Although watching the Labour Party disintegrate gives a wonderful pleasure, nothing has really changed. I spent enough of my career attending those dreary trade conferences in bland 'international' hotels off the Euston Road to have met an entire cross section of the nation over stewed coffee and rubber chicken. The ones I genuinely enjoyed were those we termed, with real affection, the 'Northern bastards'. Oblivious to our soft southern conceits they would happily demand of conference executives "I'm parched here, love; be a poppet and fetch me a cup of tea, would you?". Their night out in London would involve beer and strippers. Even though they were construction managers, they were also local councillors, Labour party officials and at home were as likely to be drinking in their local 'institute' than in the golf club. By and large they were humorous, jocund and good value. They were a million miles removed from sensitive souls such as Owen Jones and the fashionable metropolitan left, but in their own way (expressed as "I don't mind poofs, me" or something similar ) were really quite liberal.
Anyway, for years now Labour has been trying to be a broad enough church to accommodate both the Northern Bastards and the London Poofs. And even though the Northern Bastards were quite good at committees, rules and procedures, the Southern Poofs were good at the media, and won. They immediately demanded that the Northern Bastards dropped 'pet' 'love' 'sweetie' and similar terms of endearment, made their own tea and flew a rainbow flag at the Durham Miners' gala.
Even though they're no longer part of the same coherent party, both sides are still there. The Northern Bastards are still running vast swathes of local councils and the Southern Poofs the London boroughs; they still have a shedload of MPs. The problem is to come. If the Southern Poofs become a sort of rump regional far-left party, the Northern Bastards need a home. And as much as I'd like this to be UKIP, I don't think this will work. We're lacking a social democratic white van man and working men's club party, where wives make the tea and cobs for the meetings.
My time in the North taught me several surprising things. Everyone north of Leicester, it seems, can weld. Perhaps it was taught in schools, perhaps it's a dad thing. If Labour is to survive in any form perhaps this is the answer. Little Owen Jones must go to Middlesborough and learn to weld, and in return he can show them how to open Prosecco and eat mussels or something. I can't think of anything else that would prevent there being two Labour parties.
23 comments:
Not so sure your 'dismissal' of UKIP as a replacement for Labour oop North is well placed Radders.
I think Labour supporters themselves have moved on from the 'flat cap and whippet' brigade with the natural vacuum ideal for the likes of a UKIP that transcends the needs of TradLab/FauxTory.
All that this requires is for a re-branding of UKIP to remove their on-trick-pony aspect that many now seem to use as an excuse NOT to support them. Anyone who cares to peruse their manifesto would clearly identify UKIPs natural attraction to the ex-Lab vote regardless of the fact that there's (literally) no where else for them to go!
I foresee a resurgence of UKIP under a new banner and with it the demise of Labour as it now stands and even, potentially, a similar re-branding of Labour to rid themselves of the Metro/Lib image they're now sinking under.
Failing some drastic change there will be NO opposition to the Tories for a decade or more if such changes don't come about.
Radders - nice idea, but I think you're a little optimistic. People like Owen, almost by definition, can't do anything useful.
UKIP would do well to re-invent itself as a northern working class party. Having abandoned any pretence at being right-libertarian, it best hope to me would be a sort of left libertarian stance - anti-uncontrolled immigration and on the side of the working man against the vast corporations and statist fuck ups. they would probably have to be pro NHS (unfortunately) but there is no reason why they couldn't make the point that the biggest losers from abysmal state provided healthcare and education are the people it was intended (by a well meaning post labour government), to help, and therefore it behoves us bothas tax payers and consumers to give the appalling management of these behemoths a hard time.
They are points which require some intelligence and sensivity to make successfully, but being true helps enormously.
Unfortunately as UKIP seems to be run by complete knob heads it seems unlikely.
As with a nation, there is a great deal of ruin in a major political party.
If the Labour Party was not killed by Michael Foot and/or the Gang of Four, I see no particular reason why it will be killed by Jeremy Corbyn and/or UKIP.
Best regards
As with a nation, there is a great deal of ruin in a major political party.
If the Labour Party was not killed by Michael Foot and/or the Gang of Four, I see no particular reason why it will be killed by Jeremy Corbyn and/or UKIP.
Best regards
I think they did a big disservice to the health of the nation when they pretty much abolished the practical stuff at schools. Not because it necessarily helped the intellectual duffers, more that it showed the clever clogs they weren't actually so clever at all, because they couldn't make a dovetail joint that didn't look like a piece of firewood, but Bill Jones who struggled to write his name at the top of the paper could fire them out like he was Chippendale. It evened things up a bit, as did compulsory games where the brainy types got their heads pushed into the mud by their intellectual inferiors.
Nowadays the intellectual elite swan through the educational system, and rise to the top never having known the tang of failure at anything. This makes them insufferable, regardless of their political hue. It would be far better if their list of As and A*s were listed alongside an E in metal work and welding. It would be a constant reminder of their human frailty.
Its spelt MiddlesBROUGH.
Sorry. Pet hate
Someone said politics is show business for ugly people, this is so true. The days when politicians were self employed and if they were no good to the local electorate, were out on their ear with no severance pay, you had a higher class of conviction MPs. It is now,just look at me, see how much noise I can make, give me a bigger arena like the EU to strut my stuff. I might end up in the real show business at the least I will mix with them. Just look at the slaphead ex leader of the Tory party ex foreign secretary mixing with Brad and Angie. Look at the late Jo Cox on the boat with has been Geldorf .Glory hunters with no conviction. I look at them as muffin the mule or Sooty, who were much better being inanimate and who had more integrity.
I'm a Northern Bastard - and I can weld. So there! I took myself off to college in my late 40s and learnt to weld both aluminium and stainless so that I could make stuff for my boat. The college facility I went to was, by sheer coincidence, my old apprentice training school building at BNFL Capenhurst. The trainers were most surprised to have a C&W director in amongst the 18-20 year old scousers!
I couldn't give a fuck what happens to Labour. My Grandfather was Labour, my Father was and so was I. The years between my support for Labour and when Granddad started supporting Labour is four-fifths of that party's history. No more. I found out too late that they were dyed in the wool race replacing internationalists and rather nasty with it.
I can't support a party that puts foreigners above the English, Scots, Welsh and Northern Irish - and I believe Norman Tebbit alluded to such in the House of Lords this afternoon. Unfortunately the Tories seem to going the same way despite their success at the polls. That illusion will end just as it has with the Left liberals.
Steve
Hmmm... So where's Our Ravenscar, then?
Funny but true.
What Nigel said.
And what Sobers said.
"Its spelt MiddlesBROUGH.
Sorry. Pet hate"
Us lads from west Yorks alus had a thing about the 'Boro', going up there was like going back in time but nevertheless it was still Yorkshire so we just about forgave them, though during the footy matches no love was ever lost nor offered.
I went to a Grammar, it had an almost unequalled academic record even when compared to the posh bastards who attended the local fee paying Grammar. The thing was, up to and inclusive of the third form all of us were taught metal work and a fair amount of woodwork and I was loathe to have to drop it, when we had to make our 'O' Level choices but there you go - at our school in the corner of the metal work room I remember annealling a pendant; we had been taught to cut, edge, smooth, clean and glaze to wit, we even had a small coke fired forge!
I fucking hate the lavs, I don't have any high opinion of heaths lot either, as far as I am concerned they're two cheeks of the same arse.
Cultural Marxism or critical theorists as they were and those fekkin tossers certainly wheedled their way into all strata, a public pestilence went from small acorns during the fifties to blumin great forests - Common Purpose runs the show these days in Britain.
FFS, the Communists were always given the benefit of the doubt - somehow in too many households posh or not in Britain and remember the posh fuckers were dreaming of Russia in Oxbridgehire since long before WWII. But also at the hearths of inner London Cockneys, Liverpool dockers, Yorkshire miners and across Jockland, Wales and those Celtic fuckers Britain haters the lot of 'em in Oireland and don't start here because as I've said before - I have Scots and Irish roots [and sometimes] I hate them equally.
It's a mess, even in Middlesbrough there are some very blue bits and most of it is hard left but in a sensible way of hard left ][yeah I know "impossible"!!]..... if you know what I mean. Thus the scum party in the Boro is, nothing to do with rainbow flags and diversity quotas but hard left and very suspicious of blairite-Camerloon-EU statism and Internationalism.
Whereas likely be, the boro toryboys are more loving of Cultural Marxism than are their local 'enemies' the scum party.
Owen Jones, like UKIP and much like the whole of Britain don't know which way is north. The left wing permeate throughout academe has so royally fucked the UK education system, that, I am not sure if it can ever be brought back to somewhere - where objective education cleansed of Marxist doctrinaires can ever be achieved. Gove called it the Education blob and by God they'll take some shifting.
On politics, we need a British party or at least an English patriotic party, we need to drop the political straitjacked the UK establishment likes to pigeonhole us into "left versus Right, women v men, blacks v white, lav v CON and yellow in between" - all that needs booting out of England at any rate.
It the political/cultural haemorraghing is, our Ebola, the public sector aristocracy can do as they fucking well please and grow richer by the minute - through the revolving door of the corporate leeches - it's difficult to tell which is which but they're all Communist pigs in lipstick - that much is clear and where honesty, morality and any faint Englishness went out of the fucking window - WAYCIST!!
The rot, it goes deep, way deep, Westminster is a zombie parliament doing the bidding of in order Berlin, george Soros and the bankers/ corporate blob but down to local politics the rot seeps, the ordure will never be washed out and now that we have the RoP factor - it is irreparable.
Welded, we'll never learn it again - IMHO.
Ravenscar.
Thank you, that Lad!!! This from a West Yorks. lass who went to County Borough's girls' [grammar] school. They made us do cookery and needlework, just as you took welding and woodwork. So I agree with every word, especially this:
"On politics, we need a British party or at least an English patriotic party, we need to drop the political straitjacked the UK establishment likes to pigeonhole us into "left versus Right, women v men, blacks v white, lav v CON and yellow in between" - all that needs booting out of England at any rate."
It really is all too heart-breaking; thanks to Him above, though, we have the Yorkshire phlegmatics to remind us what our backbones are for!! Still think often of t'owd boy who stood in our doorway - holding it open during the snowstorm and saying "Aye; an' it'll not stop now while t'moon changes."
The months have got a bit long, though; it's time we were fettling . . .
Ravenscar - I've got tears of joy in my eye reading that. Every word.
And yes, I think I do know what you mean; I knew a couple of ex-Sheffield steelworkers, gifted craftsmen, acute and sensible free marketeers, but also at the same time fiercely tribal and committed to fairness and equity in a good-for-all way.
The DNA is still there. They fell in droves in two wars, but it's still there, and passions like yours are the proof.
The problem with losing big industries - especially shipbuilding - is the loss of the trades that went with them. It's futile to expect universities to teach the skills that are gained at real work.
As for Labour - it's workers' representation vs intellectual socialism (oxymoron?)
Once Labour ditched the representation bit and started imposing its global socialism model, the party became irrelevant.
Labour needs to die now - let the global socialists pick up the banner, and let the blue collar worker have a party that represents them (unfortunately, people like Nuttall running around wearing shooting gear won't do it)
There is a English party, it is tiny at present, the English Democrats. It is sorely in need of new members and money.
IIRC Owen Jones comes from Manchester. Which is north of Leicester.
R -"
And yes, I think I do know what you mean; I knew a couple of ex-Sheffield steelworkers, gifted craftsmen, acute and sensible free marketeers, but also at the same time fiercely tribal and committed to fairness and equity in a good-for-all way. "
Yeah that's it but there's something about England and the English I love Yorkshire but that I also love Kent and Dorzit too I used to feel well at home in my Capital city but no longer and I find people in those other great counties think like me and we share common heritage albeit I impart in a fair dialectic twang, dunno how they manage it, to understand me sometimes - especially if I've had some liquid persiflage nurturance oh - aye called, Jamesons. England, yes we are a very troublesome lot, as bad as the Irish - if we would will it but the English are also intensely practical and a pragmatic race and I know good and bad lads and lasses across the social strata, the brain rot Owen Jones exhibits is, a debilitating pathogen but it is by no means common, thank the dear Lord just for that - oh and btw I can weld a bit too!
The blog is the best and all - ALL commenters make it thus.
Ravenscar.
“If Labour is to survive in any form perhaps this is the answer.”
If Labour is to survive it needs another Damascene “clause 4” moment to change its current policy of supporting uncontrolled immigration.
The majority of the PLP support uncontrolled immigration from the EU even as the EU expands to include Albania, Bosnia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia, Ukraine plus all the “stan” countries as far as the Urals (Mr. Camron’s “Atlantic to Urals” speech Kazakhstan July 2103)
The internationalist Cobynistas additionally support uncontrolled immigration from the whole world in the belief that inviting millions of people from Africa and ME will somehow solve all the problems in these regions.
Labour are currently more interested in the well being of foreigners than their core voters, just as we saw yesterday in the HOL vote on the Brexit bill and unless they change this policy they will suffer the same fate as they have in Scotland.
PS :
The die was cast for Labour (sorry, not welded)when Mr.Gordon Brown called Mrs. Gillian Duffy whilst on a GE 2010 walkabout "a sort of bigoted woman" for asking Mr. Brown " ....but all these eastern European what are coming in, where are they flocking from?"
Sobers
It evened things up a bit, as did compulsory games where the brainy types got their heads pushed into the mud by their intellectual inferiors.
FUCK RIGHT OFF NOW YOU SHIT
I was one of those bullied unmercifully by those ( At a Grammar school, too!)
But I am also practical - I Have to be to do my own Land-Rover maintenance, for a start - I Used to be quite good at making laboratory equipment out of "left-overs" because we were short of funds, once upon a day.
I live in Accrington and I can't weld. I can strip down and rebuild a car engine, lay concrete or bricks, plaster a wall and rewire a house but I never tried welding. Perhaps that's because I was born in one of the leafier suburbs of Manchester and spent most of the years to my mid teens in Shropshire.
As for little Owen Jones, he actually claims to be from Stockport although his accent is posh boy. Still the up market bits to the south like Branhall and Bredbury are a world away from places like Brinnington where if you see someone with a full set of teeth, they're a tourist. My guess is that Owen is from one of those enclaves that is an outpost of Surrey, rather than a suburb of Manchester. He wouldn't have lasted 30 seconds in the school I went to.
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