A very honest comment, and a brilliant analogy.
As a lifelong labour voter, but no longer a party member, this is how I have felt ever since Corbyn became leader (except that, since I haven't been campaigning for labour, I haven't felt the need to defend Corbyn at all).
One other comment - it is easy to forget that Milliband, not Blair, lost the first pivotal election to the tories. It was Milliband who inherited a party that had lost its way after Brown bullied Blair out of office. The party certainly looked like an empty suit at the time, with MPs aware that 'Blairism' had brought success, but only fleeting memory of how. And without Blair it all looked pallid. The MPs had no momory of the project, and how the country was supposed to edge gently to the left as more and more of the electorate lost their fear of 'socialism'. Instead it became a 'stay in power' agenda (as it always should be, but) without any actual purpose.
This is how the idea of going back to harder left ideas in a modern age suddenly appealed to a listless part of society that always hated the tories but had become bored with labour.
That isn't a good situation. Hating tories is not a great core belief. Thinking that changing listless beige labour required connecting with 1970s/80s old labour mores was an understandable knee-jerk, but it isn't a considered strategy. New Labour was extremely considered and it worked (obtained three GE wins). Corbyn labour was not considered at all.
Corbyn labour was informed by tropes. Some of those tropes were blasts from the past. A pre-Blair past of failure. As [MENTION=16159]Bold Seagull[/MENTION] points out, when the party keeps resurrecting failed tropes, some of which were buried long ago, and had decomposed, it gets beyond embarrassing. I mean, how could the old tropes about Israel, that conflate Likud with jews in general (FFS), and which went non-mainstream decades ago, and were always antisemitic, be allowed to resurface? In the labour party. Just.... shoot me in the head.
By contrast, back in the early Blair days, I always remember when some sort of Christian position was presented to labour over some issue or other (it may have been a cheeky criticism of labour's positive stance on gay marriage based on some sort of quote from the bible, I don't recall the details) and Alastair Campbell said, simply 'we don't do god'. Well, we saw later that, sadly, Blair did do god, but what a genius way to derail the cheeky agenda. After that labour never had to defend its social liberalism as a 'threat' to mainstream christianity which was never really opposed to liberalisation anyway (it being pretty liberal - too liberal for some).
At the first whiff of antisemitic trope-resurrection, McConnenl or someone (does Corbyn actually have a spin doctor? If he does he should have sacked the useless twunt 3 years ago) should have stood up and said 'we don't do racism' and booted whoever it was had gobbed off (some nobody most likely) out of the party. Instead we had the most slo-mo political car crash I have ever seen, mischievous journalists and politicians handed opportunity after opportunity to pull another bit of antisemitic poo (ranging from lame whataboutery to actual offensive comment) from the septic labour tank, while Corbyn sat on his hands and his spokespersons mumbled something about lengthy inquiries (that appear to still be going on).
And yet, it took Corbyn and chums less than a day to throw out Alastair Campbell out of the labour party. Just think about that. Alastair Campbell. He of 'we don't do go' (but we do win three general elections).
That is like Brighton having a manager who would pick Damien Hilton, 'Silky' Dave Cameron, and Leon Knight week after week, but would drop and transfer list Lewis Dunk for one missplaced backpass.
Forget all about actual policy. When you have a leader so monumentally stupid, who is there by pure chance, who has lost again and who is planning to step down, but has the temerity to think he can oversee the transfer to the next leader....FFS, he has to go now. He can't be left in charge. It is madness. Madness. I don't care what the labour constitution says. That's like invoking the legal blood alcohol limit to justify drinking continuously in order to keep the blood alcohol limit just below the legal driving limit 24 hours a day. What part of 'that's not what rules are for' don't they understand?
Apologies for the increasingly vituperative rant. I just hate slo-mo car crashes, especially when there is a bloke like Boris watching and laughing.
