Prosecco Socialists

The Christmas edition of The New Statesman contains a long interview with Charlotte Church, a big fan of Jeremy Corbyn's who has come to the same conclusion as many others - that the Labour leader can't win a general election. 

Read the full article via the link below to the NS below, but here are a few extracts of what Charlotte has to say: 

“I think he can’t win. The best thing for him to do is to train somebody up under him, who can be a new fresh face but who has the same politics that have always been Labour’s.

“I don’t think it’s anything to do with him. I think it’s everything that the press has created.

“I just think that there needs to be somebody there who is not Jeremy Corbyn. It’s gone too far, and they’re not going to stop."

Now this is complete bollocks if you ask me, because the kind of politics that Jeremy Corbyn stands for has been very much a minority view within the Labour Party for the past 50 years.

The Corbynistas have come to the fore only recently in the wake of a devastating election loss in 2015 and an influx of new members who are enthusiastic and committed, but badly out of touch with the wider electorate.

From day one Jeremy Corbyn has made a complete 'arse' of being Labour leader and if you ask me, the 'mainstream media' is only doing its job in pointing the man's all too obvious failings.

  

http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk/2016/12/charlotte-church-we-underestimated-how-angry-white-men-are

Charlotte Church: "We underestimated how angry white men are"


Photo - KALPESH LATHIGRA

The singer on Donald Trump, grass-roots rebellion and why Jeremy Corbyn can't win.

BY KATE MOSSMAN - The New Statesman

In London’s Roundhouse in October, at a concert by the Chicago singer Ezra Furman and his band the Boy-Friends, punters got a strange support act. Charlotte Church in a kaftan, surrounded by a sprawling troupe of musicians, singing a full-throated version of R Kelly’s vintage make-out anthem “Bump n’ Grind”. Then she did “Killing in the Name”, the anti-racist rap-metal assault by Rage Against the Machine. Then “Closer” by Nine Inch Nails: “I want to f*** you like an animal”.

When these colourful tunes were released in the early 1990s, Church was wearing an Alice band and singing “Pie Jesu” for the Pope. Between kissing the venerable ring, having her phone hacked and appearing on Blue Peter and its equivalents around the world, there wasn’t much time for R Kelly, which is perhaps why she’s doing it now. Despite the ecstatic reaction, the act – which she does at festivals and in late-night cabaret slots – remains defiantly fringe.

“It is dramatic, it is nonsensical, and it is engineered to be as much fun as is humanly possible,” she says. “Which in the modern world is becoming far more necessary.”

Prosecco Socialists (15/05/15)

Here's a seriously silly article which appeared in The Guardian the other day by Charlotte Church, a self-proclaimed 'prosecco socialist' and some kind of singer I believe.

Now the reason I find Charlotte's views quite laughable is that she seems to play fast and lose with the notion of what is democratic, fair or representative.

So Charlotte gets her knickers in a terrible twist offer the fact that the Conservative Party won a majority government on the back of just 37% of the popular vote which equates to on 24% of the total population when you add back in those who didn't vote (the overall UK turnout being 66%).

Yet Charlotte would presumably have been quite happy supping her Prosecco at home, or wherever, if a Labour minority government were to be running the country on an even lower share of the popular vote which is what would have happened if Ed Miliband had managed to push his party's vote up to say 33% - or only 22% of the total UK voting population.

Maybe Charlotte and her friends would have more credibility if they had been backing a fairer voting system before now, because at this very moment they just sound ridiculous.  

I may be a prosecco socialist, but at least I went out to protest

By Charlotte Church - The Guardian

I was out demonstrating with the People’s Assembly in Cardiff as those of us who oppose the Tory government must take our message beyond the leftwing bubble

On Saturday I was one of 250 citizens who met at the Queen Street statue of Aneurin Bevan in Cardiff, to protest the Tories’ austerity measures, with the People’s Assembly. Thankfully, it’s my democratic right to do so.

While I was aware that my presence at the rally could attract the media, I’m sure that you’ll be shocked to hear that I didn’t do it for some self-aggrandising purpose. As I’ve previously stated on my blog, I have no wish to be trolled and abused. It would be much easier for me not to engage. I’m not promoting a record or a TV show. My only motivation for attending was to try to make a difference; to further political discourse in my community; to draw attention to a cause that is more than valid, it is vital.

Anti-austerity protesters take to UK streets after Tory election victory

Many people I know (myself included) received the news that the Tories had won a majority (and that Ukip got so many votes) with bewilderment. It wasn’t at all what was expected, especially considering that the political conversation that we’d seen on social media for the past six months, had been overwhelmingly in support of the left-wing parties. There can only be one conclusion: we’ve been preaching to the converted.

It’s all very well for me to sit in my cosy leftie bubble with my baja-sporting friends, spending our free time attending vegan popup barbecues and meeting in art centres to have a bit of a moan about Ukip; we missed the changing climate of British politics. We dismissed the growing support for the right wing as just a few comedy racists, underestimated the momentum they were gaining, and thought that by retweeting the latest Owen Jones article, we were doing our bit. Wrong.

We need to take the action we should’ve taken before, now. Just because the piratical Conservative party now have a majority doesn’t mean that we’ve lost. On the contrary, it means we’ve got to fight harder. Personally, I feel I haven’t done enough, and I’m going to change that.

For Andrew RT Davies, the leader of the Welsh Conservatives, to describe my exercising of democratic freedom as “unbecoming” really says more than I ever could. Perhaps he thinks I should get back to the ironing and stop babbling on about air-headed notions such as protecting the NHS (a system that he himself has been most mobile in attacking), fighting for a fairer society (a concept that entirely eludes his party), and championing the plight of those in society who are less privileged than me. Perhaps he wants to quiet me because I threaten his status as a wealthy, privately educated, white male.

Democracy doesn’t end because we’ve had an election. Trying to silence the dissenting voice is far more anti-democratic

As for him, and others, denigrating me as a “champagne socialist”, I have to say I’m more of a prosecco girl, myself. I was born in a working-class family who have for generations been active in political protest. I was nine years old when I was first taken to a demonstration by my mother, who at the time was working as a housing officer for Cardiff council. That was three years before my career as a singer began. I have earned a lot of money from creating music, but I’ve stayed in Cardiff, where my family are, where the people I grew up with are, where my roots are. I could have sacked them all off and moved to LA. I could have made a lot more money by investing in arms and oil, rather than ethically. I could have voted Tory.

Christopher Hart of the Daily Mail decried protesters as “enemies of democracy”. Democracy doesn’t just end because we’ve had an election. Trying to silence the dissenting voice is far more anti-democratic. Davies sees me carrying a placard as an insult to the electorate “who have just spoken”. But while he spends his time criticising me, he ignores the fact that there are serious legitimacy issues with David Cameron’s government. Only 24% of those eligible to vote voted Tory. That’s staggeringly low. And in my opinion it is completely unacceptable. I am no fan of Ukip, but if I had voted for them I’d be seriously pissed off.

The situation, though, is far from hopeless. If you feel at all like me, I beg you to get involved. Find out when a rally is happening in your area and turn up. As it happens those who set up these marches are, in my experience, lovely people, who care about their communities; not memorial-desecrating hooligans. If we pull together then we can’t be ignored. We need to be organised, but most of all we need numbers. There’s a march in London on 20 June outside the Bank of England. Hope to see you there.

• This article was originally posted on Charlotte Church’s blog