Wigan Pier Revisited
A chap name of Tom London tweeted his opinion about George Orwell and Jeremy Corbyn on Twitter the other day.
IMO
"I’m sure that description reminds me of someone. But for the life of me I can’t think who."
Over the past 20 years or so we've had Old Labour, New Labour, Real Labour - and now we have Deluded Labour under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn.
In the wake of a disastrous by-election result in Copeland, the Labour leader reached for the safety blanket of his 'big' mandate before insisting that:
"Labour's share of the vote in Copeland has been falling for 20 years and of course I take my share of responsibility.
"We haven't done enough yet to rebuild trust with people who have been ripped off and sold out for decades and don't feel Labour represents them.
"I was re-elected... five months ago with a bigger majority and I am determined to finish that job; to reconnect Labour with our working-class voters and values so we can win power to rebuild and transform Britain for the many, not just the few."
“I’m hugely disappointed that Gillian Troughton won’t be joining [Labour] in Parliament as the MP for Copeland.
“That means that all of us with leadership roles in the Labour Party need to have a long, hard look at ourselves and what’s not working. Seven years into a Tory government, we shouldn’t be facing questions about whether we can retain the seats we already hold.
Orwell was a proud & committed Socialist
Only to be rebuked and put right by the Telegraph journalist Michael Deacon with this extract from one of George Orwell's famous books, The Road to Wigan Pier:
“Socialism is such elementary common sense,” wrote Orwell, “that I am sometimes amazed that it has not established itself already.” The working class, he said, “ought to be flocking” to the socialist cause. And yet, to Orwell’s frustration, they weren’t. Why not?
One major reason, he argued, was that the working class were being “driven away” by a certain type of socialist – a type they believed to be utterly out of touch with their lives, views and interests. Orwell agreed. This type of socialist, he complained bitterly, was “bearded”, “vegetarian”, “teetotal”, “prim”, “middle-class”, “a crank” and “a pacifist”.
Only to be rebuked and put right by the Telegraph journalist Michael Deacon with this extract from one of George Orwell's famous books, The Road to Wigan Pier:
“Socialism is such elementary common sense,” wrote Orwell, “that I am sometimes amazed that it has not established itself already.” The working class, he said, “ought to be flocking” to the socialist cause. And yet, to Orwell’s frustration, they weren’t. Why not?
One major reason, he argued, was that the working class were being “driven away” by a certain type of socialist – a type they believed to be utterly out of touch with their lives, views and interests. Orwell agreed. This type of socialist, he complained bitterly, was “bearded”, “vegetarian”, “teetotal”, “prim”, “middle-class”, “a crank” and “a pacifist”.
Deacon himself goes on to add:
"I’m sure that description reminds me of someone. But for the life of me I can’t think who."
Now you have to admit that is funny - as wells being a spookily accurate description of Jeremy Corbyn!
Mandate Wars (03/03/17)
Over the past 20 years or so we've had Old Labour, New Labour, Real Labour - and now we have Deluded Labour under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn.
In the wake of a disastrous by-election result in Copeland, the Labour leader reached for the safety blanket of his 'big' mandate before insisting that:
"Labour's share of the vote in Copeland has been falling for 20 years and of course I take my share of responsibility.
"We haven't done enough yet to rebuild trust with people who have been ripped off and sold out for decades and don't feel Labour represents them.
"I was re-elected... five months ago with a bigger majority and I am determined to finish that job; to reconnect Labour with our working-class voters and values so we can win power to rebuild and transform Britain for the many, not just the few."
But Labour's deputy leader (who also has a 'big' mandate) took a rather different and more critical view of his party's performance:
“I’m hugely disappointed that Gillian Troughton won’t be joining [Labour] in Parliament as the MP for Copeland.
“That means that all of us with leadership roles in the Labour Party need to have a long, hard look at ourselves and what’s not working. Seven years into a Tory government, we shouldn’t be facing questions about whether we can retain the seats we already hold.
“Our job at the next election is to gain over 100 seats. Keeping what we have is supposed to be the easy bit. We have to do better. We cannot sustain this level of distance from the electorate, from our natural supporters. So things have to change.”
Quite so, but how that will happen with Jeremy Corbyn as leader is difficult to imagine particularly Jezza has surrounded himself with an unrepresentative 'leftist' clique.
