07 September 2017
Diary of a Corbynista
Silly Season-Back to Skool Edition
by Don Urquhart
9 August
Health Minister Philip Dunne announced a small increase in the number of doctors to be trained and majors on offering opportunities to people from poorer backgrounds. It’s hard enough to get any good candidates so why introduce a social engineering component?
10 August
NHS Digital reports that the amount of NHS Land earmarked for sale has doubled in a year. 117 of the sites are currently being used for clinical purposes. This is asset stripping on a grand scale, rivalling Gordon Brown’s gold bullion disposal.
11 August
Trump’s latest broadsides at Kim Jong-Un were fired from his local golf course. Some things are more important than avoiding Armageddon.
13 August
Whereas Trump boasts that he will eradicate Islamist extremism from the face of the Earth, he seems much more relaxed about the Ku Klux Klan and other fascist groups. They turned up in Charlottesville armed and ready to injure and kill.
15 August
The British Government has come up with the notion of a temporary customs union after Brexit. They have long resorted to gimmicks when they are short of policies. In this country they can distribute dead cats freely over the tables, but the EU will be unimpressed.
18 August
Sarah Champion seems a very likeable person. She resigned as Shadow Equalities Minister over a Sun article which quoted her as saying that Pakistani men were abusing young white women. She claims to have been misquoted. For me her crime was going anywhere near the Sun. Sajid Javid accuses Jeremy Corbyn of stifling free speech and there are queues of people blaming him for something or other in respect of Champion’s resignation.
20 August
Professor Patrick Minford is a leading light of Economists for Free Trade. This group is advocating unilateral removal of tariffs post Brexit. Leading up to the referendum Professor Minford opined that Brexit would destroy British manufacturing but now thinks it will give our manufacturing a big boost. My personal view of the economic impact of Brexit has never altered – I do not have the first clue. And I have yet to encounter an economist whose analysis is superior to mine.
21 August
Surely it’s not just me. Our Brexit department is publishing a strategy that will “move things forward”. The EU negotiators are saying that the initial issues have not been resolved. The two sides have completely different agendas. David Davis is just trying to look busy – as if he is taking the battle to the EU. What on Earth is going on? Where are the grown-ups?
22 August
An initiative a day. That seems to be David Davis’ approach. Yesterday it was a paper about how to deal with legal disputes. The EU has already issued a position paper and still insists that the divorce bill, rights of EU citizens and the Irish border have to be sorted before the ongoing relationship is discussed. Much is being said for domestic consumption on both sides. Is Davis trying to throw the EU off balance with his “initiatives” or is it just an Up Yours Delors retrospective for the Sun readers?
23 August
Donald Trump says he appreciates Kim’s apparent new found respect for the USA. He speaks fluent gibberish.
25 August
Chuka Umunna leads a cross-party anti-Brexit group of MP’s. He is a member of the Labour Party and his proposals are quite close to official party policy, although he seems more concerned with creating a role for himself than supporting his party. Scratch the surface of Anna Soubry, Ken Clarke or Heidi Allen and you will find a Tory more implacably opposed to Jeremy Corbyn than to Brexit. That is the company he is keeping.
26 August 2017
The GCSE results announced this week show unexpected outcomes in English and Maths. The exams have apparently become more difficult and the grading has changed to employ numbers rather than letters. Some schools will show much worse results than previously and their leaders fear recriminations from the Department of Education. This latter institution has promised merciful treatment. What kind of education system is it that makes eccentric changes to curricula time and again and inspires fear among the educators that their results might not find favour among the bureaucrats? Kim Jong-Un would feel at home.
27 August
Sir Keir Starmer proposes that in the “transition” period, the UK should remain in the Single Market and the Customs Union. This is now official Labour Party policy. For some time he has been saying that we should aim to negotiate terms outside the EU as favourable as those we have now. He is edging towards a second referendum, but cannot say this as it puts the Labour Party at odds with the will of the people as expressed in the June 2016 vote.
29 August
Graham Stringer, the Labour MP for Blackley and Broughton, tells us that Sir Keir Starmer’s espousal of a transition period whereby the UK remains in the Single Market and the Customs Union flies in the face of the official Labour Party policy. Thank goodness for Mr Stringer and his like. This means we are due for a lively Labour Party Conference where we can establish whether he or Sir Keir is the more authentic voice of the party on Brexit. I assume that the man Umunna will be creeping round fringe meetings, stirring his particular brew.
30 August
Kezia Dugdale resigned as leader of the Scottish Labour Party. Whatever her personal qualities, this is great news for the Labour Party. In her resignation letter she emphasises her love for the Labour Party and also her own personal achievements within it. Sadly she will be most remembered for her failure to support the national leader when a united Scottish party might have swung the 2017 election.
31 August
In Kyoto, Theresa May reports that she will lead the Tories into the 2022 General Election. Well, you never know. It’s a funny old game. Arsène Wenger might still be Arsenal manager this time next year. It will all depend on results. For Theresa May it will come down to the perceived success or otherwise of Brexit, and, like Arsenal’s form, this is on a downward trajectory.
1 September
The Brexit negotiations are becoming ever more confrontational. Liam Fox accuses Brussels of trying to blackmail the UK. Barnier and Verhofstadt hold to the line that the EU position has always been transparent whereas the British position is shrouded in ambiguity. The football transfer deadline usually has last minute deals from apparently intransigent positions. Not so with the expected Sanchez transfer from the Arsenal to Manchester City. That one fell off a cliff edge and I can’t see any of the parties benefiting.
2 September
St Olave’s is a grammar school in Orpington. In order to protect its position in the league tables it expelled students who had not done well enough in the A1 examinations taken after the first year in the 6th form. Parents threatened legal action to enable their children to complete their A Levels and the school backed down, the decision being announced quaintly by the Diocese of Rochester. That’s how we do education these days.
4 September
Michel Barnier has it as his mission to educate the British people about the cost of leaving the European Union. He is not out to punish us. But his euphemisms recall the days when we would execute admirals every now and then “pour encourager les autres”.
5 September
“My patience is now at an end”. Thus Adolf Hitler before invading Czechoslovakia ostensibly to protect the interests of Sudeten Germans. US Ambassador, Nikki Haley told the United Nations that her country did not want war but its patience was not unlimited.
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