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jazzy_daveI'm an old man- with roots in the student politics of the 1970s- and I liked Corbyn and his socialism with a 1940s twist- but the country as a whole thought differently and I can see there's no longer much point in banging on about Clem Attlee and Jarrow and what Thatcher did to the miners. That drum has had its skin kicked in and been booted down the road- back into the past where it now belongs. Gather up the Trade Union banners and stick them in the folk art museum.
Labour can no longer count on the voters of what the TV people have been calling the "Red Wall"- that band of constituencies that stretched from coast to coast across the industrial north of England. I stayed up late enough to see Blyth Valley go blue. That's when we knew that the exit polls were right and an era in British politics had come to an end.
In the South East Labour held onto Canterbury and its two seats in Brighton. In London it won Putney. The moneyed intelligentsia are still singing the Red Flag.
But the 20th century is over. We are no longer living in the afterglow of the Industrial Revolution. The loyalties forged in the mines and the factories are dead.
Puritanism is dead as well. An absolute rotter has been returned as PM and nobody seems to mind about his infidelities and betrayals and all the abandoned children, legitimate and otherwise. I don't suppose this is altogether a bad thing.
And on an unquestionably positive note more women that ever before will be sitting in the House.
The SNP has swept Scotland, the Nationalists now outnumber the Unionists in Northern Ireland. An independent Scotland, a united Ireland, a United Kingdom consisting of England and Wales- all these seem just a year or two away.
And Brexit? O dear, yes, some form of Brexit will be done. I don't understand the enthusiasm for it or- indeed- the passion of the opposition. It used to be the case that only Tories cared about it- one way or the other- but then the whole fucking country is Tory now.
Labour can no longer count on the voters of what the TV people have been calling the "Red Wall"- that band of constituencies that stretched from coast to coast across the industrial north of England. I stayed up late enough to see Blyth Valley go blue. That's when we knew that the exit polls were right and an era in British politics had come to an end.
In the South East Labour held onto Canterbury and its two seats in Brighton. In London it won Putney. The moneyed intelligentsia are still singing the Red Flag.
But the 20th century is over. We are no longer living in the afterglow of the Industrial Revolution. The loyalties forged in the mines and the factories are dead.
Puritanism is dead as well. An absolute rotter has been returned as PM and nobody seems to mind about his infidelities and betrayals and all the abandoned children, legitimate and otherwise. I don't suppose this is altogether a bad thing.
And on an unquestionably positive note more women that ever before will be sitting in the House.
The SNP has swept Scotland, the Nationalists now outnumber the Unionists in Northern Ireland. An independent Scotland, a united Ireland, a United Kingdom consisting of England and Wales- all these seem just a year or two away.
And Brexit? O dear, yes, some form of Brexit will be done. I don't understand the enthusiasm for it or- indeed- the passion of the opposition. It used to be the case that only Tories cared about it- one way or the other- but then the whole fucking country is Tory now.
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