Month: November 2016

Dear Labour, Here Comes UKIP.

/ Dominic / 3 Comments

In Great Britain the Labour Party (the party of the left, in all its guises) has pulled off the astonishing trick of disappearing so far up its own arse by squabbling amongst itself that everyone can see it for what it has become; Labour is a bunch of power-hungry people, so focused on their own gain, that they will commit collective suicide rather than back down to one another. This public, Faustian style death pact that all the warring elements have bought into is very worrying. These self-obsessed clowns are no longer representative of the voters and nor do they provide an effective opposition, so the Tories just march around doing what they please.

Labour used to be the antidote to the so-called ‘Nasty Party’ (the right-wing Tories) and provided an effective opposition, sometimes got into power and occasionally mitigated some of the more egregious things the hardline Tories do. However, these days there is a new force and it is going to subsume Labour.  I watched the address of the new leader of UKIP on a Channel 4 clip and it was terrifying. Terrifyingly good and terrifyingly dangerous if you are the Labour party. In fact, just scary for any person with even a semi-liberal outlook on life.

In this post-factual political world Paul Nuttal, the new leader of a very unpleasant right-wing party, has marched up to the centre ground and declared that UKIP is the voice of the working classes. His message and delivery are very convincing. An apt metaphor is the new dog in the neighbourhood seen peeing higher on all the lamp posts. These lamp posts are the parliamentary constituencies that the Labour infighting has let go unattended. Anyone who has had a dog knows that they regularly remark their territory, lest the other dogs forget. Labour has failed to do this and the new dog is here.

Nuttal is appealing to traditional Labour voters and I believe that – important caveat now – if he can galvanise UKIP he will decimate the Labour party. If they think he won’t because commonsense dictates that no sane decent person will vote for such a bunch of unpleasant people as UKIP then I have just the one word: Trump. People identify with his message and he is skilled in its delivery. Watch out.

Let The Accommodating Begin

/ Dominic

We have all heard the words of Lord Aston in 1887, “Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely.” True then, true now.

In the stunned aftermath – at least in the liberal intelligentsia – of the US Election result the thing that caught my attention was the amount of Republican politicians that were, at best, ambivalent about The Donald before his win.

There is no doubt that he terrified and confused them. On the one hand, apparently one of them as a rich white man yet on the other, he had the propensity to say worrying things in a scary shoot-from-the-hip manner. Whilst The Donald, seeing power came from embracing a more right-wing christian position (Guns, good. Abortion, bad, etc) he lacked a filter. That scares these folks, for what lurks underneath? More importantly: will it compromise them to be too close to a man who is emotionally akin to a hand grenade with the pin out?

Watch what happens now, for it has already started. The power obsessed, self interested, Republican establishment are all scrambling to (re-)establish themselves at the right hand of the amazing new leader. One who speaks to change and represents the suppressed voice of the downtrodden underclass of America etc etc. What a guy, what a visionary, what an extraordinary change agent and what a stunning bullshit artist.

What they see in Trump is a man whose victory is merely the figurehead vehicle to dismantle any social advancement seen in the last 8y. Bye bye Obamacare (it is terribly unfair you know, affordable healthcare), bye bye Roe v. Wade (gotta insert punishment in here. After all, a good grabbing by the pussy is hardly sufficient for defiling one’s own body against the wishes of god, even if it is The Donald doing the grabbing). Bye bye same-sex marriage. I mean, seriously, that is just sick and against the natural order of things. Love has nothing to do with it in the deranged christian view,. Marriage is about a woman being a procreation machine, and you just can’t make more people if the fags get in on the act, ergh.  Climate change: can’t say bye bye to liberal bullshit can we, we can but dismantle the ideas that are perpetuated by people trying to neuter the great benevolent nation that is the USA. Oh yeah, free trade agreements like NAFTA are just liberal bullshit too, designed to disadvantage the great benevolent nation. And so on and so forth.

Brace yourselves for a tide of Trump lovin’ by the right-wing fence sitters now he has made it. An undignified rush for plum jobs will ensue, as memories are not helpful things to have in politics. At last, getting off the fence will provide these poor people with well deserved crotch comfort and at least someone is getting some relief somewhere.