I heard two aircraft passing overhead yesterday while out reading. Odd really, I couldn't see them so they weren't from Bristol airport. Normally I wouldn't notice; you get used to the constant (and it's surprising how constant that is) noise. The airport is only about 7 miles away which is no distance at all.
Today the sky, blue after a cloudy and colder morning, is split by a solitary pair of vapour trails, quickly erased in isolation. This appears to be a new normal we could well do with continuing, though of course an end to all air travel forever more is a primitivist pipe dream. No matter how damaging it is we can't completely go back to before the Wright Brothers had a bright idea.
Although that would help in not giving viruses a lift around the world.
So Labour has not only inducted a new and frankly vapid leader, it's managed to leak some pretty grotty behind the scenes behaviour under Jeremy Corbyn. The usual suspects getting up to a litany of shabby tricks instead of, you know, supporting their twice democratically elected leader. Let them not forget that Labour's membership rose during that period. That won't now increase. Whether it will diminish considerably is of no concern to me, but it will diminish.
What is a problem is that the Labour leadership won't care. The Blairite rump won't care. Remember; they don't want power. They want control. They want Labour to be their party, not popular and not in government unless it can be pure. This is berserk politics. It is utterly irrational. But these are not socialists. They are avowedly anti socialist, as the behaviour reported shows. They'll sabotage what you would assume would be obvious self interest. This makes no sense to the average voter and it just demonstrates how broken the Westminster system is.
The reality is that these people have power. They might not be in government, but, honestly, I suspet most of them would rather remain in opposition. They get to be in Parliament, enjoy a comfortable gig, but not have the pressure of government. Either way, they are still in Parliament. They are still MP's. They would rather keep that than risk it for a spin of the wheel in the name of what is right - pursuing a much more positive social agenda.
Of course their social agenda isn't sufficiently different from that of the Tories. This is why they won't oppose this government's dreadful Corona-inspired incompetence. You'll hear the dead eyed refain of "now is not the time". Which means "now is never the time". It's pathetic. If not now, when? This won't be going anytime soon and if you want to be a leader, Sir Keir, you need to step the fuck up.
But he won't. That's not his job. He's just another capitalist. He doesn't want real change. Just to tinker here and there. Make capitalism a little more palatable when it needs to be (and that could well be soon), but it's not change enough. It's not remotely radical and as such he's a waste of space. There is literally no point to the Labour party right now. Their time is over; they will diminish and calcify into another voice for establishment politics and interests.
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