And So It Begins...

Before I go any further, there are two things I must stress. Firstly, I wrote this post on Thursday. This is not the ramblings of a person bitter on the day.

Secondly, I hope that I am wrong. I hope that on Friday 8th May 2020 there will be a change of government. Whoever the Conservative Party have selected to replace David Cameron will be whisked off to the Palace to tender their resignation. A little while later, the new Prime Minister will cycle into Downing Street, dismount outside the steps of Number Ten, and announce that he is forming a new administration. A Labour administration.

I genuinely hope that will happen. I want nothing more than the Tories out, and the left back in.

Today has seen Jeremy Corbyn elected Labour leader. He is now the man who bears the responsibility of trying to end Tory rule in Britain come 2020. Corbyn has ridden an enormous wave of support from the left, as those sick and tired of Blairism and Brownism have revolted, hoping for a return to plainer, less polluted socialism. Many people I know are really excited. The most left-wing leader of a major UK political party ever is certainly a leftist's dream, and part of me would like to see him in Downing Street, doing what he says he would.

And yet I don't think he can do it. As part of the Labour selectorate, I know I am barely representative of the British public. Yes, Jeremy Corbyn is who Labour activists wanted. But I know in my heart of hearts that when confronted with a choice between Jeremy Corbyn and George Osborne/Boris Johnson/ Theresa May/ Whoever the Tories pick, the vast majority of ordinary voters will opt for safety. And it seems to me that a political party in purist opposition is, well, a bit pointless. A charitable, active pressure group, little different to the RSPCA, the Scout Association, or the National Trust.

If the point of politics is to take power and exercise it in the interests of those you represent, then winning elections seems a fairly crucial part of the process in a democracy. If this means actually having a leader who can win elections, that tends to help. I've not yet seen a shred of evidence that Labour, or anyone else for that matter, can build an electoral base to Labour's left which would carry them to victory. As much as the man is reviled by many leftists, floating voters think Tony Blair was the best Labour leader since Harold Wilson. We have to engage with that. At least some of Labour's future support will, like it or not, have to come from people who have drifted to the Tory party under Cameron. That means persuading them to come back. We may not like it. But we also have no choice.

Things will get much worse for many people in this country in the near future. Those Neil Kinnock powerfully summed up as the losers of Thatcherism will suffer; the young, the old, the ill, the unemployed, the ordinary. The effects of colossal, and arguably unnecessary, public spending cuts will soon begin to show their true colours. Already it can be felt in certain places. I work in a school. My girlfriend is a debt counsellor. My mother is a midwife. Try telling me that cuts to the bloated state have saved money with no detrimental effect. I once heard it described as being like a patient bleeding. They can lose some blood without feeling any pain. But lose too much and they die.

It should be Labour's job to end this appalling state of affairs on Thursday 7th May 2020. Instead, I reckon I will be nearing forty by the time they recover and get back into office.

But as I said, I hope I am wrong. But if Jeremy Corbyn does not ride a wave of left-wing support to Number 10 in 2020, then those of us who have participated in this leadership election must bear some responsibility for having contributed to letting down those who most need a Labour government.

One way or another, the long night has begun. Let us hope it is not as long nor as dark as I fear.

The Wit and Wisdom of... David Trimble

But the realisation of peace needs more than magnanimity. It requires a certain political prudence, and a willingness at times not to be too precise or pedantic. Burke says, "It is the nature of greatness not to be exact." Amos Oz agrees, "Inconsistency is the basis of coexistence. The heroes of tragedy, driven by consistency and by righteousness, destroy each other. He who seeks total supreme justice seeks death." Again the warning not to aim for abstract perfection. Heaven knows, in Ulster, what I have looked for is a peace within the realms of the possible. We could only have started from where we actually were, not from where we would have liked to be.

And we have started. And we will go on. And we will go on all the better if we walk, rather than run. If we put aside fantasy and accept the flawed nature of human enterprises. Sometimes we will stumble, maybe even go back a bit. But this need not matter if in the spirit of an old Irish proverb we say to ourselves "Tomorrow is another day."

... Now, winter is here, and there is still no sign of spring. Like John Bunyan's Pilgrim, we politicians have been through the Slough of Despond. We have seen Doubting Castle, the owner whereof was Giant Despair. I can certainly recall passing many times through the Valley of Humiliation. And all too often we have encountered, not only on the other side, but on our own side too "the man who could look no way but downwards, with a muckrake in his hand".

Nevertheless, like one of Beckett's characters "I will go on, because I must go on." What we democratic politicians want in Northern Ireland is not some utopian society but a normal society. The best way to secure that normalcy is the tried and trusted method of parliamentary democracy. So the Northern Ireland Assembly is the primary institutional instrument for the development of a normal society in Northern Ireland. Like any parliament it needs to be more than a cockpit for competing victimisations. Burke said it best: "Parliament is not a congress of ambassadors from different and hostile interests; which interests each must maintain, as an agent and an advocate, against other agents and advocates; but parliament is a deliberative assembly of one nation, with one interest, that of the whole; where not local purposes, nor local prejudices ought to guide, but the general good resulting from the general reason of the whole."

David Trimble, former leader of the Ulster Unionist Party. This is taken from his speech after receiving the 1998 Nobel Peace Prize with John Hume, for their work on the Good Friday Agreement.

The Wit and Wisdom of... Neil Kinnock, Mk IV

I'll tell you what happens with impossible promises. You start with far fetched resolutions. They are then pickled into a rigid dogma, a code, and you go through the years sticking to that, out-dated, misplaced, irrelevant to the real needs, and you end in the grotesque chaos of a Labour council—a Labour council—hiring taxis to scuttle round a city handing out redundancy notices to its own workers. 

I'm telling you - and you'll listen - you can't play politics with people's jobs and with people's services.

The voice of the people, not the people in here, the people with real needs is louder than all the boos that can be assembled. The people cannot abide posturing. They cannot respect gesturing generals or tendency tacticians.

It seems to me that some of them become latter day public school boys. It seems to them it does not matter if the game is won or lost but how you play the game. 

Those games players end isolated and try to blame others - the workers, some of our leadership, trade unions, the people of the city, for not showing sufficient revolutionary consciousness or somebody else. 

Who is left in the ring? The casualties are left, not to be found among the leaders or some of their enthusiasts, but among the people whose jobs have been lost, whose services have been destroyed and whose standard of living has been crushed down.

Neil Kinnock, addressing the Labour party conference, 1st October 1985. Kinnock was launching an attack on the activities of Liverpool's Labour council, which was run by far-leftist Militant Tendency.