Polly Toynbee is (Sometimes) Right

... about once a decade, I suppose.  She's an odd mix.  On the one hand she has a dreadful propensity to write up in the ever-gullible Grauniad whatever rubbish she's been told over a congenial lunch one-to-one with someone she's girlishly in awe of.  Her cavalier attitude towards easily-checked facts once spawned a small industry under the banner of Fact-Checking Pollyanna.  

On the other, she is capable of painstaking (if not actually painful) feats of empirical research, e.g. taking on menial jobs for months at a time to find out what's really happening somewhere, in order to write a book with some serious underpinnings.  She's an interesting contradiction; and the psychology of all this is a real puzzle.

Anyhow: she's had one of those once-a-decade moments (as usual, in the Graun). 

Squalid prisons are just the start. The entire justice system is in meltdown ... From the police to legal aid to the courts, savage cuts mean a nightmare is unfolding largely out of public view 

You scarcely need to read the article.  She's right, of course.  My own vantage-point on this is a friend in the CPS, whose stories from the front are frequently quite appalling.  Plus, of course, we all have the reports of our own eyes. 

And we know who's at least partly to blame: yes, the woman who was Home Secretary for six long years.  It's plain that (in her manifest cowardice, by now so transparent she is the laughing stock of Europe) she bowed all too readily to the budget constraints demanded by Osborne, and concluded the only priorities to be maintained were (a) counter-terrorism and (b) various crazy social policies inflicted upon the police.  Both she and Osborne richly deserve to languish in one of our choice prisons, doing some Toynbee-style first-hand research for themselves.

Recall the 2011 riots:  does anyone imagine they could be handled again today?  Even then it was wholly unsatisfactory for the first few days: but at least, on Cameron's insistence, a mighty and unrelenting effort was mounted to run to ground as many of the miscreants as possible over the following months.  Today?  Well, we may find out.  As one of our perceptive BTL commenters wrote in 2011, on that occasion there was no officer-class of motivated malcontents in evidence to coordinate the street-scum: but what if there was?   

Seven years later and it's not just in existence, it has a positive virtual Sandhurst of its own.  We may be grateful its titular leader is the utter plonker he is; that his No.2 holds no popular attraction whatever for the voters at large; and that Diane Abbbottt is a national joke.  That said, imagine her as Home Secretary ...  well, we may find out.

ND

Corbyn silly season ad infinitum

Well a week away does not seem to have changed much for myself, thanks to BE, ND and BQ for keeping up the production line - no August shut downs for us.

(On that note, I was working with an Italian Bank this week and even they shut the office in August, its the only way the Owners can get the staff to take their paid holiday apparently, otherwise they just turn up for an hour a day here and there for the month....).

Anyhow, Mr Corbyn I am starting to find really rather intriguing. For a man who has held the same views all his life he appears to have come up with no policy ideas at all - everything is a protest. Worse, the Labour party have decided to put up an even greater fool against him in the form of Owen Smith. he also has no policies or indeed, ideas or, sadly, charisma.

So now, after some usual technical and legalistic skulduggery (funny how the anarchist left is always so keen on using bureaucratic powers to get their way?), Corbyn is totally nailed on to win a second Labour leadership contest.

I can only guess at his plan, which must be to hang in there until for some unknown reason the Tories come a cropper and he magically becomes Prime Minister. Or maybe no, perhaps the UK descends into 1970's and worse style strikes and social disorder and there is some sort of left-wing Coup.

Anyway, this is all very unlikely indeed. The more pertinent, and hilarious, issue is what do the Labour moderates do. Their party is gone, soon they will face deselections and see the end of their rebellion. But my hunch is they don't have the cahoonas' to go full SDP2 and leave as they have no voter base to work with - trying to steal some of the Lib Dem's 8% does not look good and they HATE the working class who now vote UKIP (Emily Thornberry as the stand out example).

So they perhaps will resile to their fate and seek jobs at charities and such like or back in PR and Schools whence they came. It would take a heart of stone not to laugh. Key tip for next time, don't invite vampires into your house, it never ends well. At least they will have time to watch some movies.

The gaiety of the nation is ensured for at least 4 more year with Corbyn ensconced as leader of the opposition and that bit is at least good news for all.

What this means for politics in other parties in the UK, is for another post.