Better Together II: 3 blackwhite goodthinkers vs 1 plusleft unperson
By Telit Lycadiz, Our Guest Cybernat Political Correspondent
The recent General Election campaign and the subsequent Labour leadership hustings have proven that, for some politicians at least, what they say bears no relation whatever to what they think and what they do.
Not since the publication of George Orwell's masterpiece 1984 has there been such an attempt to distort the very meaning of language by the political classes.
For example, in his first truly Tory budget, blue in tooth and claw, George Osborne added a few pence to the minimum wage and called it the National Living wage – something which already exists and looks nothing like his new and unimproved version.
But perhaps that was simply a wee mistake brought about by the overinhalation of white powders from the naked bodies of sex workers, or what is now known in the House of Lords as the Sewel Principle.
Gideon might just as well have served up a big tureen of boiling hot vomit and, rather than swimming through it as they should have, most Labour MPs would have simply lapped it up. They may have protested that it was the most distasteful dinner since Paddington Mundell scrounged a free buffet in a Dumfries foodbank, but they would have emptied their bowls and asked for seconds all the same. After all, there were plenty of diced carrots in there, and those are supposed to be good for you, aren't they?
Then Ian Duncan Smith chipped in with a redefinition of child poverty which magically enriched the lives of a million kids who, after no more than a signature with a blood-filled Mont Blanc, suddenly find themselves no longer disadvantaged in the slightest. Now this might seem like a clever act of Tory betrayal against the poorest and most vulnerable but, just like tuition fees, workfare and the bedroom tax, IDS was simply following Gordon Brown's lead. Though perhaps with a bit of added Mwahaha.
But what of the Labour Party itself? After failing to turn up for the vote on the Welfare bill, Scotland's only Labour panda, Ian Murray, told the BBC he and his party had voted against it. And the BBC, very politely, took him at his word, even though it was a blatant fucking lie. What he meant was they had voted for their own amendment, then pissed off to the bar in a petulant huff before the actual vote took place.
Labour's excuse seems to be that the party is currently leaderless so nobody is telling them what to oppose and what to support. How could a party without principles ever work it out for themselves? But that's simply untrue. While they clearly are without principles, they have at least four leaders right now, not counting the actual leader Harriet Harman. They have three on the right and one on the left, and that's a very familiar pattern for anyone who watched the telly at any time during the referendum debate.
Also, just like the partners in Better Together, the message from the three drone-like Blairites is almost interchangeable. They can be discriminated only by analogy to the three BT parties themselves. Confused? Then let me explain.
We have the far right candidate, Liz Kendal. Her contribution to NuSpeak1 is to redefine the phrase 'being a fucking Tory' as 'making Labour credible on the economy'. Liz represents the Scottish Tories in our analogy – a bit further to the right than the others, but irrelevant as nobody actually votes for her anyway. Liz Kendall is to social equality as Cyril Smith was to the flying trapeze.
Then there is an actual, genuine Ken doll, Andy Burnham. His contribution was to claim if elected leader he would be totally against the Welfare Bill, but then to chicken out and only abstain against it, as if that was the same thing. We now know he is a real Ken Doll because he clearly has no gonads. Andy is Scottish Labour in our story – nearly, but not quite, as far right as Liz, and about to come a poor second in the election as the voters discover he's just a hollowed out plastic toy.
The Last of the Troika is Yvette Cooper, the lib Dem candidate. She uses her maiden name because 'I've Eat Balls' makes her sound too much like a founder member of ISIS and she really, really doesn't want to scare anybody – particularly not Tory/Ukip Colonel types from the Home Counties who are her target demographic. She's the LibDem option because, like Nick Clegg, she wants us to vote for her out of pity. Her husband lost his seat by being too arrogant to actually campaign, so she needs the extra cash to keep the celeb lifestyle going while Ed lies on the sofa all day watching Jeremy Kyle.
Finally, there is the dastardly Jeremy Corbyn, the SNP option. Anti-austerity, anti-nuclear anti-razor blade and monstered by the press. He appears to be the only person in the Labour party who not only gets what is wrong with the party, but also knows what to do about it. So suddenly he's getting the full Project Fear treatment as he starts to look like a potential winner. Sounding familiar yet?
While JC may be the last chance for Labour's salvation, the party leadership see him as just a very naughty boy. They appear hell bent on not only heading for the electoral abyss but gleefully throwing themselves off the edge in a way that even lemmings never actually do. That's just another myth, like having to look and sound exactly like the real Tories if you want to beat them.
I confidently predict that, if he really does look like becoming leader, a Daily Mail front page in August will feature a picture of Jeremy having sex with an underage fox cub during an IRA/Hamas reunion dinner. Under the image will be a reassuringly vague Vow to implement Corbyn Max policies, but only if the actual Corbyn is rejected, with the signatures of the other three candidates carefully photoshopped in for versimilitude.
That front page will later be described by serious commentators, without irony, as journalism...
And given a press industry award.
1. NuSpeak is the 'modernised' version of Orwell's Newspeak – it has fewer clauses than the original. Viewers in Scotlandshire have their own programme, known as NooSpeak.
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