The Birth and Death of the Laburnum Party.
Watching Labour tear its own heart out is reminiscent of watching squatters tip a grand mansion into decay.
The damp slowly creeps up the walls; the rafters collapse under the weight of slate and moss, the elderly retainers are carted off to insalubrious care homes, and eventually only the Momentum squatters stand guard to hold hostage the Haversham creature that gives them the right to live in the building; ripping the ancient staircase from its mooring to burn as fuel, tearing the lead from the roof, caring not that their actions ensure the roof can never again provide cover.
Momentum merges as one with the title of Labour and becomes Laburnum – poisonous to all that touch its leaves, its fruit, even the gnarled bark of its leader.
The Laburnum Top is silent, quite still
in the afternoon yellow September sunlight,
A few leaves yellowing, all its seeds fallen.
Ted Hughes
As spokespersons for the nation’s ‘underdogs’, the unemployed, the sick, the weak, their voices have all the resonance of a Victorian undertaker’s mute; the death rattle in the throat of the Keir Hardie.
The gadarene Blairites could not wait for the obsequies; they took to their Beatrice Webbed feet and fled; the ‘party that dare not bear its name’ – for fear of legal action. They have no leader, just safety in numbers. 172 of them; a twitching headless corpse; they snatched the ‘our’ from Lab’our’, and declared it ‘their’ property.
In metropolitan covens across the land, the Guardianistas wait for word as to how they should think, how to express their ideas, what to teach the next generation of Guardianistas. Who will lead them to the promised land? Where is their ‘safe space’? Their radiant optimism that they spoke for the dispossessed all but vanquished by the ‘Leave’ vote.
How could it be that the ungrateful wretches rose up and bit the hand that denied their children a council flat, that put them at the end of the queue for Doctors, that filled their school with a thousand mother tongues but English? Did these racists and bigots not understand that the mindless slogans, the fatuous patter, the tractor statistics, the teeming streets, were for a higher purpose? The glorious union with countries that their forefathers had sent them to die in? Be proud to be Scottish, be proud to be Welsh – be ashamed to be English.
Today, the Laburnum Party will dust down their leader, and set him in front of [who the heck will be standing in for the Prime Minister? He hasn’t been seen for days] [Tyrion Lannister in the Speaker’s Chair?] The Game of Drones drones on – he will denounce Blair as a war criminal in league with tyrants in Kazakhstan. To be sure, ’tis a terrible thing for a former Labour Prime Minister to be breaking bread with the first Soviet country to abolish weapons of mass destruction and give all the weapons-grade uranium in their country to the US to destroy. Blair is supporting a country that is 70% Muslim – off with his head!
There is a monumental death wish creeping over the country; drivelling comedians, geriatric pop stars, foul-mouthed far-from-enchanting Welsh chanteuses, expense scammers, fraudsters, will watch the Thatcher-swilling obese figure of Watson, (a man who voted consistently against the £10 million pound Chilcot Inquiry even taking place) lead Corbyn to his seat – and then to ignominy.
They are all prepared to believe anything, no matter how preposterous, how obscure, how authoritarian, to further the cause to which they have given their lives – the furtherance of a Union that will consume them all, abolish their platform, remove the last vestige of their power. They are literally eating their own flesh.
By 12.30pm Corbyn will have fulfilled his task.
And the laburnum subsides to empty.
Ted Hughes.
- JuliaM
July 6, 2016 at 11:50 am -
You’re on cracking form, Anna!
- Mr Ecks
July 6, 2016 at 11:57 am -
The piece seems all over the place Anna.
Life is complicated but not that complicated.
Socialism has murdered 150 million human beings over the last 100 years and either totally ruined or massively blighted the lives of hundreds of millions more,
Should any sane people care that middle-class cultural Marxist and white-working-class-hating scumbag Princess Toni Bliar is hopefully –if the old fool is up to it–going to be eviscerated by a middle-class Trot (I believe that is Corbyn’s stance) who, while partly a cultural Marxist has some kind of nutty nostalgia for old style ZaNu values like being passive in the face of aggression because you hate your own people more than the enemy (eg Benn and the Falklands etc).
That said Iraq was a monumentally stupid caper with Tone desperate to appear a “statesman” strutting alongside Baby Bush as W got revenge for his Dad. Or whatever reason he had for kicking off a 2+million,million dollar blood-soaked mess that Iraq has become.
As for the monumental death-wish— that is falling on the despairing, wailing members of the well-off, middle-upper class cultural Marxist London Bubble as they realise that they aren’t going to be sucking EU wundersticker much longer.
All that is needed now to seal the deal is anybody other that the Darling Dud of May to be the next PM.
- Don Cox
July 6, 2016 at 5:22 pm -
Socialism is not the same thing as Marxism.
Socialism is about the welfare state, Marxism is about Class War. A certain amount of Socialism is a good thing for most countries, whereas even the smallest amount of Marxism (including Trotskyism, Maoism, etc etc) is bad.
- Stewart Cowan
July 6, 2016 at 7:44 pm -
“The goal of socialism is communism.” (Lenin)
Fool ’em with ‘free’ ‘healthcare’ and ‘free’ this and that for a while (i.e. paid for by handing over 40% of your earnings in tax) and they won’t notice they’re in a communist system until it’s too late. It’s probably already too late.
- Mudplugger
July 6, 2016 at 8:05 pm -
Sounds spookily like the EU – fool ’em with cheap roaming-charges, brightly-flagged projects and subsidies worth only half what they paid for them and they won’t notice they’re locking into the system until it’s too late.
Phew, Brexit was a damned close call – well voted, Britain.
- Mudplugger
- Mr Ecks
July 6, 2016 at 11:01 pm -
So it was actually called the Union of Soviet “Marxist” Republics was it?
- Stewart Cowan
- Don Cox
- Bandini
July 6, 2016 at 12:31 pm -
AR for PM! Or at least involved in the Brexit negotiations – should they ever happen – tearing a strip off of Juncker…
On Chilcot I’m amazed to see the ‘cash-strapped’ BBC resorting to crowd-sourcing their journalism:
“Are you looking through the Chilcot Report? Have you spotted something which hasn’t been covered? Email haveyoursay@bbc.co.uk with your comments and page reference numbers.”
- tdf
July 6, 2016 at 8:24 pm -
@Bandini
Given that the executive summary alone is 145 pages, one has some sympathy for the BBC
- tdf
- Stewart Cowan
July 6, 2016 at 2:29 pm -
“They are all prepared to believe anything, no matter how preposterous, how obscure, how authoritarian, to further the cause to which they have given their lives – the furtherance of a Union that will consume them all, abolish their platform, remove the last vestige of their power. They are literally eating their own flesh.”
This could equally be said of the SNP. The end justifies the means, seemingly, and their end is “independence” ruled from Brussels. It truly is preposterous, but the leaders are trying to sell us Scots a pig in a poke because (for some reason) 60% of us seem to think that the EU has a magic money tree and after our wedding, will shower us with gifts, because we’re just a baby that can’t wipe it’s own slate clean and start again as a truly independent country that actually wants to get its fishing fleets back to sea after chasing the foreign super-trawlers from our waters.
These Nationalists in nappies are so naive that they believe that, with 1% of the EU’s population, they will be listened to, because being infants (and infantile) they don’t have the ability to rule an independent country, like Iceland does, which has a smaller population than Ayrshire.
Should rattling up support for their vanity project prove to be successful, I believe the Gnats would risk breaking all their toys – everyone’s toys – to realise their ridiculous dream of ‘independence’ under the yoke of the New Roman Empire.
Rather than having money thrown at us, I fancy that the EU mandarins will be jealous that we have 90% of the EU’s oil and charge us a fortune for membership as a result/punishment for being naughty children who must be taught to share our oily toys with everyone else, while the Norwegians have used their oil revenue to build up a huge fund, but we don’t want that here. Nah! We want to be sent to bed early without any pocket money.
We don’t want a huge pot of our own money, or our fishermen to work, or to decide who we let in to further push up house prices because an increasing proportion of land is unavailable for major development as it becomes a national park or forest park or UNESCO biosphere or world heritage site. We certainly don’t want the middle class or the rich coming to live here, as is suggested by the new Scottish version of ‘stamp duty’ called ‘LBTT’, where the 10% kicks in at 1/3rd that in the rest of the UK. http://www.murraybeith.co.uk/blog?id=40
The future isn’t bright; the future is yellow: a very suitable colour for a bunch of cowards acting on their personal desires, delusional that they are.
The sensible people will be keen to leave in a mass ‘sane drain’ exodus.
- The Blocked Dwarf
July 6, 2016 at 3:16 pm -
EU mandarins will be jealous that we have 90% of the EU’s oil
That was probably what Juncker was referring when he had that recent love-in with Nicky Fish…that bit about ‘giving value to Scotland’s voice in EU’. The route for admission of an Independent Ecosse , for ignoring the Spanish veto and the other criteria , will no doubt be well oiled.
- Misa
July 6, 2016 at 3:28 pm -
Is there no stopping Adorable Anna?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/07/06/adorable-raccoon-rescued-from-drowning/?playlist=structure%3Anews- The Blocked Dwarf
July 6, 2016 at 3:36 pm -
or one might report it ‘Underage Raccoon attacked by weekend sailors whilst swimming’.
A young raccoon was cruelly attacked today by well heeled weekend sailors who threw heavy life jackets at it in an attempt to make it drown.
- The Blocked Dwarf
- The Blocked Dwarf
July 6, 2016 at 6:30 pm -
I should start this comment by saying that I DESTEST Tony Blair, I hold him personally responsible for destroying the country of my birth . No exaggeration to say that if I ever met him in person I would feel compelled to punch his smug face until his bodyguards pulled me off. It would be worth the beating and the prison sentence.
I do not like the man….are we clear?
But, and I say this through gritted teeth, i feel very strongly that Gordon Brown, whom i loath equally and who looks like he already met me on a dark night, should never have started the Iraq inquiry. I understand he wanted to get back at Blair but by launching the inquiry, even in camera, he attacked one of the most important pillars of our *cough* democracy.
In the final instance, someone somewhere has to make the call and press the red button. Someone has to drop the leash holding back those dogs of war. In this country it has been the Prime Minster’s job and burden, since god knows whenever it wasn’t the monarch’s job anymore, to declare war. And any war that the PM declares is ‘legal’ under the Royal Prerogative. Even if T.Blair esq knew that the most dangerous weapon Saddam had was Corbyn’s name in his Rolodex , and the whole WMD thing was an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of underdone potato.
Didn’t someone once say you can’t fight a war by committee? Churchill perhaps? Sounds like the sort of thing he would mumble between scotchs.
Was Bleurgh wrong to go to war? Almost certainly -far as I can see but he did, it happened and belated attempts to ‘get him’ for it are wrong and let’s be clear that’s all Chilcot really is. Two and half times the entire corpus of Harry Potter (although surely better written than anything Rowling has ever managed) of injured ‘how every dare you go to war without the Daily Mail’s permisson’. As I said with the whole ‘lets ask Parliament before we bomb Syria’ move by Cameron, the House doesn’t have a say in when we go to war, and for good reason…otherwise we’d still be in the Committee stage of sending the taskforce to the Falklands and the bill to attack Hitler would be in the Lords…somewhere.
I’m sorry, desperately sorry, for all the parents of service men & women who died but they were all soldiers of their own free will, not conscripts. In other times grieving parents would have been proud, and taken comfort from the fact, their child died (and was buried abroad-what is it with this modern practice of freighting the bodies of our fallen ‘heroes’ back? Whatever happened to some corner always England?) doing what that child considered, rightly or wrongly, it’s duty.
/ranting Dwarf
- Mudplugger
July 6, 2016 at 7:59 pm -
Far from being a ‘rant’, Dwarf, that was a most articulate expression of reality – if more people read it, the Iraq post-mortem may enjoy a greater degree of context.
- DtP
July 7, 2016 at 7:26 am -
@TBD – yep, wot Mudplugger said, it bring to mind a Rousseau quote i’ve kept from college ‘one can not imagine the power that wells up through the nation state’ and whilst Chilcott has returned perhaps an open verdict, to judge Blair’s actions as illegal abrogates the highest offices of command of their involvement and Parliament did vote on it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwuQbN5QSms
By the way, is it common practice for Blair’s henchmen to pull you off? Desperate times but good to know…..
- Bandini
July 7, 2016 at 11:15 am -
I read this yesterday from one of those who voted for war:
“As a Foreign Office Minister, I voted for the invasion of Iraq. I am still trying to understand my failure – Denis MacShane”
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/chilcot-inquiry-report-iraq-war-i-voted-in-favour-trying-to-understand-my-failure-a7122221.htmlThe comments are less than kind, and justifiably so. Let’s spare a sack of feathers & bucket of tar for these other players, too. (MacShane’s Wikipedia entry is also worth a read for anyone interested in the man’s ‘calibre’, and, no doubt, that of many others who rise to the top.)
- Bandini
- Mudplugger
- Cascadian
July 6, 2016 at 6:58 pm -
Splendid analysis landlady.
May I add to the Laburnham theme.
The spectacle of a wilted, jaded figure formerly known as “la Burnham”, mass-killer of NHS patients, particularly in former Liebour strongholds (known in some execrable quarters as our Andy), having seen the inevitable implosion of Liebour, is now shopping himself around with his oh-so-special-work-experience as a mayor of Manchester! is precious. Only the deluded Liverpudlian socialist could believe that the electorate would accept yet another party-man despite the hatred that exists between the two cities, and the obvious unsuitability of this party drone for any situation above filing clerk. He was rejected firmly. The plebs are smartening up.
These creatures have no shame, believing the long fore-bearing liebour electorate will forget once again their awfulness. I look forward to the day when liebour MP’s who have deserted the early good works of the Labour party for their personal benefit will fear to venture into the streets.
The destruction of liebour has been fascinating to watch, so many self-regarding but unaware “activists” unable to comprehend that decent working people could think for themselves, shuck off the dogma and outright lies that they have been fed-world-class NHS, that cannot handle basic cleaning tasks nor provision patients with water, an education system that produces overly-sensitive dullards in the main, a “world-class’ banking system that only exists due to criminal manipulation, second-class (to be charitable) infrastructure airports/railways/motorways. All sacrificed to generous welfare systems for-all and rent seeking “industry” that is the legacy of these posers.
When a party can accept members such as Twatson, Burnham, Mr and Mrs Balls, the Kinnockios it’s death cannot be mourned.
The Laburnham party, a sickly yellow, wilting flower, that makes a big mess sums it quite nicely, suitable for university towns and welfare ghettoes.
- Mudplugger
July 6, 2016 at 8:10 pm -
It may prove to be a false hope but, now that their old reliable stooge-voters have finally realised there’s at least one other box on ballot-papers and the stubby pencil can actually make a mark in it, this may have started a trend of the taken-for-granted masses starting to make their own voting decisions, rather than taking instruction from others. Bring it on.
- binao
July 6, 2016 at 10:04 pm -
Memory isn’t what it was, but aren’t Momentum simply the godchildren of a previous bunch of Labour nasties?
The ones Kinnock kicked out before he went native in euroland HQ all those millions ago? - A Potted Plant
July 7, 2016 at 3:24 am -
Brilliant!
Thank you.
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