Corbyn, what is best in life...

"Crush your enemies. See them driven before you. Hear the lamentations of the Tories."

Jeremy Corbyn, on the face of it, seems on course to inherit the poison chalice that is leadership of the modern labour party. I think one of two things will happen: his bid will be chewed up by the accounting process and he will fail, or he will win and find himself leading a party of traitors.

The evidence for the former is the disgraceful way the party has handled 'entryists', those people seeking to join solely to support Corbyn whom the party believes don't support it's 'aims and values'. This is patently absurd since Jeremy is a Labour MP of long standing, to argue that people are joining the party solely to support one of its members is as absurd as it sounds. If they do not believe these people are supporting the party's true values then what does that say about Jeremy? I have never seen such political dishonesty from any party - and I include the Tories. What Labour are doing to themselves is akin to punching themselves in the nuts with an iron fist, repeatedly and loudly.

The evidence for the second point comes from the comments - the shrill hysterical warnings of oblivion - portended by Labour grandees including the warmonger Tony Blair and the insidious Peter Mandelson. These spectres seem fit to continue to haunt the party, but that's what happens when you bury your dead in a troubled grave. We must either throw some sticky rice at these scumbags, or tell them they are no longer welcome. Neither will happen of course, Labour are on a direct line at unstoppable speed toward utter annihilation, and they seem hell bent on liking it. I don't think Jeremy has a chance.

So where does that leave us? It is possible that the violent dissolution of #JezWeCan will demand some release; the energy will need to go somewhere and that could well be the streets. If so I dare say I would welcome that. I'm not in favour of violence or vandalism, and I'm not condoning it (for the benefit of our friends in GCHQ...beep beep), however Labour would only have itself to blame. Should they end up picking Burnham, as I fear likely, they will fart themselves toward 2020 will all the grace of a deflated balloon spurting out it's remaining oxygen. Labour will exhale all that once made it good and die in a fit of inoffensive stupidity. They claim that Corbyn will make them unelectable despite doing the very thing they could not: attracting grassroots supporters: the very lifeblood of any party.

It beggars belief that a party would reject that in favour of an ideology that, on all evidence, cannot and does not work. They offer nothing more than a slightly lighter shade of debt and death. Austerity is a beggars bargain; if only we could peel back the "two for the price of one" sticker that has been placed over our society and see the truth. Fortunately some of us can.

Will Get Fooled Again?

More ridiculousness; this time from the human slime that is Matthew Hancock. This creature is already known to me thanks to his regular appearances as a Tory pundit on the BBC, talking bollocks. He tried to argue against Paul Krugman on the issue of austerity economics, but the former has a nobel prize in the field and Hancock has nothing but contempt; "you're wrong" he claims, on the basis that, being a Tory, he isn't.Yesterday he came out with the latest iteration of the government's viciously circular war on welfare. Another "intensive" work scheme, this time primarily aimed at the young - because after all they broke the economy didn't they!

If nothing else this is actually a tacit admission that everything the Tories have tried, all born of their hateful ideology, since 2010 has failed. Wasn't the work programme meant to be intensive? Wasn't the post WP service meant to be intensive? Wasn't every aspect of signing on meant to be intensive? Wasn't workfare meant to be intensive? Isn't the claimant commitment and it's 35 hour/week jobsearch (I defy anyone to use their website for 35 hours without going mad) meant to be intensive?

This would be laughable if it wasn't so tragic and so damaging. There won't be any intensive support; claimants will just be sanctioned at the drop of a hat as they are now. Where are these mentors going to come from; the same private sector cowboys that have run things so far? Whatever happened to Emma Harrison eh (I bet she turns up again)?  Will it be the already beleaguered JC+ staff - including those jobsworths that push sanctions on to claimants without a care?

This is just intended to play to the gallery: look it's the Tories being tough on scroungers. Except they've already tried being tough. They've already tried asserting there's a culture of dependency to crack...but the evidence doesn't support the existence of such a culture. Even if there was such, threatening people with and putting people through a regime of sanctions achieves nothing. It won't create jobs.

There will  never be full employment. There will always be more out of work, especially among the young, than in work. All this does is punish people for living in the world the Tories have created.

Won't Get Fooled Again?

Although the ascendancy of Jeremy Corbyn would no doubt be a positive for our archaic and corrupt political system, it seems Labour are beyond hope. Why do they continue to allow their politics to be dictated by the right. The centre ground has shifted so far to the right that we have the sad spectacle of the other leadership candidates arguing against Jeremy because we mustn't upset business.

Here they all, including, sadly, Corbyn, on LBC engaged in a leadership debate. The problem with this is that, again, they are letting the tail wag the dog. Iain Dale, the host, is another tedious right wing attack dog; people like him don't give a toss about the rights of workers and exist only to reinforce that same central position of business, quite literally as usual. He even asks Jeremy why he thinks he's qualified to be PM, asserting that Jez hasn't run a business or a bank or a corporation (a bit like Cameron, Howard, Hague and especially Iain Duncan Sauron). In fact there is a banker in government, Lord Fraud. He wasn't elected, he has no idea of life on benefits and yet is integral to teh creation of hideous policies such as the Bedroom Tax, and the notion that disabled people should be patronised by employers instead of treated well.

By participating in this farce Labour not only allows itself to look like a group of squabbling kids, which is no doubt what Dale and the right wing want from this, but allows the right, through Dale, to dictate the terms of the discussion. As he's the host of the show he has complete control - which is the sad nature of living in a media dominated society - he has the power of the button and can thus control what's said and when. If someone, in this case a prospective labour leader, speaks 'out of turn' he can interrupt and accuse them of being difficult or obtuse. In fact this is what made Jeremy's recent interview with Krishnam Guru Murthy so odious, on C4 news: KGM asked long winded questions that demanded a longer answer than time would allow, by trying to answer Jeremy then runs out of time and looks stupid. Or the question takes so long to ask that only a simple short response can be slotted in; couple this with provocative subject matter (such as perceived support for terrorists) and the interviewee is made to look foolish.

This is what happens when the opposition allows the right to dictate the terms of the debate. This is why I would have counselled against going on LBC. Inevitably, with four labour candidates arguing for the same job, there will be disagreements. This is the very definition of airing your grievances in public. Instead they could have held a private hustings. But their idiotic advisers thought this was a good idea, in a particularly Thick Of It fashion, and so they appear, to a right wing audience (as I imagine Dale has, most radio phone ins seem to) like a bunch of petty schoolkids. This only reinforces the notion that Labour aren't fit to run anything.

What is the logic of a party that claims it opposes austerity appearing on a debate controlled by adherents of austerity?