12 November 2020

Diary of a Corbynista

Socialists up a blind alley.

By Don Urquhart

4 November

CNN reporting of the presidential election knocks spots off the BBC’s efforts. Perhaps that is to be expected but the gulf in quality is such that it makes me reflect on whether I want to keep paying the licence fee. As well as disappointing in terms of quality, the BBC’s political reporting is biased. I have to look on YouTube or the net to find middle of the road commentators like Novara Media, The Canary, Double Down News or Byline Times.

5 November

Question Time had American actress Rose McGowan on to talk about the Presidential Election. She made the very good point that her country is not run by politicians but by an oligarchy of corporate interests.

When asked to chip in on our pandemic issues, she expressed confusion that we should have set a date (December 2^nd) for the lockdown to end. Fighting Covid is boxing with a ghost she said. More sensible than our home grown talking heads.

6 November

In The Guardian, Elisabeth Sibele extols the virtues of child labour in Africa:

Child labour doesn’t have to be exploitation – it gave me life skills

Perhaps she is missing the point, rather like a very nice lady wearing a lovely dress and asked by her friend where she had obtained it.

It comes from Bangladesh.

But surely they are all sewn by young children.

I know….but they’re very careful.

7 November

I have a number of good friends who are supporters of Tottenham Hotspur. We can rib each other quite amicably about the characteristics of their team and mine which is the Arsenal. I used to be a season ticket holder and was regularly criticised for taking too objective a view of the refereeing and the opposition. My wife and I were once in the Highbury North Bank when a propos of nothing the chant went up “Stand up if you hate Totnum”. We remained seated and were glowered at. My wife explained: “I don’t hate them, I pity them”. They glowered even harder while also looking confused.

Many times I have overheard conversations about the North London rivalry where visceral hatred replaced any kind of intellectual activity. This used to boil over into crowd trouble at games until all-seaters were made mandatory.

I was reminded of this today when watching the scenes of Trump supporters either demanding the starting or stopping of the count, and in fact turning up with guns at the Philadelphia vote count center; even more so by the utterances of reporters on Fox News denouncing Democrats for every possible electoral crime as we football fans used to traduce anyone getting between our team and victory.

8 November

I am diffident about commenting on the American election. It looks like something I am familiar with but is also as alien to me as cricket is to my American friends. It’s as if I were assessing the qualities of a Sumo wrestler.

Nevertheless I worry that 70 million Americans voted for Trump and, presumably bought into his many and various conspiracy theories including the assertion that the election was stolen from him.

9 November

These are bleak times for your Corbynistas. The Labour Party is not appropriate for us but where else is there to go.

10 November

The left wing of the Labour Party is notoriously febrile. Where do you look for leadership? There is the Socialist Campaign Group comprising 37 MPs. How many of them would declare that they were leaving to join say an Independent Labour Party? That is what Mr Hardie, the current leader’s namesake called his original party in 1893. There are other groupings out there. George Galloway has his Workers Party, but he is not everyone’s cup of tea. Momentum has had too many internal disagreements. Chris Williamson has some support. Then there’s The People’s Assembly. There are too many people out there with their own agendas.

This includes the left wing media.

Novara Media, The Canary, Double Down News and Byline Times are all competing for the same demographic and now Owen Jones is looking to set up his online channel. You wonder why they don’t all club together with the Morning Star, venerable and reliable for many years. I suspect there are too many egos out there for a viable quality publication to emerge online or on paper. And every single one has its hand out for funds from the punters. They need to get together. By definition their potential supporters are rarely flush with cash.