Pig Headed

It’s autumn conference season and the parties are preparing to huddle and regroup and applaud each other and generally reinforce their tribal values. The Tories can relax some of their austerity measures now, showing off their caring side in the certain knowledge that it will be nowhere near the peak-welfare demands of the Corbynistas, who will then seem unreasonable as the ‘entirely independent’ ONS (Ministry of Truth) releases figures to show how much better off a three-child family will be after their tax credits have been cancelled.

What’s that Jeremy, they’ll say, protesting about a move in your own direction? At conference we’ll hear about strategies for dealing with this and strategies for dealing with that. How to handle press briefings; ‘the message’ and how to stay on it. Because it’s all about perception. It matters not what you believe in, nor even what you do; all that matters is what people perceive. Tories good with money but bad with people, Labour hopeless with money but ever so caring. At least that’s what they think.

At least in this respect Jeremy Corbyn has to be applauded. He is telling his troops to behave as he does and keep it political, never personal. So the neo-Nazis in Labour’s ranks who would control everybody by rule of law and police action might have to actually act a bit more like, well, like the Tories generally do. Instead of piling on the vitriol it’s far more effective to laugh at your enemy as he beats his puny fist against your mighty chest. For instance when Comrade Cul-de-Sac has to back down on yet another high principle in the face of realpolitik .

But best of all about Conference Season is that it is a time for all the fruitcakes and fascists and downright lunatics to crawl out of the wainscoting at every party venue. Famous, now officially ex-lefty, Nick Cohen has recently written; “ Labour’s new leader sees a moral equivalence between 9/11 and the assassination of bin Laden, and associates with every variety of women-hating, queer-bashing, Jew-baiting jihadi, holocaust denier and 9/11 truther. His supporters know it, but they don’t care.” It’s surely only a matter of time before we see a clutch of “Jeremy ate my hamster!” headlines to brighten up our days.

There are idiots in every party as there are idiots in every walk of life. The young, the naïve, the foolhardy and the honey-trapped. The press has a field day uncovering transgressions, major and minor and it really doesn’t care which party they are from or how flimsy the evidence. Protected sources are enticed to give up the deepest darkest secrets of party officials and activists, or failing that, their second cousins twice removed. And the revelations will often be beyond belief.

A relative of George Osborne once ate a whole child. Alive. Jeremy Corbyn’s cousin secretly owns most of Saudi Arabia. A high-profile Green Party donor made his fortune from selling incinerators and fly-tipping asbestos. A Libdem councillor named his second son Adolf. A UKIP spokesperson was once in agreement with something somebody related to a member of the BNP said in 1985. Or, get this, David Cameron once fucked a pig!

Samantha and I...

Ah, the excesses of youth. I mean who hasn’t at some time rested their cock for a moment in the dead mouth of a haram corpse? For every story there will be a gleeful roar from the away supporters and embarrassed shuffles from the home crowd and then it will all die down... apart from the occasional oink from the opposition benches. The ancient shenanigans of those in the public eye are fleeting flecks of colour in the big picture, but that doesn’t matter to the press; the perception is the thing, so get ready to do your own colouring in after they provide the sketches... just don’t colour outside the lines.