Friday, 10 May 2019

Weekend: The Things You Can Find in the Guardian

Quite genuinely, there is often some great stuff amongst the dross.  This week, for example:

1.  A really neat summing-up by Rafael Behr on Corbyn -
... impatient and frustrated with Brexit, but not in a way that speaks to the hearts of remainers or leavers. It is not an itch to complete the job or to abort it. Instead, the Labour leader sits tutting and drumming his fingers like a man who feels the wrong revolution has barged into history’s queue when it was meant to be his turn.
2.  Polly Toynbee

Unless you are a Liverpool or Tottenham supporter, you probably need cheering up and Polly Toynbee is a reliable source of a wry smile.  She has latterly taken to contorting almost every one of her thrice-weekly articles into concluding that only R2 can solve the nation's woes.  Her desperation is palpable, and this week it has reached new depths: an appeal to the PM, on the grounds that a second referendum is May's only hope!
As the knock on her door tells Theresa May her time is up, let her look to her legacy. With her unsurpassed reputation as the most pitiful failure of a prime minister, she has less than nothing to lose. A public vote is her last chance.
Ah well.  Nobody on Team Corbyn is listening to the R2 pleading of the Wise Woman of Clapham Common, so perhaps Mrs May's desire for posterity is indeed Polly's best bet.   Anyhow, since the local elections, she's been out & about in the North to recharge her batteries at the front line.  What does she find? 
...I was in Middlesbrough, surveying Labour’s local election wreckage. The party now controls not one Tees Valley council, losing Middlesbrough, Redcar, Stockton, Hartlepool and Darlington. “We all got beaten,” said one of the surviving Labour councillors, grimacing at the pain of it. The regional mayor is Tory, and in Middlesbrough the new mayor is a multimillionaire hedge-funding property developer, standing as an independent.
And she thinks R2 will bring her joy?  As Behr says in the Corbyn article: "the current appetite for upending the British status quo has little to do with socialism". 

ND

7 comments:

andrew said...

For once i completely agree with Polly T.
Radio 2 can indeed solve all the ills of the world.
Remember to take with a nice cuppa and in extreme cases a biccy

E-K said...

... or a Garibaldi... or a Peek Freans Trotskyite Assortment biscuit.

Nick Drew said...

aha, Political Biscuts, I like it!

Ginger Nuts: we've had too much of the Kinnock family

Fox's Crunch: yeah, he needs to bugger off

Rich T(ony) and Hob Nob: ... and we've had enough of the Blairs, too

Jammie Dodger: and you, Cameron

Anonymous said...

Dianne Abbott - KitKat

Anonymous said...

My mistake. You can only get four fingers in a KitKat.

Bill Quango MP said...

Gordon Brown's Lisbon Treaty Cowardly Custard Creams.

Twix - The two fingered snack.
Up yours delors.

andrew said...

I opened a tin of may's withdrawal agreements.
Couldn't find anything I wanted in there.

Then ate a whole pack of Boris rolls in one sitting, they are so moreish but need to go to the toilet quite urgently now.