Questions Of The Day (Politics)

[Mick Harper]

Dunno about you, but I'm getting a wee bit bored with Sir Keir Starmer. Say what you like about Jeremy Corbyn but he was boring in an interesting way.

[Chad]

His eyes are too close together. You know what they say...

[Mick Harper]

Aye, you're right there. Happen. No need to lay it on wi' a trowel though.

[Mick Harper]

I agree the Corbynites will have to be excluded from the Shadow Cabinet but I do not agree that they should be physically 'educated' by flying squadristi of nouvelle Blairistas. (I think it's time to start talking in code.) There are half a million of them so it would break coronavirus regulations for one thing. On the other hand...

[Wile E. Coyote]

[Mick Harper]

I can only partly agree with your analysis. Vanguardists are not per se opposed to popular movements. The CPSU grew to a membership of tens of millions and could still be controlled by a politburo (or one man in the case of Stalin). In the pre-takeover stage there is no evidence that Lenin wanted to curtail the growth of the Social Democrat party in Russia. He surely knew he would need huge numbers of useful idiots when it came to seizing and retaining power. As long as he controlled the Bolsheviks, which I agree would need to be restricted, the Mensheviks could play the popular card.

Even so it does look as if things did rather run away from Momentum. Unless their control of CLP's means that, in the medium term, Sir Knight can be eased aside. The half-million might not have delivered the right leader this time but they are not going to be up half the night arguing about abstruse rule-changes in their constituencies, so they might deliver the correct one next time.

[Chad]

The shadow chancellor is very ginger. You know what they say...

[Mick Harper]

[Wile E. Coyote]

[Mick Harper]

So the next question is, is it Momento Mori? The end of the model. Like Militant, does it collapse like a balloon and we have to wait twenty years until the next vehicle comes along, or is it more like the old days when the condition was chronic, it waxed and waned, but never seemed capable of mounting a permanent coup? Marxists would argue that it would depend on the underlying revolutionary potential but unless Brexit goes pancake-shaped, this hardly seems likely.

Except, unless something is done about the ridiculous educational system, a permanently disaffected youth seems possible. A bit like the Young Germany Movement of the early nineteenth century or over-educated under-employed people mooching about in African and Latin American cities more recently.

Seamus' departure is an example of how, really, there was so little talent at the top. No cadres, as they would put it.

[Mick Harper]

On the other hand that's true of Britain as a whole so they're in with a fighting chance. If only we here at the AEL could get our hands on Britain. We need some sort of Jon Lansman figure. Elderly, reclusive, vaguely repellent, fancies himself an intellectual, designs on taking over the world.

[Mick Harper]

The Prime Minister is tucked up in bed 'in good spirits'. There are no big decisions to be made in the near future. There is nothing for the government to do at all for the present except one of them has to come out every day at 5 pm and say, "There, there." Unless I get some excitement soon I'm going to shoot myself.

[Boreades]

[Mick Harper]

Churchill would dictate to his secretaries (there had to be a team) in his pyjamas, in bed, in the bath and (though this is disputed) on the toilet. Actually the secretaries might have been on the toilet while he was in the bath though, as I say, this is disputed.

What I have said before is that Mr Johnson is not in the least Churchillian. It is only lazy people who suppose, because he (Bo-Jo) once wrote a book about him (P-J), that Churchillian parallels can be thrown around with gay abandon. I once wrote a book about megaliths but nobody would accuse me of being a stony-faced relic from the past. Granite-jawed and mysteriously impressive is acceptable.

[Boreades]