Damp squibs and victory parades

Now the last embers have died on the damp squib that was the  local election circus, and it is clear the results are spectacularly underwhelming, the media can get back to discussing Donald Trump. The man is a blunt instrument it’s true, but sometimes the only tool you need is a great, big, fuck-off hammer. But back to those elections: the best bit for me was learning that Saint Jeremy had a victory cavalcade all ready to process through Barnet. Instead he had to settle for Plymouth for his little display of personality politics – you know, the very sort of thing this deep conviction politician is steadfastly against.

On polling day great wails rang out in those areas which were trialling the requirement to produce personal identification. But this wasn’t some draconian imposition, sprung on the day; it had been extensively broadcast - and challenged – for weeks beforehand. Nobody with any interest or understanding of politics could have been unaware, so to screech that they had somehow been disenfranchised by a de-facto fascist state was ludicrous; if you were thus unaware, on what basis, what understanding, were you voting at all?

It was notable, of course, that all the clamour came from would- be Labour supporters. The poor, they cried, the disabled, the disadvantaged and (wait for it) the-most-vulnerable-in-society were once again put upon to be the exemplars of people who couldn’t prove who they were. Except, these people are often the most documented and therefore the most easily verifiable; benefits claims, records of interviews, doctors’ appointments, blue badges, etc, etc, etc. If you are on benefits of any kind, we know who you are, surely? Maybe Labour’s failure to break through was down, partly, to this spannering of their dodgy vote machine.

Be that as it may, all eligible voters in the UK should have a National Insurance number, of which they will have been notified. It isn’t rocket science that if this handy nine-digit reference number can be used to trace your contributions and pay your pensions it can be used to verify your eligibility to participate in deciding who runs the country, the county, the borough. But of course, this does disadvantage those who want to vote on behalf of the dead, the illegal alien and the 80 non-existent residents of Flat 17b Grenfell Tower...

But what would they really be voting for, this hidden army of loyal biddable mandate-givers? Why, they would be voting for poverty. After a hundred-plus years of socialist ‘progress’ in the west we still have poverty. More so, in fact, as they seem to insist on importing more exotic forms of human misery from cultures which don’t even know what liberty and self-expression are. I was berated yesterday by ‘a Labour’ (who hilariously described me as a Blairite!) who insisted that Tories are rich, Tories are greedy and Tories don’t care, as if these were disqualifiers from the right to have a say.

But little could be further from the truth. If any Tories are rich it is because they care. They care about their kids, their future and the future of the country. They work hard to better themselves – education, hard graft, always striving for better; because only by doing the hard miles do you earn the rewards which socialists want to legislate as a right. Tories don’t have good jobs because they are Tories; they become Tories because as they pay more and more into the system and see less and less return, they realise the enormity and futility of the socialist project.

Have a happy bank holiday!

Socialism needs to persuade poor people to vote. So, if too few people feel poor, socialists put their efforts into persuading people that they are in abject and neglected straits. This is a pretty good working definition of a perverse incentive. Often attributed to Churchill, the sentiment that “If a man is not a socialist by the time he is 20, he has no heart. If he is not a conservative by the time he is 40, he has no brain” may be a cheap line, but truths don’t need to come with a price tag. Jeremy Corbyn is 69 in three weeks; what does that say about him?