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What is that sound I hear off in the distance?

Hurrah! The struggle for the leadership of the Nationalsozialistische Britisch Arbeiterpartei has been won by Jeremy Corbyn, and the re-branding as the Party of anti-Semitic conspiracy theorists is now complete! I look forward to reading of this momentous moment in the Great Leader’s memoirs, which I assume will be titled “My Struggle”. Our friends from Hamas and Hezbollah are thought to be very happy with this outcome, as well they should.

But what is that sound I hear off in the distance? Gunfire? Has the revolution started already? Ah, no, it is the pop of champagne corks coming from 4 Matthew Parker Street in London!

this-is-socialism

Update: strangely not everyone is happy 😉

32 comments to What is that sound I hear off in the distance?

  • Patrick Crozier

    The collapse of the centre left in British politics is a thing to behold.

  • Pat

    The national socialists were extremely patriotic (very excessively so) which was part of their appeal.
    The current Labour party holds patriotism in contempt. Doubtless that makes them feel superior, but it shuts them off from a lot of support

  • RAB

    Well I voted for him. 🙂

  • Kevin B

    So I woke from my afternoon nap in a cold sweat but all I could recall of my nightmare was a brief fragment of converstation:

    “Prime Minister Corbyn… It’s President Hillary on the red phone.”

  • Fred Z

    “Prime Minister Corbyn… It’s President Hillary on the red phone.”

    Not to worry, Putin has the lines bugged, lots of dirt on both of them and multiple hit-men in place. Probably one of the callers is Putin using a voice synthesizer.

  • Jacob

    They said the Americans were crazy for having such crazy or ridiculous candidates…

  • They said the Americans were crazy for having such crazy or ridiculous candidates…

    Well they are.

  • The really interesting thing is how Corbyn’s triumph shows what a total shower of incompetents the Labour mainstream are. I’ve written more on this here:

    https://jonathanabbott99.wordpress.com/2016/09/24/useless/

  • AndrewWS

    That whirring sound you hear is his deceased and sane predecessors spinning in their graves.

  • Andrew, surely you mean (singular) “predecessor”? Other than perhaps Ramsay Macdonald, I can’t think of a single Labour leader who would qualify as “sane”, by any definition.

  • Runcie Balspune

    @JonnyA, read your piece, interesting, I like your blog, needs to be added <<< (if not already).

    Labour missed a trick by not enforcing one of their world renowned all women shortlists on the leader ballot, but even with a few XYs around they had more than one competent and formidable women to choose from, but they go for a retired geography teacher whose only redeeming factor is he still might be alive for the next election, and then, when they realise their horrendous mistake, they put up another perfectly viable high profile and respected woman, a gay one no less, and push her aside for a banal and obscure welsh Marxist.

    "Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action."

    And now the right wing parties have trumped them, they really are the stupid party (as well as the nasty party).

  • David Crawford

    At least the Democratic party in the USA was smart enough to rig the system enough to keep that old commie Bernie Sanders from getting the nomination. Believe me, Sanders would’ve won a fair and square primary contest, no contest.

  • JohnK

    Kim:

    I believe Hugh Gaitskell was pretty decent, which was probably why the KGB got rid of him.

  • Anat T.

    Which goes to show that the ‘National’ bit is not the defining part of ‘Nationalsozialistische’

  • mickc

    Any celebrations by the Tories are premature.

    The “liberal elite” and its views have been rejected, hence the Brexit vote. May is less than impressive and will have trouble with the Cameroons, especially Osborne.

    Corbyn has all to play for.

  • The Pedant-General

    What’s source of the excellent fig 12.7 cartoon?

  • Patrick

    Hello Kim,

    How’s things with you? I still miss your blog. I reckon you could write an awesome ‘Let the EU sink’ article these days!

  • What’s source of the excellent fig 12.7 cartoon?

    The internet (i.e. just something I found on Twitter)… so good question

  • I paid the full Labour Party members fee to be able to vote for Jeremy Corbyn and will do so in every election he is nominated.

    I can’t think of anyone more suited to break the Labour Party than Comrade Jezza.

    Truly the gift that keeps on giving.

  • John Galt, September 25, 2016 at 12:04 pm: “I paid the full Labour Party members fee to be able to vote for Jeremy Corbyn”

    I question the wisdom and rightness of this action.

    1) By a very wide margin, Corbyn’s reelection did not require the vote of JG and the tiny number of others whose voted for him without wishing it to benefit Labour’s cause. JG transferred to the Labour party, for a result that would have occurred anyway, money Corbyn may use to fund prosecution of a British soldier, or of someone who rashly exercised free speech, or whatever. There is good hope the money will be wasted in pointless Labour bureaucracy but one cannot absolutely rely on that.

    2) Such left-wingers as grow up, politically, do so by observing the sorry real-life outcomes of their supposedly-brilliant plans. To avoid growing up, they seek excuses for why the outcome was an unexpected one. It would not help a labourist towards repentance if they could imagine their party’s folly was contrived by its proponents, not the predictable outcome of their own preaching and policy. In fact, such a labourist would have to be grasping at straws to imagine it mattered that JG and a very few such others got involved, but I see no reason to give even the most in-denial guy even that absurd excuse.

    3) “There must be something one will not do to stay alive”, said Gandhi. Orwell, quoting him, adds that for Gandhi (and those he could influence) “the line is well this side of chicken broth” (i.e. not to be consumed even if recommended during a life-threatening illness). I don’t want to preach absurd standards, but I know I would feel cheated if it emerged that Trump was the Republican candidate only because liberal (US-sense) voters raided Republican primaries. (FYI I do not think this any more than I think JG-ers swung it for Corbyn – it is just for comparison.)

  • Yes, Niall and they say no election is ever won by a single vote, but I am aware of more than one libertarian who did exactly the same.

    It might not make much difference, but every little helps.

  • I know three Tories who voted for Corbyn, so it might be more prevalent than commonly assumed 🙂

  • I think he would have won it anyway, the lefty student types have really schooled us grey-bearded libertarians on how to do entryism. We vainly talked about it with regard to ukip and the tories, they just went ahead and did it.
    The Labour Party now belongs to idealistic utopian youth.
    At least we now have an answer to the question I keep seeing asked in the msm: “post-brexit, WHAT is UKIP actually FOR?”
    Why, it’s to form Her Majesty’s Opposition of course!

  • Laird

    JG, I voted in the Democratic primary for Bernie Sanders, just to stick my finger in Hillary’s eye. Not that it mattered much; the Democrats in my state went for Hillary in a big way. Unfortunately, I’m now getting solicitation mailings from the DNC. Not sure the momentary enjoyment was worth what will undoubtedly be many years of annoyance. (And grousing by my wife!)

  • Paul Marks

    The logical result of economic collectivism (of the sort backed by Owen Smith – not just Jeremy Corbyn) is political totalitarianism – Mr Corbyn and his supporters are, within this context, being logical. Harold Laski got to the same place intellectually almost 70 years ago.

    “How dare you say that the Labour party should logically support the IRA and other totalitarian political movements around the world” well now we have a leader of the Labour Party (overwhelmingly elected and overwhelmingly reelected) who sees the logic himself. If one is a socialist (if one really believes in the collective control of the means of production, distribution and exchange) of course one should support Death Camps and so on. The overwhelming majority of the Labour Party now support the position of such organisations as the FARC in Colombia – and the various Islamic “Social Justice” groups in the Middle East.

    There will be no more about “we are socialists – but we are also patriotic British people who support traditional liberties” – that position (although sincere) was always illogical, and now it is dead.

    Now to support the Labour Party meas to support totalitarianism – it is as simple (and as brutal) as that.

  • Paul Marks

    By the way it is not just the “youth” who support Mr Corbyn – socialism (Class Hatred, envy, and the lust for power) appeals to people of all ages.

    Let us face the bitter truth – looting people (and abusing people and murdering people) is FUN. It appeals to the darkness in all people – and many people find ideological excuses to let the darkness control them (but it controls all of us from time to time – each day, each second, is a struggle against the darkness – the temptation to just give in and have fun, is vast).

    “Paul you are saying that the Labour Party is now evil” – yes pussy cats, that is exactly what I am saying.

    Although, yes, the young seem better able to kid themselves (they have more flexible minds), convince themselves that they are doing noble things when they engage in horrors – older people find it harder to deceive ourselves, we know only too well when we do horrific things that we are doing horrific things.

  • Stuck-record

    The gigantic irony is that it is the very young who have never known a world without amazing availability and choice/quality of physical goods and labour, complete freedom to travel, associate, and think, that are determined to (unwittingly) destroy it all.

    It would be highly amusing. But it’s just sad.

  • John Galt III

    A vote for Corbyn is a vote for Mohammed.

  • lucklucky

    I am not happy and there are big odds that Corbyn or is successor will be Prime Minister.

    Marxism won over culture and most or all their tenets are repeated in every media even in so called “right”. It is the culture, language that advances political ideas.

    So i think Perry is wrong.

  • Edward MJ

    Well at least they’ve come out of the closet at last. There can no longer be any doubt to anyone of their intentions: “In this party you no longer have to whisper its name, it’s called Socialism.”

    To rapturous applause among party members, the shadow chancellor said: “Imagine the society that we can create.

    But we don’t need to imagine do we. We can look at Venezuela, or Cuba, or any of the other real-world examples where Socialism has always been a miserable failure.

  • Alisa

    No no no, this time it will be different – all the others just did not do it the right way.

  • Nicholas (Unlicensed Joker!) Gray

    I suppose that’s why they keep going- the lure of Utopia. “it’s just around the next curve, comrads! Keep going!” This time is always different, honest! We’ll come up with a working Climate-change model that works perfectly, AND makes the tea!