Blog 2023 Malcolm Blair-Robinson

Set in the mid nineteen nineties, this fast moving thriller lifts the curtain on sex, sleaze and corruption in high places as the long reign of the government totters to an end, following the ousting of the iconic Margaret Thatcher. The novel catches the mood of those times with a host of fictional characters who engage in political intrigue, sex, money laundering and murder, pursued by an Irish investigative journalist and his girlfriend, the daughter of a cabinet minister found dead in a hotel room after bondage sex.

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This is a minefield into which a wiser Blog would not venture. Commenting on political elections based on reported figures and polls went so badly wrong at the general election that a period of reflection seems in order. The problem is we may be in the midst of a contest of historic proportions which may (or may not) signal a seismic shift in the political weather leading eventually to changes as dramatic of those inaugurated by Attlee and Thatcher. Whatever the outcome of Labour’s poll in the end, it is now the fact that the race is dominated by Corbyn. Everything he says his commented on and reported and everywhere he goes he is greeted with acclaim. What the other candidates say or think is ignored, unless they comment on Corbyn. For any soundbite his name has to be in it.

This is leading some MPs, who sit under the pink shade of New Labour, to become so alarmed as to demand that the contest be halted. This is absurd. It suggests a disconnect between the parliamentary party and the people. This blog has long asserted that Labour has drifted too far from its roots and its spectacular loss in May was because the working class, far from voting for the Tories who received their lowest winning total on post war record, either did not vote or voted UKIP in England and SNP in Scotland.

The panic surrounds the surge of 150,000 new Labour members or supporters who have so far registered to vote. The Stop the Vote campaign asserts that loads of Tories are joining up to back Corbyn to make Labour unelectable in 2020. Maybe a handful of nutters are. But these figures reveal a surge greater than the total current membership of the Conservative Party. It suggests that what is actually happening is that very large numbers of people who feel deserted and let down by New Labour and who have walked away from the party, are now returning at the prospect of a leader who understands them, is one of them and who will fight their corner. ie Corbyn.

The notion that you can stop a political contest because you fear you might lose shows a political clique that has indeed lost the plot.