helenwatson wrote:
Yes, you're right as ever Nick. I've been ranting a lot this weekend because, since Thursday, the whole focus of the media has been on slagging Labour and Corbyn.
I posted something as a response to a friend but I think I'll put it here has well. The whole thing really frustrates me because, it seems people have really short memories.
For the past 20 odd years, Blairist Labour, the Tories and the Lib Dems have essentially passed power from one to the other and back again without much fundamentally changing for ordinary people. Blairist Labour were not a threat to the establishment and big tax avoiding business and, in power, the Lib Dems just acted like the Tories' second eleven.
Labour is then flooded with people sick to death of the expenses fiddling status quo and they elect a leader not made in the same mould as the rest. People begin to raise their sights, think maybe something different might be possible.
And Blairist Labour, the Tories, the Lib Dems, the establishment and tax avoiding big business wail and screech and scream and howl, increasingly louder and more hysterically: he's unelectable, he's shambolic, he's not a leader. Because the movement the man represents challenges their power sharing agreement, where they pass around the top jobs and the only people who really benefit are themselves.
So they're scratching and writhing and fighting, dirty, because their political lives are totally dependent on it. And some who supported him and wanted him, lower their sights again, say maybe a different world isn't possible, maybe this is all there is.
And the power sharers carry on cutting and privatising and destroying our NHS and slashing wages and raising rents and making jobs insecure and before we know it, our kids have worse life chances than their grandparents.
This is a long story but we can change the shit ending if we just raise our heads and stand our ground and make that other world possible.
I am currently waiting to see if my nomination for council has been accepted and I am going to fucking do this. This bullshit has been going on for long enough and I'm sick of being an armchair commentator. If anyone wants to join me in doing the bastards, feel free. xxxxxxx
Good luck Helen, more power to your elbow. I love the way Mandelson et al assume the elitism that alienated Labour from their core electorate would a) work and b) isn't the reason so many people are pissed off with Labour.
Jeremy Corbyn could do some things differently but he is at least committed to a socialistic/democratic socialist party and its cause in ways that Mandy and Blair just don't get and don't see the point of. Corbyn's message is the right one and it would be better served by people like you than the tantrumists in the party and of course the biased media
The NHS is a classic example of something won not given by our Tory "betters" which the Blair goverment thrust further into privatisation and look where we are.
Good luck