20 June 2019

Diary of a Corbynista

Prime Ministerial Talent Lacking

by Don Urquhart

13 June

It’s not often that Question Time has a panellist as wonderful as Francesca Martinez.  She has cerebral palsy and you get the impression that speech is difficult.  But by a distance she was the most articulate of the panellists so it was doubly pleasing that she is a supporter of Jeremy Corbyn.

14 June

Boris Johnson and his acolytes claim that his tenure as London mayor was a great success.  Channel 4 has done its own analysis which does not look so rosy.  Here are some of the findings:

He promised to end rough sleeping in the capital by 2012, but in 2015 there were 940 people sleeping on the streets;

He undertook to increase police numbers but in fact reduced them by more than 1,000;

He claimed that he would double the number of special constables but in fact reduced the number considerably;

At the start of his tenure 10,000 affordable homes were being built each year.  By 2016 he had it down to 500.

15 June

Conservative Party supporter Matthew Parris was on Any Questions and made two contributions that stuck with me.

For a start he claimed to be able to induce a sneeze by tickling a particular spot behind his ear, and he demonstrated this remarkable skill.

Secondly he questioned the character of the odds-on favourite to become Tory Leader challenging him to reveal how many children he has fathered.  Mr Parris thought it was somewhere between 5 and 7 and reminded us that Johnson took out a super injunction to prevent reporting of one of them.

There are quite a few things that your average Conservative Party member might take a dim view of and this might explain why there are 5 other contenders hanging in.  The TV hustings over the next few days could rival Game of Thrones for random brutality.

16 June

In the BBC series Years and Years Emma Thompson plays a populist Prime Minister implementing cruel policies in a burgeoning dystopia.

She has this exchange with Rory Kinnear’s naive civil servant:

If I could do it I’d go – sail away far from all this, just head for the horizon and…gone!  Imagine if I did!

You’re the Prime Minister you can do what you want.

They’d kill me. 

Who would? 

They would have me killed.

Boris Johnson’s backers represent large corporations, hedge funds and property companies.  Harry Cole in The Daily Mail depicts Johnson as the front man for a well-financed operation.

17 June

In yesterday’s Tory leadership hustings on Channel 4 the word Corbyn came up 20 times.  For example Jeremy Hunt lambasted him for not immediately accepting the American view of the tanker incident in the Gulf of Oman.

But as is so often the case, the Leader of the Opposition is in tune with our neighbours while at odds with the right wing in his own country.

Here extracts from two European newspapers:

Le Monde

Washington has been hammering it since June 13: Iran is responsible for the attacks on two tankers that day, near the Strait of Hormuz.  After having unilaterally withdrawn from the Iranian nuclear deal reached in 2015, the United States seeks, by waving the presumed evidence of this accusation, to break their isolation on this subject.

But the administration of Donald Trump is still facing at least two obstacles.

The first is that of credibility, illustrated by the scepticism of countries such as Germany against the evidence advanced by Washington.  Secretary of State Mike Pompeo tried to sweep it away Sunday, June 16, highlighting a form of cowardice on the part of countries that “would like all this to disappear.”  Since the fiasco of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction that had been advanced to justify the 2003 invasion, but which Washington has never found, US accusations in the Middle East are unreliable.

Frankfurter Allgemeine
In the case of attacks against tankers in the Gulf of Oman, there is no consistent support for American allegations against Iran in the EU.  Among other things, Federal Foreign Minister Heiko Maas and his colleagues from Luxembourg and the Netherlands made it clear at a meeting in Luxembourg on Monday that they do not want to draw any conclusions at the moment.  “We continue to gather information,” said Maas.  One knows the insights of the American and also the British secret services, but has not made a final decision.

Luxembourg Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn recalled that in 2003, the United States invaded Iraq on the basis of deliberately or unconsciously misinterpreted intelligence information on alleged weapons of mass destruction of Saddam Hussein.  Like UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres he called for an independent investigation.  “I believe that the main task of foreign ministers is to avoid war,” said Asselborn.  “We have to do that today.”

18 June

Labour Party Deputy Leader Tom Watson has published a video where he urges Jeremy Corbyn to wholeheartedly support staying in the European Union.  Jeremy Corbyn has been the spokesperson for the Labour Party Conference in trying to leave the EU with a good deal.  Conference instructed MP’s to push for a General Election if a good deal was not available, and to push for a second referendum if there was no prospect of a General Election.

It appears that there will not be a deal of any kind, but the Tory leadership candidates are speaking freely about a General Election if that is the only way to avoid a no deal result.  And who knows which way Boris will jump.  It is surely not out of the question that he will “show leadership” by engineering a second referendum in order to avoid a General Election.

Tom Watson is far from politically illiterate so it is difficult to interpret his initiative as anything other than an attempt to position himself as party leader in waiting.  And, sadly, he is not short of support in the PLP.

19 June

It was unedifying – 5 grown men fighting like rats in a sack for the opportunity to present themselves to a group of English Nationalists* as a potential Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.  They bumbled, temporised, shouted over each other and abused political opponents, in a random incoherent miasma.  It was like watching an embarrassing boy band audition for Britain’s Got Talent.

For this was the BBC programme Our Next Prime Minister.

*A Yougov poll of Conservative Party members showed that they are relaxed about Scotland and Northern Ireland leaving the United Kingdom as long as Brexit is delivered on time.