On Sunday morning I was grazing social media when I came across an item on how various right wing newspapers clubbed together to sell the idea Britain was under siege from Johnny Foreigner, was scrooge central for the world’s free-loaders and the only way for the country to get out of all this was to go for Brexit.
I’ll not bother naming the papers but here are some of the screaming headlines I noted down – “Immigrants bring more crime’, ‘One in 5 Britons will be ethnic’, ‘Sick benefits – 75% are faking it’, ‘Draw a Red Line on immigration’, ‘Thousands of illegal workers claiming benefits’ and my own particular favourite “They’ve stolen all our jobs’.
Now considering the fact that most of these papers – you can figure out where most of those headlines came from for yourselves – are owned by billionaires it hardly needs Einstein to figure out their agenda - that it was all about keeping a right wing Tory government in power.
No hippy socialists types should be allowed interfere with their power, privileges and tax breaks.
Which brings me neatly on to one Jeremy Corbyn who I happened to meet up with and have a long chat with on Saturday. It was a very interesting and informative way to spend a morning.
Top of our agenda was Brexit. He openly admitted that Brexit proved a difficult sell for Labour. What they were trying to do, he claimed, was get across message that it was in Britain long term economic and social interests to stay in the EU - but that the whole Euro project was badly in need of major reform. Accountability and transparency needing overhauling.
“That”, said Corbyn “was a nuanced message, difficult to sell on the doorstep. All the Tories did was claim week in-week out in their friendly media that they had ‘an oven ready’ deal done and that they would be ‘taking back control’ and what was really a very complex issue was reduced to a sound bite. It was totally misleading and dishonest, as has proven to be the case.”
And while he skipped around my question if he could he give me five examples where Sir Keir Starmer differed in policy from either David Cameron or John Major – I doubt if he could have done it! – he was adamant that socialism was not dead. When I suggested if it was not dead it certainly was on life support he was having none of it, pointing out that in America the ‘radical left’ candidate, Bernie Saunders had almost made it on to the ticket to be the Democratic contender for the presidency, and that across much of south and central America the rise in support for left wing parties was clearly evident.
I have mentioned this on quite a few occasions that I find it baffling that working people frequently vote against their own class interest. Does any blue collar worker in America really believe that billionaire Donald Trump has their interests at heart?
Does anyone believe that Eton-Oxbridge toffs in the Tory Party know what it’s like to worry about finding the money to pay the gas bill on a Friday morning? If you do, go check for flying pigs.
Anyway, I came away from my talk with Jeremy Corbyn thinking to myself what a decent man, what an honourable politician.
And then the thought wormed its way into my brain that he was way too honest, too principled to be prime minister.
And then I thought to myself – how truly sad is that?
