A Death Wish

Okay my knees may be buggered but I can’t say I’m looking to cark it any time soon, even so, for a while I’ve had something of a death wish. It loitered, suppressed, on the edge of my consciousness since about 2010 but then burst out with monstrous intent on December 12, 2019. Sitting there, absorbing the force of Boris Johnson’s “Get Brexit Done” election the consequences for me seemed inescapable, as the size of the win suggested that the Conservative Party were likely to continue to be the Government of the United Kingdom for another 10-15 years. Sure I’d given up smoking and unsafe sex was a distant memory so I reckoned I might still have a decade or two, yet logic and actuarial tables protruded and I grappled with a growing probability that although I was born under a Labour government the chances are I’ll die under a Conservative Government. Amazingly though, since Keir Starmer became the loyal leader of His Majesty’s opposition those probabilities have fundamentally changed. Four weeks out from the election, the Labour Party is projected to be in line for the biggest electoral win in its history. Sure, in the cark it stakes, it would be nice to be surrounded by a loving family to hear my memorable last words but my growing underlying death wish is that I now die under a UK Labour Government… after a record number of terms. Sadly, it’s the Hope That Kills You!

Retrospectively, while I recognise that from birth I’ve been a paid-up (in hock anyhow) member of the Lumpenproletariat, it is the case that through random chance I’ve flitted my way through life and astonishly have somehow managed to escape the determined attempts of various conservative governments to disempower my ilk as they redistribute power and wealth upwards. Given that long ago I’d recognised that my default was to be a lazy, talentless no-hoper my life’s mantra has always been “Blimey how did I get away with that” rather than “I’ve worked hard and deserve everything I have”. Yet why is it that while I’ve never really paid the full price of living under a conservative government I still take the existence of such governments personally?

I’ve lived under right-wing regimes from Queensland’s Bjelke-Petersen to the Vorster regime in Apartheid South Africa and right now I live in the Netherlands where the rabid reactionary, Geert Wilders leads the majority government party, yet, even without accounting for its ideology, policies and incompetence, there is something about the UK Conservative Party’s smug self-entitlement that I find intolerable.

I had an entirely apolitical childhood. There was no sitting around and discussing as a family at dinner, everything from The Wealth of Nations to The Rights of Man. My first stirring of anything approaching political consciousness was in my late teens. I’d sometimes meet up with a mate for a drink in The Kings Arms opposite Bexleyheath clock tower. We’d meet there because even though he was even less political than me he was paradoxically a member (number 3!) of The Bexleyheath and Crayford Anarchist society (no truly) which met occasionally in the pub’s snug. Proudhon would have been proud. My friend later graduated to the Hells Angels.

That particular June evening I’d got to the pub late as I’d voted for the first time, the voting age having just been lowered to 18. My friend hadn’t voted…he was an anarchist! When we left the pub we discovered that although it was edging towards midnight it was a pleasant summer evening, so decided to walk down Watling Street to the Drill Hall where the electoral count was being held. There was subdued excitement amongst the crowd outside when it became clear that Harold Wilson’s Labour Government was to be replaced by a Conservative government. Given this was Bexleyheath the excitement became joy when the newly elected member for Bexley, Edward Heath, appeared on the balcony to make a speech. My friend and I were indifferent to the joy. Not so, the solitary girl standing next to us. Probably a couple of years younger than us and likely still at school, when Heath appeared she burst into inconsolable tears. My more empathic friend eventually asked her if she was all right. Through her sobs, all she could keep blurting out was: “I can’t bear the thought of living under this government, I can’t stand it…” Little did she know that compared with what followed, Heath was pretty benign.

Her fears stayed with me. A few months later, after pulling 16-hour shifts, over a long weekend as a mini-cab driver, I woke up Tuesday morning to discover I had just enough money to get the cheapest possible ticket to Sydney on the SS Australis. I decided that I too did not want to live under a Conservative government and a month later I crossed the equator into political exile.

Time doesn’t fly, it bounds and leaps, so fast forward four decades to the other end of my working life and having taken early retirement I discover myself watching the 2010 UK general election results on CSPAN whilst suffering altitude sickness at a scruffy hotel in Puno, on the Peruvian side of Lake Titicaca. Having navigated our way through the ups and downs of the New Labour government and forgiven at least some of its idiocies (the PFI=WTF!)), we thought we’d explore a bit of the world before settling back into docile retirement in SE England. The news from CSPAN suggested otherwise. Watching the smug chuckle brothers seal their bromance with a coalition agreement in the Downing Street garden I felt just like the girl a lifetime earlier and just couldn’t bear the thought of living under that government. Little did I know that compared with what followed, Cameron and Clegg were pretty benign! Anyhow, they couldn’t last long, could they? The UK being in the EU made our decision relatively easy and we went to stay in the Netherlands for a while. Still here!

But for how long? After all, Geert Wilders has just formed his first government. Okay maybe not as Prime Minister, instead he is embedded as a malignant puppet master pulling the strings over a loose alliance of libertarians, bigots and businessmen who collectively make Sunak, Johnson and Cameron in the UK look like the three wise men. (Yes I know I’ve neglected Truss and May but the PVV are also determinedly misogynistic) So, over the past few years, for family reasons as well, returning to live in the UK is increasingly attractive. And yet, and yet, the instinctive resistance, stemming from watching Edward Heath celebrating his victory, to living under a UK Conservative government’s smug patronage remains strong. If only the Labour Party could come up with a reasonably competent, decent, thoughtful leader who surrounded themselves with equally competent, decent and thoughtful colleagues in a coherent shadow cabinet there would be a chance of throwing the present decadent mob out of office and I could return to live in the my birth land and fulfil my death wish of (eventually) dying under a Labour government, blimey I could even have a Co-Op funeral!

Sadly, there is a determined attempt to thwart my wishes and deny Labour an electoral victory. Not though from the Conservative party, which is seemingly doing everything possible to make Starmer and Labour look like the natural party of government. Sunak is decidedly no Richard Todd! Instead most undermining of Starmer is from the left as self-righteous, self-proclaimed progressives, both within and outside the Labour party, not only mock his perceived dullness but also bemoan his supposedly lukewarm radicalism.

We have, for example, the Guardian columnist and poster boy for energetic young radicalism, Owen Jones (whose book Chavs: the Demonization of the Working Classes was brilliant) very publically switching his political alliance from Labour to the Greens who he claims are the only real hope for radical change. But then I remember that this is the same Owen Jones who a few years ago, through several laudatory interviews with and columns on Douglas Carswell helped legitimize the right-wing libertarian Conservative MP, who went on to become the first Brexit Party Member of Parliament.

So too, another Guardian columnist, that long-term stolid voice of the progressive English middle class, Polly Toynbee, launched an attack on Starmer for having the temerity to admit defecting conservative MPs to Labour ranks. This admission of “turncoats” was in Toynbee’s eyes, shamefully betraying Labour radicalism. Surely this isn’t the same Polly Toynbee who in 1981 very publically left the Labour Party and was one of the driving forces in setting up the Social Democratic Party, an act which helped keep Labour from power for the next 16 years.

Some of the death-watch beetle’s tapping comes from within Labour’s parliamentary structure itself, and it’s not just the usual suspects. For example, the MP for Canterbury, Rosie Duffield, a vocal and self-identifying domestic abuse survivor, claimed that being in the Labour Party was, to her, like being in an abusive relationship. Unsurprisingly, within weeks this statement was being thrown back by Sunak at Starmer during Prime Minister’s question time.

It cannot be denied that the management of Diane Abbot’s disciplinary investigation was appalling. Certainly, the article she tried publishing in The Observer was disgraceful, but she deserved to be treated with considerably greater respect, and not just for her iconic status, than she was accorded by her party. Yet the way she herself fed into a story created by that well-known Labour supporter, Rupert Murdoch’s The Times, was at the very best, naive. It is not victim-blaming to point out that Abbot fuelled with some enthusiasm a story which seemed primarily contrived by hostile media to damage Labour. At the story’s tail-end Starmer wholeheartedly endorsed her, in response to which she promptly told the world he was a liar. Then there was the particularly poignant press conference when, surrounded by supporters, she tearfully begged to know why it was that after 37 years “loyal service” to Labour, they were treating her like this. Surely, this couldn’t be the same woman who over those 37 years voted against her party on about 400 occasions, more times than any other MP, with the exception of Jeremy Corbyn.

Another determined Starmer opponent is Sharon Graham, the General Secretary of Unite, the UK’s biggest union. She stands out as being the only TUC-affiliated union leader who has publically refused to endorse Labour’s election manifesto. She has also regularly threatened to withdraw financial support from Labour as well as accusing Starmer of having “lost touch with reality”. Graham was elected to her role with a 37.7% vote plurality, which constituted 4% of Unite membership. The election was won with the fulsome support of the Trotskyite (and nothing wrong with that) Socialist Workers Party (formerly the notoriously corrupt and despotic International Socialists)

There are radical Trade union leaders who are clearer-sighted and pragmatic. Mick Lynch, RMT’s Secretary General, for example, refuses to get drawn into criticism of Starmer and says that while he is unlikely to give a Labour Government a free pass, his number one priority is getting rid of the Conservatives. He concludes that voters and the left must “grow up a bit” and recognise Starmer as the only alternative to the present government.

I’ve left it a bit too late to grow up a bit so I guess I’ll have to leave it to others to grow up for me and help fulfil my death wish.

I’m not going to pretend that I’ve seen attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion or watched C-Beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser Gate but I have knocked about a bit and generally without a scratch. Yet, yesterday, taking a break from these scribblings and seeing the sun streaming through the window I gave the lawn a long overdue mow. This morning, there was an itch on my thigh and looking down as I pulled my trousers up, there it was; a bloated tic. Now, even as I type, I can feel Lyme Disease’s deadly pathogens course through my constricted arteries! So, think only this of me…

Perhaps, as the Bard said: “The best you can hope for is to die in your sleep”, even so, to all the self-righteous progressives out there, (even though I might agree with much of what you say) standing on your moral high ground preaching the true path and bleating on about how useless, the betraying and Tory-light Keir Starmer and the labour party are, (albeit, presently 21% ahead in the polls), can you all, please, just SHUT THE FUCK UP and give me at least some chance of dying under a Labour government!

Explanatory postscript.

Why the random comparison between Rishi Sunak and Richard Todd? What’s the difference between them?

No, it’s not that one was a charismatic, much loved 20^th Century British film star and the other is an uninspiring, much derided, multi-billionaire, 21^st Century British Prime Minister.

No, the difference is:

One of them was amongst the first Brits to arrive in Normandy in the early hours of June 6, 1944, parachuting in to capture the strategic Pegasus Bridge in the early hours, whereas the other was one of the first Brits to leave Normandy 80 years later.