by melo
Thu May 23rd, 2019 at 01:32:41 AM EST
he seems to be fundamentally against the EU but not quite willing to say it and say what he'd like to do.
Drew
(Reply:)
Or maybe he knows what an unusual -and multiply nuanced- situation he is in.
I imagine his desire to reform the EU is tempered by the realisation that he would not get much/enough support to have a hope in hell of actually doing so, in the present rightward-drifting climate.
The Gilets Jaunes are probably close to being on the same page, yet they do not bother to form a party to try and channel that street unrest into a political force instead of (so far) just social counter-force. Who wants his head poking up like that?
With Macron wearing the colours of the Centre-Left while legislating away his people's rights and favouring his bestbuds at GS, a genuine leftie like JC would see what a flock of ignorant sheep he would have to persuade in France to vote for more EU workers' rights, or better hospitals. Ditto in Germany, Austria and most of the EU.
After decades of his own party being bent backwards and out of shape by Blairism he can see the signs in Europe of an ideologically hollowed-out Centre-Left in the PD in Italy, Podemos in Spain, along with the right's resurgence everywhere.
There's not enough of a political swell to ride and guide with even the best-placed rhetoric and judicious of policies.
Unless the balance of power shifted tectonically, Europe is too far gone into the neoliberal weeds to recover, barring some unforeseen upheaval nowhere to be seen.
The parties against the further Soros-isation of Europe, the Salvinis, Le Pens are tacky, loud and wrong about everything except the marriage of high finance and crooked crony politics, (thanks to decades of misleadership on the level of Barroso and Jungcker,) a paradise for the Amazons and Apples, playground for the rich to come make and spend billions taxfree, while it's austerity for Muggins and and everyone else down the totem pole.
Now that game has been recognised by enough voters for what it was, but... there's still no solution to chum up with except a shinier, more streamlined version served up by Macron with himself leading a new Europe even more tasty to the rich and bitter for everyone else, a two-speed Europe, just like good old days of yore when gilded elites trod on the great unwashed with impunity for centuries.
What dent could Corbyn have made in that corporate-friendly wave, all on his tod?
After hearing politicians beating their chests about how they will rattle Europe's cage and tell 'em what's what, from Cameron to Renzi and come up with bupkis, bounced off the smug rubber wall of complacent entitlement, I am glad JC doesn't waste energy posturing.
I wish he had more pizzazz to put forward his policies so they could break through the calculated interference run by the MSM and reach more people, maybe he just has to wait until the others all come completely unhinged as would happen with Bojo as PM, Mr Jolly Japes himself abroad would help Farage ensure whatever small vestige of shredded international respect for Britain's ability to even politically stand up without doing a John Cleese silly walk, would vapourise.
The harder they come, the funnier they fall...
--And Britain came SO hard when she was at her peak, by Golly-gosh-willikins, damn those Guards looked dashing as they suicided in 1000s charging cannons with glorified kitchen knives.--
What could Corbyn do about that, a country prisoner of such demented self-aggrandisement?
A lot, actually!
(Pity the giant distraction of the Brexo-drama got in the way, achieving less than zero benefit for anyone else but the 1% and their (9%) lieutenants and sucking years into a political black hole during which the Tories continued to ransack and betray the society whose very claim to exist they smugly deny).
Like Bernie Sanders in the US he expertly corralled and harnessed the popular backlash to these grim times, but like Bernie could not translate into enough Momentum to seriously, not symbolically breach the portcullis of the Establishment, slay the dragons and release the princess and the treasure from the grotty dungeons and return them to a deserving, expectant people to live happily ever after, (or until climate chaos definitively did them in.)
A younger man with his popularity might have gambled one one or the other with a 50% chance of success, but by JC's age one becomes too cagey for such possibly rash gambles.
I think he knows a no-deal, hardest-of-hard Brexit will happen, and if pushed would admit he doesn't see much or any point in fighting it, as the UK is just a frying pan in the EU's fire, and he has a better chance of helping the lives of his electorate in the smaller fishbowl of the UK, even though his head is above the parapet and the bullets are dinging his helmet. Until the No Deal Crashout happens in October, Britain wakes up the next day and lo and behold the NHS is just a memory, and there is Bojo sweating in a pink linen summer suit, bulging wattles as he snows the next-gen maroons, so virtualised at this point they cannot see anything extraneous to a pop culture narrative and would only know reality if they fell in a hole in the pavement while texting.
If the Tories implode, Ree-smogg is unmasked as the archvillain cantral casting sent here to embody, Teresa May is gently helped offstage by those nice chaps in their white coats, Bojo takes up powergliding past Westminster Bridge in a sudden hurricane, the wind of 10000 bums all pointed at him, unless Britain is really ready to surrender its self-referential mythologising, Corbyn is powerless really.
His neo-Keynesian, Neo-Bennite vision of England would need an electoral majority of 99% to pull off, and for that you'd need the survivors living on dandelion hootch and hedgehog pie, huddled together in sports stadiums for warmth.
Then, only then, would JC's vision of egalitarian democracy ring and resonate in enough voters' hearts, (if democracy itself is permitted to last that long.)
So he has to content himself with trying to torment Teresa M into revealing even more who she is than Greenfell fire did, and lob more earnestly biting remarks into the Tory trenches, for the record.
A man who favours equality between Israel and Palestine, higher taxation for the rich, who doesn't tug his forelock when asked, stand up for the National Propaganda Dirge, blather, repeat, support Ireland's right to independence, the guys a pariah!
He will not be permitted to have any agency in the Tory Titanic's experiment in iceberg-crunching, nor is any needed, eh Mr. Speaker?
No need to throw these drowning bullies an anvil, the stolen gold in their fat jingling pockets will help propel them down to Davy Jones by itself.
Zing, ding, that was close.
OORRDUUUURRRE!
