Imagining Jeremy Corbyn's 2020 Success

It was with a spring in his step that Jeremy Corbyn, an unusually sprightly 70-year-old strolled down to the polling station on 7 May 2020. After all this was a day most had said would never come. The Labour leader had confounded the critics who said he’d never win the leadership, then those who said he’d be ousted after a succession of disasters.

In fact the public had rather taken to ‘Uncle Jez’ as the Daily Mail referred to him (not that Jeremy took the Mail, but his housekeeper had told him this). There had been a brief wobble when Zac Goldsmith won the London mayoralty after the Evening Standard published a dossier on Jeremy’s meetings with extremists in an attempt to taint Labour’s candidate Sadiq Khan, but that was forgotten after Jeremy delivered a rousing hour and a half speech attacking the media. Afterwards hundreds of people in Islington had patted him on the back and said they’d never buy a paper again - although he noted his newsagent still stocked the Mail and Sun.

Amjad Bashir: The Tories' New Party Animal

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The Tory Party has welcomed a new MEP to the fold this weekend, as UKIP MEP Amjad Bashir joined the Conservatives.

Party Hard: Amjad Bashir

 
However, as defectors go Bashir might not be the catch he once seemed. That's because it turns out that claiming his support is a little like having slept with Russell Brand. Initially impressive until you think about how many people can probably say the same. It turns out that as well as being a UKIP bigwig, Bashir has also been a member of George Galloway's ultra-leftist Respect Party, and it turns out Labour too.

Does Bashir's love of parties stop there though? As these pictures show, Mr Bashir's love of a party doesn't stop there.

 

Bashir was a stalwart in The People's Front of Judea...

  His defection to the Bolshevik Party was hailed as a 'major coup' for Lenin, although he was little known due to Stalin editing him out of pictures and official documents.

 

The 'Gang of Four' who began the SDP were originally the Gang of Five - but Amjad's principles led to him shunning publicity...

  And after his defection to the Monster Raving Loony Party he became Amjad The Flying Biscuit Tin Pocahontas Barley Water Bashir...

Although, not even as big a party animal as Amjad would turn up at the wake presided over by Nick Clegg...

 

Day 101: Dave's Defective Defector

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In other minor party news, the day started appallingly for UKIP – the Sunday papers were running an all-out assault on Nigel Farage’s party. First there was that much loved slow news staple – the Kip of the tongue, as the party's General Secretary said that they should ‘stand-up for bigots’. 

Serial Party-goer: Amjad Bashir

This was one of those classic gaffes – a politician uttering an uncomfortable truth. Like it or not, a significant proportion of the population hold views that are unsavoury to the body politic, unpleasant, bonkers or all of those. Recently in a pub I heard a serious proposal to tackle ISIS – it was to drop Ebola victims from West Africa on them. Of course UKIP don’t hold those sort of views as a party, and I don’t think their senior members are ‘bigots’ or racists (certainly in the fascistic BNP sense, xenophobes perhaps)– but they’re certainly number 1 with bigots, who hear the anti-immigration message and blank out all else.

Yet this was overshadowed by the big news, horror of horror for Farage, a UKIP MEP defected to the Tories. On The Sunday Politics the Con(servative)-artist formerly known as Sebastian Fox (aka Grant Shapps) could barely spout his endless slogans so full of glee was he. Amjad Bashir was the rat leaving Nigel’s sinking ship, who called Farage’s party ‘racists’ and ‘amateurs’. On the face of it it was a huge scalp for the Tories – Bashir had been UKIP’s small business spokesman and was in the post of communities spokesman. As an immigrant of Pakistani origin he was also a useful man to have around to rebut the aforementioned ‘bigot’ charge. 

Then a different story began to emerge – Bashir had been under investigation by UKIP for attempting to rig a selection, financial and employment irregularities and consorting with an organisation named by Canada as a terror group. Suddenly David Cameron spending two hours buttering up his shiny new defector began to look a little less of a triumph. Later we found out that prior to his time aboard the HMS Kipper Bashir had been booted out of George Galloway’s ultra-left Respect Party, which he’d joined after 15 years in the Conservative Party (others claimed he'd also been a Labour member). With Nigel Farage nonchalantly brushing off the latest mud thrown onto his tweed jacket, it actually ended up rather a decent day for the purples’ army.

Perhaps Dave though will take a leaf out of Galloway’s book, see past his new pal’s foibles and salute his Churchillian indefatigability – after all it was the great Sir Winston, who died 55 years ago this weekend, who said:  "Anyone can rat, but it takes a certain ingenuity to re-rat."

Yesterday’s winner: UKIP

Yesterday’s loser: The Greens

Chump of the Day: David Cameron – for obtaining a defective defector, and pushing the Green Party into the spotlight.

Day 101 (Yesterday): The Day The Green Surge Stopped Being Sustainable?

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The last few weeks have perhaps been the most joyful in the Green Party’s history – the ‘Green surge’, initially a minor uptick in the polls made more significant by the subterranean popularity of the Liberal Democrats, has become something more substantial. Natalie Bennett even got something previous minor party leaders could scarcely have dreamed of – inclusion in the TV election debates, but perhaps most importantly – the publicity that came from the argument around whether they should be included. 

However all that ended yesterday, as their leader Natalie Bennett was forensically taken apart by Andrew Neill on what should’ve been one of her first forays into the big time. Pressed by Neill on Green Party policy, it’s fair to say that Bennett went to pieces faster than a falafel atop a wind turbine.

Natalie Bennett's interview with Andrew Neill is a must watch

101 Days To Go...

I’m starting this blog because like many I will be following the run-up to the general election with the eye of the political anorak, and know others will as well. As such I thought I'd rather like to have an outlet for my thoughts on each day of the long campaign in what could be one of the most bizarre and close general elections in history.

It may be a pithy observation on the day’s events, a picture or video- or sometimes a comprehensive explanation of my view on the day’s electoral sparring and what it means for the election.

I am a left of centre Labour supporter, which of course will colour my view slightly, however I hope that doesn’t mean that I suspend my critical faculties and will be looking at the facts beneath the bluster and won’t hold back on aiming to capture what might be happening – even if that is contrary to the way I’ll ultimately vote on May 7^th.

It’s my view that many of the memes and slogans you hear from all parties are inevitably often caricatures and gross exaggerations (including those parties which cast themselves as outsiders and innocents), so I shall generally write from a sceptical point of view and try to be explicative, humourous and interesting where possible.

Because if all we have to read watch and listen to for the next 101 days is claim and counter-claim, dodgy dossier followed by rebuttal and muddy argument – it’s going to feel like an absolute eternity.