Okay, well much as the word “centrist” is as crude a catch-all term as “the left”, it’s a slight misnomer to call them my “mates”. Some of them are longstanding and dear friends, others I only know via Facebook. But they seem to be extraordinarily highly represented on my feed, more so than in society at large.
I have some political sympathy with them, primarily over Brexit, on which, sadly, I find myself in far more agreement with Blair than with Corbyn. I agree with them about Syria and the egregious support for Assad offered by some on the far left as if it would be a betrayal of the glorious Soviet motherland to say otherwise. In other areas I do not. They appear far more exercised when someone down in the sewers of Twitter somewhere says something fatuous, arguably (or unarguably) antisemitic about Israel than they are about the actual, murderous crimes of the Israeli state, which they blithely ignore as if they were simply a fact of life.
They claim to represent some sort of true socialism but detest “the Left” with the gleeful heat of a thousand Nick Cohens, more than anything on earth. They share on their feeds instances of some maverick Labour council lunacy or some dubious Ken Loach statement as if this represents “the Left”’s terminal malaise since it made the lunatic error of electing Jeremy Corbyn as leader. They sometimes appear convinced that in the nightmare event of his becoming Prime Minister, there will be a resurgence of the IRA, Stalinism and pogroms. They monitor George Galloway closely as if he were deputy leader of Labour or something. In each instance it’s hard to disagree with them - yes, if you trawl social media, it’s as easy as fishing for shopping trolleys in a canal to find examples of gross idiocy, Rothschild memes, and so forth from people espousing leftwing politics. But so what? On sharing these items, their fellow centrists flock to support them, often with the sarky cry of “Your a Tory!’, the misspelling intended to ape the leftist caricature that dominates their minds.
It’s hard to know what they actually believe in themselves as they never outline their own beliefs. Are they for renationalisation? Aggressive taxation of the super-rich? They vary in commitment - some actually campaign and leaflet for Labour, which is more than I do in fairness, others would never go on a demo lest they find themselves standing within 20 yards of a tankie. What bugs me about them, these friends, is their utter lack of political reflection. Corbyn’s surprisingly good performance in the 2017 General Election incontrovertibly removed one of the key planks of their argument - that his sort of politics was anathema to the general public. The truth is, centrist parties across Europe have generally performed abysmally, with Labour’s last share of the vote exceptionally high by comparison.
Unfortunately, when centrists do soul-search, their impulse is to become still more “centrist” - redouble the number of Controls On Immigration mugs. It doesn’t occur to them that it’s not the 90s any more and levels of inequality have reached a tipping point that renders their own, business-friendly pragmatism utterly irrelevant. There was a brief moment of chastened humility after the 2017 election but this has been replaced by rage that the centre right is no longer the controlling force in Labour; the “sensibles”, or the “grown-ups”, as they like to say. Their analysis is that the UK has simply turned moron for no apparent reason (resulting in Brexit, as well as Corbyn) and that it is simply a matter of time before they come to their senses and vote for Yvette Cooper, or whoever.
I don’t ultimately think Jeremy Corbyn has the calibre to lead Labour in the direction it needs to go. He’s an old man, not a great man, prone to binary simplicities. It would take an extraordinary talent, a youthful Harry (or Harriet) Perkins to pull off what’s required, something that only really happened once last century and then after a World War. However, I’ve no regrets whatsoever for voting for him. Thanks to Blair/Brown spending years ensuring that his wing of the party was barely represented, the only option on the ballot paper for those who wanted Labour to be truer to itself was Corbyn. He was the only doorway available. As for the centrists, as with the Democrats in the US, they need to spend a good deal less time harping on about the basket of deplorables they see all around them and more time contemplating their own failings. Right now, that just isn’t happening.
I have some political sympathy with them, primarily over Brexit, on which, sadly, I find myself in far more agreement with Blair than with Corbyn. I agree with them about Syria and the egregious support for Assad offered by some on the far left as if it would be a betrayal of the glorious Soviet motherland to say otherwise. In other areas I do not. They appear far more exercised when someone down in the sewers of Twitter somewhere says something fatuous, arguably (or unarguably) antisemitic about Israel than they are about the actual, murderous crimes of the Israeli state, which they blithely ignore as if they were simply a fact of life.
They claim to represent some sort of true socialism but detest “the Left” with the gleeful heat of a thousand Nick Cohens, more than anything on earth. They share on their feeds instances of some maverick Labour council lunacy or some dubious Ken Loach statement as if this represents “the Left”’s terminal malaise since it made the lunatic error of electing Jeremy Corbyn as leader. They sometimes appear convinced that in the nightmare event of his becoming Prime Minister, there will be a resurgence of the IRA, Stalinism and pogroms. They monitor George Galloway closely as if he were deputy leader of Labour or something. In each instance it’s hard to disagree with them - yes, if you trawl social media, it’s as easy as fishing for shopping trolleys in a canal to find examples of gross idiocy, Rothschild memes, and so forth from people espousing leftwing politics. But so what? On sharing these items, their fellow centrists flock to support them, often with the sarky cry of “Your a Tory!’, the misspelling intended to ape the leftist caricature that dominates their minds.
It’s hard to know what they actually believe in themselves as they never outline their own beliefs. Are they for renationalisation? Aggressive taxation of the super-rich? They vary in commitment - some actually campaign and leaflet for Labour, which is more than I do in fairness, others would never go on a demo lest they find themselves standing within 20 yards of a tankie. What bugs me about them, these friends, is their utter lack of political reflection. Corbyn’s surprisingly good performance in the 2017 General Election incontrovertibly removed one of the key planks of their argument - that his sort of politics was anathema to the general public. The truth is, centrist parties across Europe have generally performed abysmally, with Labour’s last share of the vote exceptionally high by comparison.
Unfortunately, when centrists do soul-search, their impulse is to become still more “centrist” - redouble the number of Controls On Immigration mugs. It doesn’t occur to them that it’s not the 90s any more and levels of inequality have reached a tipping point that renders their own, business-friendly pragmatism utterly irrelevant. There was a brief moment of chastened humility after the 2017 election but this has been replaced by rage that the centre right is no longer the controlling force in Labour; the “sensibles”, or the “grown-ups”, as they like to say. Their analysis is that the UK has simply turned moron for no apparent reason (resulting in Brexit, as well as Corbyn) and that it is simply a matter of time before they come to their senses and vote for Yvette Cooper, or whoever.
I don’t ultimately think Jeremy Corbyn has the calibre to lead Labour in the direction it needs to go. He’s an old man, not a great man, prone to binary simplicities. It would take an extraordinary talent, a youthful Harry (or Harriet) Perkins to pull off what’s required, something that only really happened once last century and then after a World War. However, I’ve no regrets whatsoever for voting for him. Thanks to Blair/Brown spending years ensuring that his wing of the party was barely represented, the only option on the ballot paper for those who wanted Labour to be truer to itself was Corbyn. He was the only doorway available. As for the centrists, as with the Democrats in the US, they need to spend a good deal less time harping on about the basket of deplorables they see all around them and more time contemplating their own failings. Right now, that just isn’t happening.
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