Monday 28th September
The Labour Party Conference is in
full swing, with the New Politics operating in the last space to have been
created by the old order. As Corbynistas throng about in fervent glee, the
newly ousted moderates sit there being very convivial outwardly, but plotting
behind closed doors.
The trouble for them is that
Corbyn has a huge mandate within all aspects of the party, and if he can
translate that to the wider electorate then their age is truly gone.
Corbyn’s problem is that if he
stands up and sings The Red Flag, and
proposes policies according to that spirit straight away, then that nebulous
judge of all things – Middle England – will run to the Tories faster than Sepp
Blatter supporters to anyone other than Sepp Blatter.
So, today it’s Shadow Chancellor
John McDonnell’s turn, where he tries to toe the line between new age radical
and reasonable economic thinker. He does well by acknowledging the dilemma, but
then destroys that by describing the New New (Old) Labour approach as
“aggressive”. From a man who was recently accused of supporting insurrection on
the streets, it was a choice of words almost designed to worry the unconverted.
Tuesday 29th September
Finally, Jeremy Corbyn gets his
first proper chance to make his pitch to the nation as he delivers his speech
to the Labour Party Conference. So, he faced a choice between talking to the
public or trotting out the same hustings pitch he’s used to incredible if
parochial success for three months now.
Well, struggling to achieve unity
in the party, he chose the latter, and attempted to win over doubters in the
party by the tactic of Quantative Standing Ovations. The resulting speech
wearied delegates knees and hands, but was often like listening to that seminal
greatest hits album Now, That’s What I
Call Len McCluskey’s Internal Monologue, but With the Rude Bits Censored for
Live Broadcast.
The broad response was,
therefore, a three-way split: those who were going to love it, loved it; those
who were going to dislike it, disliked it; and those who were undecided, remain
undecided.
Given that, it feels like there
is very little to add. Apart from the fact that, though this was the first
set-piece of the New Politics, it has now transpired that large sections of it
were written four years ago for Ed Miliband, but the former leader rejected it.
That’s Corbyn for you. He’s the
totem for all things spurned by Labour Leaders Past.
Wednesday 30th September
That should have been that for
Corbyn. However, he just keeps the media circus on the road.
Yesterday he restated his
opposition to the Trident nuclear deterrent in his speech, and was asked about
it this morning on the Today Programme,
where he revealed that, were he Prime Minister, he would never push the nuclear
button.
This makes Labour’s policy debate
on the issue pretty irrelevant. It’s basically become about whether they’d like
to spend billions on buying an elephant for Prime Minister Corbyn to have in
his room.
Labour frontbenchers have offered
a range of reactions to this. At one extreme, the ever-verbally-cautious Andy
Burnham went for disagreement, whilst at the other end, Shadow Defence
Secretary Maria Eagle criticised her leader, describing his words as “not
helpful”.
Meanwhile, David Cameron is
breathing a sigh of relief that no-one’s had the nous to ask him “When would
you press the button?”, whereupon we could all rehearse the scene from Yes, Prime Minister, where it is
revealed bit by bit that no Prime Minister ever would.
Apart from Boris maybe. He seems
like the sort who’d do it with gusto.
Thursday 1st October
Let’s check in with the
Americans, because the trees of the Republican Presidential Primary are
yielding very strange fruit.
Runaway leader and satirists’ wet
dream, Donald Trump, has been at it again, and by “it” I mean “casual, mindless
racism”.
Let’s be clear: it isn’t racist
to take a strong stance on immigration. However, it’s pretty racist to say that
all Mexicans coming to America are “rapists”, and to renege on a pledge to take
in 10,000 Syrian refugees because it might bring a 200,000 strong army from
ISIS to America is pretty racist, totally sensationalist and, most evidently of
all, utterly innumerate.
Ladies and gentlemen, the next
President of the United States.
Friday 2nd October
And so the week draws to a close
with the Labour Leader drawing heat for his wish to abolish Britain’s nuclear
defences, an industry in the North collapsing and resulting in numerous
redundancies, and all manner of tension between Russia and America over
military operations in an Arabic country.
So, basically, this weekend the entire globe is
indulging in some kind of grotesque 80s nostalgia party. Welcome to the New
Politics.
