were subject to extreme penalties if caught.  Soon after WW2 the country elected a Labour government which directed the economy to peace, and creating a platform for social equality: universal free education, the NHS, mass social housing, which gave the population a pay-off for the pain. It had a vision of what the country could be like.

The so-called “austerity” of the years after 2008 has been entirely different.  The world financial system collapsed, not under the weight of war but under unsustainable debt created by ‘loadsamoney’ gambling on stock markets and currency speculation (which, by the way, we are still seeing).  Unlike WW2, the cost and pain of our 21^st Century “austerity” has not been borne equally.  The long term pay-off is not at all clear except to those who have imposed it.  It has had no vision other than to deliberately, and nakedly, deconstruct the state’s involvement in directing, and contributing to, the economy.  Its primary driver has been ideological and its aim has been to shift the responsibility of delivering almost all state service functions into the private sector for profit.  As a result, for example, we have burgeoning private health care, housing, prisons, education (for those that can afford them) and, at the same time, the state providers of these services have been systematically starved of resources.  The gaps, where possible, are filled by charities and individual compassion, as demonstrated by those providing 1.6 million food parcels at food banks, proliferating homeless shelters, and crowd-funding for basic school equipment.

In the wake of an unexpected rebuff at a General Election of 2017, and the self-inflicted policy hiatus caused by their Brexit debacle, the Conservatives addressed why so many people didn’t vote for them, by changing leadership ‘style’ and then leader (again).  They do not seem to see, as others can, that if they can change economic policy now, in the run up to another election, they could have changed course before.  If are listening now, why weren’t they listening before – it’s not like they weren’t told?  In my opinion it’s not “austerity” per se that the populace increasingly reject, but the pointlessness of it except for those who have benefitted, and will continue to benefit, from it.  There is still no overarching visionary ‘holy grail’, other than some nebulous notion of “getting Brexit done” and continuing deficit reduction.  There is no gain worth this pain.  The increasing ranks of newly politcised young people, who apparently voted en-masse for something better in 2017, need more than ‘being famous’ to escape the future that has been mapped out for them.

The Conservative leadership simply do not, and cannot, ‘get it’ because they seem to be intellectually, socially, culturally, some even morally, incapable of grasping that we can see Emperor Boris has no clothes.  On Thursday 12th December 2019 they, and we, have the chance to shout “I know who you are, I see you!” – if we have the courage.

You couldn’t make it up.  I almost feel sorry for Theresa May (TM).  Almost.  Since her decision to press ahead with business as usual, in an unbelievably inept statement in front of No 10, the house of cards has started to collapse.  I don’t know if the Conservative ‘grandees’ know what to do for the best: should they let TM carry on for a while or add to the pressure and ease her out?  She’s fatally wounded, but the party top echelons, and the rank and file MPs, need to be reminded THEY voted for her as leader after David Cameron resigned.  As a supporter of Labour the temptation to gloat is overpowering, but we need to be careful.  There is a real risk of economic collapse if the government can’t govern.  A run on the pound isn’t beyond the bounds of possibility.  Foreign investment might desert the UK, not only because of the uncertainty of government, but also of an increasingly uncertain Brexit.  There’s no certainty that another election would help clarify things.

The situation in Northern Ireland is toxic, and made worse by the failed power sharing executive.  Sinn Fein are making hay, but it isn’t a huge leap of the imagination to see paramilitairies on both sides of the sectarian divide taking advantage (with or without encouragement of their political ‘wings’).

Who would take her place?  I hear the usual pro-Boris Johnson sentiment, but he seems like an accident waiting to happen (again, and again).  He appeared on camera yesterday (having been confirmed as Foreign Secretary) looking, frankly, like he’d been dug out of a rugby club booze-up rather than holder of one of the highest posts in the country.  Not Gove (whom he hates and May sacked in favour of Boris Johnson).  I think we might see TM ‘crack’ under the pressure (really or as an excuse) sooner rather than later and I don’t see the party going for someone young and untried in the perilous condition we find ourselves in.  I think we might see Sir Michael Fallon, currently Defence Secretary, step forward (with all due humility) and accept the heavy burden of office he didn’t seek.  If you believe that, you believe in Father Christmas.  All in all it’s a disaster, and while I can say “serves you right”, it’s really worrying.

 

Well, I was wrong about the 2017 general election, and am happy to admit it.  Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party did a lot better than many expected.  My own predictions were pretty accurate, though; first of all I predicted the election would happen in 2017.  Secondly I predicted a Tory win, but without a clear majority.  I did expect the SNP would drop a few seats from its historic near monopoly in Scotland, but did not see the big resurgence of Tory vote there coming (without which we might be looking at a left-of-centre coalition not a right-of centre one).  I did predict a ‘coalition’, but I thought it would be with the LibDems again (despite what the LibDems were saying publicly, they had ‘form’).  Instead we’ve got the Ulster Unionists propping up the Tories, which is a pretty frightening prospect – I’ll write about this later in this post.

I was wrong about Jeremy Corbyn’s ability to reach the public.  As the campaign went on he did better and better; he played to his strength of public speaking and getting out into the country.  Even with the help of some blatant lies, a lot of hostile and smearing press coverage and, it has to be said, subtle (perhaps institutional) bias in the BBC, Theresa May showed she couldn’t do it, if anything she was worse than Jeremy Corbyn.  She couldn’t campaign, and being unwilling to debate and being seen to only speak at carefully staged meeting of party activists, she seemed detached, even aloof.  She provided an unlimited supply of ammuniton for a well organised social media campaign against her.

Good ‘on the stump’, Jeremy Corbyn did less well on camera, and showed he isn’t as fleet of foot as he needs to be – as has been seen time after time at Prime Minister’s Questions in th House of Commons.  Why is this important?  Well, for a couple of reasons.  First, Theresa May cannot survive as PM beyond (perhaps even up to) the end of the Brexit negotiations.  You can almost hear the knives being sharpened.  The timing of her departure is entirely dependent on how well the Brexit negotiations are perceived to be going. Her replacement is unlikely to be as inept or non-combative at the next election.  I predict another election will be fought at the time the Brexit negotiations are concluded – 18 months for Labour to get its act together. The Conservatives will not make the mistakes they did this time round.  Realising they shot themselves in the foot with an ill-considered manifesto, they already realise a more collegiate approach to policy forming is required.  Labour can’t count on many more ‘own goals’ from them.

Secondly, the secret weapon of Corbyn’s unassailable integrity can only last so long; the young and first time voters go ‘off the boil’ quickly.  They must be encouraged to remain active, engaged and ready to vote.  The part of the Labour party that tried to dump Corbyn and then, when they failed, turned its back on him, must rue the fact that he took them to within a whisker of victory.  They must be thinking “if only”, especially those that came close to, but failed, to winning a seat.  It’s good to see a few of his detractors have publicly recanted.

Now, to the ‘unholy alliance’ with the DUP.  The LibDems stuck to their, broadly, anti-Brexit stance and said “No deals”.  The only others left standing with enough votes to keep Theresa’s Tories in power are the DUP, The Democratic Unionist Party of Northern Ireland.  During the election, one of the smears repeatedly thrown at Jeremy Corbyn was his alleged sympathy with the IRA (and others).  Even though this was shown to be misreported and taken out of context, some of that stuck.  The DUP are the political representatives of Ulster “Loyalism”:  their power also grows from the barrel of the gun, they are to the Ulster Freedom Fighters and the Ulster Volunter Force (etc.) what Sinn Fein is to the IRA.  After the so-called Good Friday Agreement, which brought an end to open armed conflict between Loyalists and Republicans in Northern Ireland, known as “the Troubles”, the two sides came together in a devolved power-sharing Northern Ireland Assembly.  This institution collapsed just before the UK election was called, resulting in an election in Northern Ireland which has, so far, failed to restore functioning government there.  Suspicion and anger has returned, open (and armed) hostility might be only just around the corner.  Sinn Fein has 7 members elected to the UK parliament, but they have consistently refused to take those seats becuase they don’t recognise the authority of the institution over Northern Ireland (which they see as properly part of the whole of Ireland), and refuse to take an oath of allegiance to the Queen.  How will Sinn Fein see the inclusion of its ‘mortal enemy’ in the government apparatus of Westminster?  They have, for years, believed the UK government is secretly “in cahoots” with the Loyalists. They are bound to think that the DUP is going to get concessions, and help, in exchange for keeping the UK Government afloat.  Even if they don’t really think this to be true, they are going to say it.  They have a constituency to maintain and you can imagine guns being dug up and oiled, on both sides, already.

In the context of an already extreme security threat, from ISIS etc., the last thing our already overstretched security services need is another, this time internal, threat to deal with.  The broader implications of this election result are therefore very, very worrying. “Strong and Stable” was Theresa May’s ‘tag line’; if nowhere other than Northern Ireland, things look considerably less stable.  And, as for strong….?

 

Having watched the televised, separate, public ‘interviews’ with Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn, last night, I don’t know whether to be in despair or incandescent with anger.

I feel despair because, once again, Jeremy Corbyn showed why he is seen as unelectable as Prime Minister, even by some Labour supporters.  I’m a Labour supporter, and sometime activist and member of the Labour Party, but even I was unconvinced – and I voted for him as leader.  I cringed.  He did well on his firmest ground, unfairness, inequalities, lost opportunities: the socialist agenda.  He was utterly hopeless on defence and, especially, nuclear weapons.  He proved totally unable to step away from his principled stand, which is broadly that of a disarmer, into the here and now.  Instead of ducking the question and making weak (if correct) statements about avoiding conflict with dialogue, he could have pointed to Britain’s membership of NATO.  He could have said that, although our weapons are (questionably) independent they would, in reality, never be used outside of the NATO treaty.  He could also have said that many members of NATO do not have nuclear weapons.  He could have said that the UK’s nuclear weapons are a deterrent, not a first strike weapon and that, if they were to be used then the whole theory of deterrence would have failed.  He could have said that, as a last resort, they might have to be used.  He couldn’t have said, though it is true, that the UK has continued to develop other, equally horrible, weapons.  He could have made more of the passing reference to the Conservatives having eviscerated our military capability.  He could have mentioned the obscenity of food banks; he could have said a lot, but he’s not fleet of foot, not a cut-and-thrust, counter-punching, ‘street fighter’.  He’s too nice, and his unwillingness to answer a binary question just looked ‘shifty’, but his tenedency to look perplexed and irritated by some questioners was damaging too.  It was absolutely not good enough to answer a question, however loaded, about policy detail by telling the questioner to read the manifesto!  For one thing, it seemed like he didin’t know the answer himself.

I feel anger because, despite Theresa May having showed just how patronising, uncaring and unconnected she is, she will still be Prime Minister on June 9th.  Faced with personal and harrowing evidence of the impact of her, and the 2010/15, Conservative government’s, austerity policies all she could say is “I’m not going to make excuses (for bad treatment) but hard choices had to be made.”  Hard choices like funding cuts in Corporation tax by taking away benefits from disabled people?  She doesn’t know what ‘hard’ is: try having to decide between feeding your children or keeping them warm.  That’s a hard choice.  We know that money doesn’t grow on trees, Treeze, but what you do with the money available is what’s at issue here.

I’m in despair because the Labour Party ‘heavyweights’ have, for the most part, been invisible and unheard throughout the campaign so far.  The 2017 General Election could go down as the Labour Party’s worst own goal in history.  It’s not about Corbyn, it’s about Labour, you selfish dummies!  What a waste.  If only….

You know the sort of thing I mean by Train Wreck TV.  “Epic Fails” on YouTube, or those tittilating films that sit at the side of your Facebook page, offering vicarious enjoyment of some poor person’s misfortune.  That’s what it feels like with the Labour Party at the moment: you can’t watch, but you can’t help yourself.  It’s a gruesome fascination with the inevitable bloody outcome.

Unusually, we have had local government elections just before a general election.  The result seems to have indicated that a Corbyn-led Labour Party is seen as unelectable, even by many natural Labour supporters, and are likely to be heavily defeated on June 8th.  The extraordinary thing about this, and I’ve seen it expressed in vox-pop interviews with these disappointed Labour supporters, is that much of the belief of Corbyn’s “unelectability” is based on false perceptions.  Just the other day I saw a clearly distressed life-long Labour supporter say that he could no longer vote Labour because Jeremy Corbyn was anti-Brexit!  As far as I know, if anything, Jeremy Corbyn was for Brexit: at most he was ambivalent during the Brexit campaigning.  So, where did that impression come from?  Along with much else negative about the Labour Party, it comes from a very slick Conservative election machine.

It is clear, from what we have seen of the campaign already, that the decision to call an election was anything BUT a snap decision.  The Conservatives have been preparing for this for weeks, if not months, and have hit the ground running.  Labour, on the other hand, have been caught out because they are so busy navel gazing that they ignored the signs, and the warnings, that an early General Election was a very predictable outcome of the Brexit referendum last June.

The saving grace, if there is one, is that an unrestrained right-wing Tory government will feel it can do anything…until the country runs into the buffers of Brexit in 18 months time.  That’s only 18 months to realign the left and prepare for another general election.  Let’s hope that, by then, they learn that UK elections are not just about ideas, but votes; not about integrity but learning how to fight dirty; not about unpicking what your opponents say they will do but what they actually have done.  As well as projecting their vision of an alternative Britain, Jeremy Corbyn and the present Labour party leadership should be banging on about what the Torys have already done in the last 7 years.  The only hope they have of staving off a landslide, and having a sizeable left of centre contingent of MPs, is to wake the electorate up to the unvarnished, un-airbrushed, history of Conservative rule since 2010.  Collapsing NHS, collapsed social care, schools closing or overcrowded, teachers leaving, roads full of potholes, homelessness and food banks rising etc., etc.  The tragedy is that many of those who have been directly and personally affected by these failures have been successfuly gulled into believing it has all been the fault of the EU and, especially, immigrants.  Only one week after Parliament has been dissolved, starting the general election properly, the Conservatives have again wheeled out immigration as a major policy issue.  Classic distract, divide and rule tactics. In the absence of a Labour election manifesto, despite there having been a Labour Party conference last autumn where policy is supposed to be decided, the Conservatives are recycling Labour policy pledges from 2015, which they then derided as Marxist, or unaffordable, and claiming them as evidence of their own inclusiveness.

While Theresa May complained that the EU was trying to interfere in the UK election, actually the election of Emanual Macron, an avowedly pro-European and pro-globalisation politician, as president of France plays very nicely into the Conservative general election plan.  They can claim, and already have, that this is proof that Theresa May must be returned with a strong mandate, otherwise a reinvigorated French-led EU will roll over the UK in the formal Brexit negotiations.  Theresa May can now pose as Britannia going into battle with the nasty ‘Frenchies”, while keeping the UKIP vote on-side.  Theresa May was against Brexit and yet has managed to convince the electorate she was not!

I despair that the present Labour leadership have not understood the lessons that crystalized in the Brexit vote: politics is visceral.  Much of the British electorate is not fair minded, it’s not calm and reasoned, it’s not politically correct, it’s not well informed.  It’s no use appealing to the altruism of the British electorate because much of it is self-interested. Thatcher saw that when, in 1987, she said “there is no such thing as society”.  She was, in a real sense, quite right because she was in the process of creating the sort of “loadsamoney”, “me first”, “pull the ladder up” kind of country where people would vote this week for whatever gave them the best deal, and next week for something else, but meantime (and in the longer term) to hell with everyone else: a kind of ‘U Switch’, ‘Go Compare’ approach to politics.  If I could, I would weep.

Mostly I would weep about the Labour leadership’s failure to see the world as it is, and deal with that, rather than wish in some nebulus way that it (and the voter) was thoughtful, decent, different and ‘nice’.  It’s no use wishing it doesn’t matter to the electorate what you wear, how your hair looks, whether your teeth are white and regular, and whether you look the part.  It just does: our entire economy is based on us embracing aspirational materialism.  Even to those with nothing, those who might be considered fertile ground for the Labour message, it does matter what you wear, what sort of house you live in, whether you have the ‘right’ car, and whether you look tired and half asleep in interviews. The campaign opening Conservative sound-bite slogan, “strong and stable leadership” and coalition of chaos” is as specious as it is effective.  It has been delivered at every opportunity, and in any context, even in presenting bananas to Jeremy Corbyn on the street.  Done on camera for the benefit of the BBC, who dutifully kept showing it as ‘entertaining’, it neatly kept the slogan in the public mind and linked ‘bananas’ with Jeremy Corbyn: for those who forget, ‘bananas’ is a colloquial synonym for ‘mad’.  Perhaps the Labour Party should turn each Conservative slogan in on itself as soon as it appears…”Mean and Nasty”  “Attacking the weak”…etc., etc. but I’m afraid Jeremy Corbyn doesn’t do ‘snappy’ and every question, instead of being met with a binary, yes / no answer, gets a reasoned discussion.  He doesn’t even seem to do passionate and angry, which plays to the Conservative-portrayed image of weakness.

So, I expect a new Conservative slogan every week.  Labour is, and will remain, on the back foot.  It’s as if the Labour leadership see this sort of “professionalism” in campaigning as somehow dirty, and part of all that is wrong with politics.  Well, it is wrong, and I want a different world too, but I know I’m not ever going to get it at a UK election.  The naivity is staggering.  I also weep for the constituents of the many experienced, electable, Labour MPs who appear to have left their leader ‘hanging out to dry’.  In being disloyal to him they have also been massively disloyal to their movement and the hundreds of thousands of do-or-die supporters up and down the country. They, at least, deserve to lose their jobs.

Whichever it is, more interesting questions are whether she will still be Prime Minister at the end of 2020 and whether Jeremy Corbyn will still lead the Labour Party.  In the case of the former, much depends on Brexit.  As things stand, at time of writing anyway, the whole Brexit project is looking increasingly ‘flaky’.  The EU negotiators are pointing out with increasing frequency, and bluntness, that the UK postion and attitude is unrealistic to the point of denial.  Over the next 18 months the economy looks like an inflationary one, with pressures on domestic budgets already rising.  There is no more room for manoeuvre because, since the “world-wide financial crash”, we have already seen the exchequer squeeze every last penny out of public services until the social infrastructure is in tatters.  The pips haven’t just squeaked, they’ve liquidised.

The Liberal Democrats, the Greens, and the Scot Nats are all pushing for a ‘soft’ or even non-Brexit.  If it all goes horribly wrong, the Torys have form in back-stabbing their leaders, however popular they may have been, but actually it is Jeremy Corbyn that is most like a dead man walking: in fact he is ‘undead’, a political zombie.  Whatever one thinks of his programme, his personal ethics, and his integrity, it is clear after 3 weeks of the snap-election campaign that he has been left to fight this election on his own.  So far the only Labour spokespersons have been John Macdonald (shadow chancellor) and Diane Abbott.  The latter is a public relations disater in that she is not liked by the population at large and is prone to gaffes.

Where were the Labour party’s heavyweights?  Why didn’t they speak?  I guess because, having failed twice to unseat Corbyn by internal ‘democracy’, they hope the wider electorate will do the job for them by delivering a crushing defeat on 8th June.

This is unforgivable; by not fighting hard for the Labour ‘ticket’ they are consigning the working classes and the disadvantaged to at least 5 more years of Tory rule, and this time unfettered.  The Liberal Democrats, having paid the price of an uncomfortable coalition in the Cameron-led government by getting hammered in 2015, won’t make that mistake again.  They know they can’t win but, pointing to Labour disarray, have pitched themselves as the only viable opposition party to a Tory majority government.

In the immediate foreground, as a sort of ‘trailer’ for the General Election, we’ve just had local government, and regional mayoral, elections.  It is true to say that local elections are unreliable as an indicator of the national electoral mood; for one thing the voter turnout in the former is typically much lower than the latter. However, this time, I think it is safe to say the poor showing of the Labour Party is, if anything, likely to under-predict their impending humiliation in June because I doubt the Labour Party will manage to get its voters out.  The traditional Labour voters who deserted for Brexit and UKIP are unlikely to return to the fold.  Tory tails are up, Labout tails are dragging, and yet Jeremy Corbyn is merely expressing “disappointment” at the poor local election result.

Disappointment?  Man up, Jeremy, it’s an effing disaster.  He says he has 4 weeks to get his message across:  4 weeks?  Jeremy you’ve had two years, what difference will 4 weeks make?  In my opinion it is so bad that the only useful thing he can do to turn things around is to step down and give the electorate that 4 weeks to find belief in an alternative leader.  Barring an act of God that’s not going to happen, so I would go as far as saying would-be Labour voters should, as an act of damage limitation, vote for whoever is likely to stop a Tory being elected in their constituency.

 

Well, there’s a surprise!  Not.  A General Election has been ‘sprung’ on us, the UK, dated 8th June.  Seven weeks of lies, half-truths and the slickly manipulated media storm of professional politics.  Yeuch!  Many things really piss me off about all this, but it’s the way the manipulators assume we can’t see what they are doing that really gets me riled up.  It’s made worse for me by the fact that many people really don’t see they are being sold a crock, and don’t want to know.  Nobody will thank you for being told they are, and have been, gullible (Jeremy Corbyn please note).

At time of starting this blog, we are only 72hours into the campaign and already we see the same old staged photo-opportunity and the repetitive ‘sound bites’.  Mostly from the leader of the Conservatives, but other political parties are available.  And they know it works: just gather up a handful of enthusiastic supporters and dole out besloganned placards to be a backdrop to the leader on camera for the Six o’clock news.  The news media are complicit in this fiction too: if the camera occasionally pulled back to a wide view from time to time we’d get a more realistic picture of support and enthusiam, with ordinary folk just drifting by a knot of noisy accolytes.  But no, almost a year on from the Brexit referendum, people are shown in vox-pop interviews still mindlessly regurgitating slogans they swallowed back then.  It’s was all lies, and it’s still all lies.  Look at what they do, not what they say.  We’ve seen what they do, even with a slender majority.

Let’s be clear about this; the Conservatives have been in power for 7 (seven) years, not one.  They have already presided over the collapse of the NHS, the education system, the care system and the welfare benefits system, the evisceration of the defence establishment, the failure of the prison system and, at the same time, giving  tax bungs to the already very rich and corporate Britain.  And then there’s the immigration issue which underlay much of the support for Brexit:  may I remind you, dear reader, who was the longest ever serving Home Secretary and cabinet minister responsible for law and order, security and immigration during that time?  Yes!  It was Theresa May!  And yet TM has the brass ringed neck to say her government is about stability and experience while a vote for anyone else is sabotage and a recipe for disaster.  How very dare she??!!  She even has the gall to say that the alternative to another 5 years of Conservative governance is a coalition of chaos, a thinly veiled swipe at a possible coalition of left-wing interest between Greens, the SNP, Labour and others.  Excuse me Mrs May, but which party was it that entered a coalition with the LibDems for the first five years of this government?  Oh yes, the Conservatives! And with narrow majorities they’ve been only too glad to draw on parliamentary support from some distinctly grubby, and extreme, quarters   During that first five years they continually blamed the outgoing Labour government for having to carry out “slash and burn” austerity, which they were really loving, and given the chance have every intention of pursuing further.  Remember the “Big Society”?  Cameron’s slogan which covered the wholesale shift of state support for services onto the shoulders of those least equipped to carry it.  Thousands of police officers lost, so that the detection (clear-up) rate for crime is 16%.  More people in prison than ever before, with fewer officers to look after them.  Rehabilitation?  Forget it.  Remember the big educational opportunities of Academies and Free Schools?  Many have closed or are failing.  Never mind that idea, let’s have more Grammar schools instead. Care Homes and Care providers backing out of contracts left and right while carers on the minimum wage are run ragged from house to house.  Excellent military aircraft like the Harrier and Nimrod scrapped so we can eventually buy worse back from America.  Aircraft carriers scrapped to be replaced with another £8 billion worth – as yet to sail. “State of the art” destroyers with engines that failed and had to be replaced.  Historically low levels of house building, and even that pitiful level of completions is mostly in the private, homes for sale, sector.  Affordable housing?  What’s that?

Let’s not get into the obscenity of food banks (almost so commonplace as to be unremarkable now), the inexorable rise in homelessness, the assault on the disadvantaged and disabled, and on pensions.  Is it any wonder many of our young aspire to fame and celebrity as a way of living a better life.  And where is money going?  The “deficit” is down, but borrowing (both state and personal) is up!  Amongst other places, let’s not forget nuclear power stations and High Speed Rail (HS2).  Don’t be misled.  The people sitting round the cabinet table with TM, and their advisers, are the same people that were there under Cameron. And now they expect us to believe they disavow it all, deny any responsibility.  “It’s all going to be better now, trust us.”  Again? Really?  Who are you kidding?

I could go on, and on, but if you’re going to vote, please don’t be conned into thinking it’s about Brexit, OK?  Despite the fact that many of the pre-referendum warnings are coming true, it’s been agreed (and voted for by Labour).  It’s going to happen. If Brexit has any place in this General Election at all it is because we deparately need to rein in the hard-line “Brexit at all costs” lobby – because a cliff-edge Brexit will do nothing for anyone but the financially secure and internationally mobile.

As a natural Labour supporter I have no problem with Jeremy Corby’s policies, or his personal honesty and integrity.  Unfortunately elections in a modern so-called democracy are not won on policy or integrity.  Look no further than America for proof of that.  Who even remembers Bernie Sanders?  He gave Hilary Clinton a good run for her money but lost, and so did she.  Democratic elections, in a mature (?) democracy like ours, are won by appealing to narrow personal interests, prejudice, political ignorance and character assassination.

If the last 7 years have proved anything positive, it is the capacity for ordinary people to reach out to help others, even when increasingly under the screw themselves.  However, as I see it, other than committed supporters of Labour, there is little hope of a Labour Party fronted by Jeremy Corbyn and John Macdonald persuading enough voters to win.  I fear the hordes of politically ambivalent, opportunist, or plain stay-at-home voters, will return another right-wing coalition with the Lib-Dems.  Remember, you read it here first.