Give it a whirl

In the 1970s the UK was in the grip of strike fever. Union officials gleefully called wildcat walk-outs, sympathy strikes, occupations, mob picketing and any form of action that could bring an organisation to its knees. Even some private companies found themselves caught up in the madness, choosing to close their doors rather than give in, resulting in their work-forces picketing the dole office instead. In nationalised industries, days-long ‘beer and sandwiches’ meetings were held, during which union moochers flexed their muscles and managements were held to ransom.

Inevitably these strikes achieved little to nothing. Necessary redundancies went ahead anyway, in some cases hastened by the very industrial action intended to prevent it. And in the case of the most militant of unions, longer term plans were put in place to render them impotent within a decade. As a result, the Labour Party, the former party of the workers, was banished for a political generation. Talk about shitting on your own doorstep.

It is the job of opposition to oppose. But it is not the job of any responsible party to simply obstruct. Decisions have been made with which you may not agree, but continuing to fight a battle long after the victor has left the field is denial and folly. Whilst politics itself may be a game, governing the country should not be; at a time when differences should be put aside for the national interest, undermining our position is tantamount to treason.

But it isn’t just here and it isn’t just Brexit. Across the developed world populations are awaking, trudging to the ballot boxes and saying no to the entrenched positions of increasingly socialist regimes. Fed up of being ignored, alarmed at mass migrations, the apparent elevation of minority rights above the rest, the fiscal failures of welfare states, ordinary men and women have found their voice. And the left doesn’t like it one bit.

Donald Trump was elected President of the USA. He didn’t just break in and assume control; he was voted in, democratically. And Hillary Clinton lost, democratically. The Conservative Party are the elected government of the UK, albeit by a thread. Angela Merkel cannot form a government, because the German people no longer want what she wants. Those who were promised a socialist utopia are disillusioned and no longer afraid to speak out.

Like the union wreckers of old, the left are not interested in giving the majority of people what they have said they want; they exist to oppose, to frustrate and to generally get in the way of progress. This is somewhat ironic for a movement that calls its politics ‘progressive’, but then, just like the so-called ‘anti-fascists’ their headspace is an irony-free zone. Meanwhile, Momentum pushes ahead with its takeover of local councils, despite what voters actually want – which is credible governance, not ideology.

The left love to talk about everybody else as dinosaurs; dull, lumbering beasts who should be extinct. But if anything it is the resurgent hard left who are the dinosaurs, harking back to the smoke-filled rooms of the seventies and the destructive deployment of union muscle. Then as now, it is the young who are taken in by promises of what will never be; aimless cannon fodder, all too ready to swear allegiance to a false prophet in the guise of Labour’s latest ‘Uncle Joe’, Jeremy Corbyn.

Did you ever wonder what being

on the winning team was like?

Like generations before them they will surely come to learn how they were used, then look on in exasperation as the next wave of recruits marches and chants and does all it can to be part of the problem. But instead of always being against, how about a little experiment? How about a year – one, single year – in which those clamouring for a change they are not going to get stand silent instead? Or, even better, get on board. Try being on the winning team for once; you never know, you might even get to like it.

EU Lullaby

Hush little baby don’t you cry, momma’s gonna sing you a lullaby. Hush, hush, hush and dry your tears, save them all for your adult years. You need to grow up big and strong and free the world from the Nazi throng. All around they kill and maim but worry not, we know their game. You must learn to sit and wait and then attack with all your hate heart. Momma’s gonna buy you a mocking bird, but first you need to embrace the absurd.

Sing your children to sleep with glorious songs of the demos, comrades. Inculcate your kids with the morals of the left, by telling them at every turn how evil are those who pay all the taxes and give people meaningful work without the express consent of the state. Teach them how we all depend on one another and that individual success is a malignant cancer, eating at the heart of national unity. For, one cannot profit except that another loses. And to excel at academia is to play into the hands of evil capitalism, unless it is in the fields of diversity studies, wimmin’s issues or macramé in dance as a form of expressing the eternal struggle for illusory equality.

Mildly berate them should they win any prizes denied to the whole class, explaining to them how the elite seek to divide and rule by offering the lure of riches as reward for effort. Constantly refer to that elite as the one-percent. For does not all reward lie in the warm glow of candle-lit vigils and shared kettling experiences with the ninety? The state provides both unity and division as it drives you to protest and simultaneously suppresses your dissent. All aided and abetted by a national media so obviously Fascist in its ethos as to be nothing but propaganda for the lizard overlords who try to drive a wedge between us. Hate the lizards.

Solidarity, brothers and sisters and should the evil workers advance you have a moral duty to fight back. Don’t forget an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. They take your eye, you give them a tooth. The flag they fly is pure provocation; patriotism is the preserve of the weak, driven to hate. Never forget the sacred mantras:  It is racist to love your country. It is racist to like white people. It is racist to express any concerns about the cost of housing an additional 300,000 people a year. And it is especially racist to give a job to a fully qualified British national when an unknown refugee with a fake identity is all ready and waiting to have a go, just as soon as he can beat the Calais blockade.

Take no responsibility. If you fail, if you hurt, if you don’t get what you want, remember it is all the fault of Thatcher, who stole the milk and tried to steal your dreams. We are raising a nation of sleepers who can be relied on to toe whatever line the party tells them, when the time comes. Drip, drip, drip; sowing the seeds of entitlement deep within the psyche. Like the simpletons who swallow the lies of islamism, we need an army of dupes, brainwashed into believing in miracles and trusting in the hereafter; the state can still provide, even if it has no money. Financial gravity can be overcome. Saving the NHS is more important than saving lives. And all immigrants are good immigrants.

It wuz Fatchaa wot dun it!

At the heart of the project is the EU. Is the new communism an aim of the EU or is it the other way around? No matter. When you are needed, our minions, we will tell you what you need to hear. Public opinion, the national mood, what ‘ordinary people’ want, is whatever we say it is. And if that mood needs to change we will tell you how you now feel. Come the revolution, comrades, there will be no revolution.

Opposites Day

The job of Her Majesty’s official Opposition is to oppose the government of the day. Ordinarily the way to achieve this is to ridicule the policy and competence of the incumbents while presenting credible alternatives. A certain amount of hyperbole is to be expected but in resorting to the texts of Ancient Greece, Ed Milband’s New-but, Old-but Labour is stretching to breaking point the aphorisms about learning from history. Transcripts have come to light of Shadow Cabinet strategy meetings…

Ed: Our job is to oppose, so that’s what we’ll do. Whatever they say, we’ll say the opposite. On Opposites Day black will be white, up will be down and left will become right.

Shadow Cabinet: Didn’t Tony Blair and Alistair Campbell already do that? And we all know how that ended.

Ed M: Okay, so forget the left-right thing. But we know David Cameron must have a chink in his armour, an Achilles heel. We just have to find that.

Ed Balls: How about the flatlining economy?

SC: To be fair, Ballsy, you can take naysaying too far sometimes. It IS a flat line… it’s just  an upwardly sloping one.

Ed M: How about we attack them on their employment record?

SC: Really, Ed? You really want to go there? Have you seen the figures?

Ed M: But the Prime Minister just doesn’t get it, does he? With this cost of living crisis eroding everybody’s lifestyle. We can keep stabbing away at him with that and eventually we’ll break him down.

*silence*

Ed M: What?

SC: Have you not seen the papers lately? More in work than ever before, cost of living the lowest it’s been for half a decade, housing market healthy and new-build starts higher than we ever managed… And that mild winter didn’t help one bit. Nobody ran out of heat, nobody starved, too few old people died. We’re telling you Ed, this situation is desperate.

Ed M: They have utterly failed to get a grip on immigration. 200,000 a year are coming here, taking our jobs, claiming our benefits…

SC: We let in over 3 million…

Ed B: ...that we know about.

Ed M: I know, let’s try and say he brought a criminal into Downing Street. He’ll go down in history as the first politician ever to employ a criminal! And trying to get into bed with Murdoch - can you imagine how the public will react to that?

Harman: Have you really forgotten everything about the Blair years? And did you ever hear of Robert Maxwell? You can attack Cameron's character Ed, but at least he has one to attack. Sometimes I think he looks quite the statesman while you're banging on with your puny sound bites. We're fed up of having to come to your defence all the time.

[Ed Miliband’s lower lip begins to tremble and he looks - as he so often does – as if he is about to cry. He stamps his foot and raises his voice a notch in both volume and pitch.]

Ed M: But I am the leader! And I have done my homework. He hasn’t done the right thing! He has brought disgrace on his office! He hasn’t learned the lessons of history! He HAS got a weak heel and I will keep on stabbing at it until he is on his upper class, blue-bloody knees.

Harman: But Ed, if you had done your homework you would realise that a) The general public forgot all about Leveson a year ago, b) Your carping on about him being out of touch is exactly what everybody accuses you of being, c) Your constant ‘intellectual’ politicking has been called out for the bullshit it is, d) Achilles isn’t history, it’s a myth, and e) Compared to you he doesn’t look like Achilles so much as Hercules.

Wait! I've got an idea!

Ed M: So you're saying we should stop with the personal attacks, come up with some truly ground-breaking new policies, fight for a better Britain and present the voting public with a proper, viable alternative to government as normal? But we're the official opposition, right? So let's stick with our winning formula and just do exactly the opposite.