In life, things are not always what they seem. In fact, very often they are anything but.
In 1983, the British Eighties group Eurythmics – well, they were really a duo, Annie Lennox and David A. Stewart – released their biggest hit, “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)”. Annie Lennox has one of the best voices ever in the pop industry, and if you think this statement of fact is unusually euphoric by my standards, and it is, do check out her two solo albums, Diva (1992) and Medusa (1995).
Anyhow, the lyrics to “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)” are as follows:
Sweet dreams are made of this
Who am I to disagree?
I travel the world
And the seven seas
Everybody's looking for something
Some of them want to use you
Some of them want to get used by you
Some of them want to abuse you
Some of them want to be abused
In a nutshell, this is an apt modern-day rendering of the classic words attributed to Petronius, a Roman satirist of the first century AD: “Mundus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur.”
“The world wants to be deceived, so let it be deceived.”
And why is that so? Because, hey, Annie will tell you, “Everybody’s looking for something”.
If you live in the UK or take an interest in British politics from a distance, you may anticipate where this is going, at least for the next few paragraphs.
You see, back in May of this year, we had General Elections with an outcome so unexpected that it (should have) embarrassed every self-respecting pollster as they all got it gloriously wrong. Instead of what had universally been predicted as a “too-close-to-call” race, the Conservatives and the Scottish National Party (SNP) figuratively wiped the floor of the House of Commons with Opposition leader Ed Miliband and his band of merry Labour candidates.
Declaration of interest: I am especially bitter about the outcome of the election and the fact that nobody predicted it because in a moment of panic earlier in the year, when they feared things were not going their way, the Conservative Party followed the advice of their Australian campaign guru, Lynton Crosby and decided to adopt a strategy of “Asymmetrical Demobilisation”. A-what?
This approach basically boils down to taking away from the opposition’s list of good stuff they would do if elected anything that even remotely looks like low-hanging fruit and tell the baffled public, “Just in case you want this, and you may well not, you don’t need to bother giving the other guys your vote – we’re taking care of it already.” Which brought us Plain Packaging in the UK. Not that it won the Government any votes of course…
Elsewhere, German Chancellor Dr Angela Merkel is a mistress of this approach – just ask any Social Democrat or Liberal in Berlin – but she has been doing it successfully for many years now without the very expensive help from Lynton Crosby who is giving the term “hired gun” a whole new meaning.
Post counting of the UK votes, and having received and cashed in his check, he didn’t waste any time decamping from Westminster, and on his way home Down Under took a slight detour by stopping over in Sri Lanka where he helped the United National Front for Good Governance win that country’s parliamentary elections on 17 August, returning Ranil Wickremesinghe as Prime Minister, much to the chagrin of local strongman Mahinda Rajapaksa who had already been voted out of the Presidential residence in the capital Colombo in January when he sought an unprecedented third term in office – 2015 just wasn’t his year I guess. Bad karma.
By the way, in the interest of his clients, and being an Australian, I don’t think Lynton Crosby deals in polysyllables or theories of Political Science – he just calls the time-tested strategy described above as “barnacles off the boat”.
Now that he is back in Australia, and in all probability never having to work again for a living, I wonder if he might consider dropping PMI from his firm’s local client list which had made him assailable in the first place, and a liability and source of embarrassment to Prime Minister David Cameron, causing this wily, but otherwise unimpressive politician to be receptive to suggestions he needed to demonstrate to the do-gooders up and down the country he was not “in the pockets of Big Tobacco”. Personally, he couldn’t care less about Plain Packaging and has long since forgotten it was ever passed in Parliament, while we are now stuck with it. And yes, I am still seriously upset.
But then, The Right Honourable David Cameron, MP – just Dave to his toff friends, as in: “I say, jolly good show, Dave old chap.” – is not known for being hampered by strong convictions on anything. As he himself has famously admitted, one day he just decided it might be fun to be Prime Minister and has since then successfully pursued this particular career path.
“Everybody’s looking for something.”
Fast-forward a couple of months, and the UK Labour Party, still smarting from an unexpected drubbing both north and south of the border (to Scotland that is); sandwiched by fringe parties appealing to working class voters both from the Left (SNP) and the Right (United Kingdom Independence Party, aka UKIP); having licked their wounds and unceremoniously rid themselves of loser Ed and his cronies in their leadership; has decided to reinvent itself and head Back to the Future.
If I can be permitted another bout of nostalgia for the popular culture of 30 years ago – this is the title of a seriously funny Hollywood movie of 1985, directed by Robert Zemeckis and starring Michael J. Fox as Marty McFly, a typical American teenager of the Eighties, who is accidentally sent back to 1955 in a plutonium-powered DeLorean "time machine" invented by more than just slightly mad scientist Dr Emmett Brown, played by Christopher Lloyd. During his often hysterical, always amazing trip back in time, Marty must make certain his teenage parents-to-be meet and fall in love – so he can get back to the future.
I don’t know about you, but I am always intrigued by time travel stories and the implications of historical cause and effect. What if?
The sound track is also very good – Huey Lewis and The News, “The Power of Love” anyone?
There were two sequels to Back to the Future, in 1989 and 1990, but as is often the case, they didn’t have the impact of the initial movie. One exception to that rule is The Godfather: Part II (1974).
Sadly, Michael J. Fox was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease in 1991 and disclosed his condition to the public in 1998. Fox semi-retired from acting in 2000 as his health deteriorated. He has since become a proponent for research into this terribly debilitating condition, creating the Michael J. Fox Foundation, and on March 5, 2010, Sweden's Karolinska Institutet, one of the most prestigious medical universities in the world which appoints the Nobel Prize winners in that discipline, awarded him a honoris causa doctorate for his work in advocating a cure for Parkinson's disease.
Meanwhile, back in the year 2015, as the UK Labour Party is still seeking a way back from oblivion we briefly need to brush up on a bit of background:
Founded in 1900, Labour has historically viewed itself as “the party of the producers – of the workers, in the widest sense of that noble word: of all the people, without distinction to class or sex, who labour to enrich the community”. Over a century later, in an affluent post-industrial society with high levels of social security, where nothing much is produced anymore, Labour’s original positioning has lost its relevance, and both its content and leadership seem no longer fit to return the Party to power.
So the antiquated organisation, having recognized its need to adapt to the social and political landscape of the 21st century, asked one of its Trade Union stalwarts, Ray Collins, to work out a reform plan on how to become attractive again to the electorate, which he presented in February 2014 (Building a One Nation Labour Party) and from which I have lifted the above quote by Arthur Henderson, General Secretary back in 1918.
In response to ever-falling membership numbers and shaken by the recent election disaster, Labour is now implementing one of Collins’ key recommendations, seeking to open up to diverse constituencies through a new, ridiculously “inclusive” leadership selection procedure. And there’s the rub.
How does it work? Well, the Party’s traditional Electoral College, dominated by the Trade Unions and the establishment of what considers themselves to be representing the “workers’” interests, has been replaced by a “one-person-one-vote” system, allowing three groups to decide on the next Labour leader:
Party members – sure; supporters through affiliated unions and organizations – fair enough I guess; and, remarkably, supporters registering online, paying a one-off fee of £3 – hello?
Enter Jeremy Corbyn, Stage Left (not Right).
Jeremy Who? By way of an introduction, this honourable gentleman of 66 years is a British Labour Party politician who has represented the London constituency of Islington North in the House of Commons since 1983. A member of the Socialist Campaign Group, the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign, Amnesty International, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and the Stop the War Coalition (of which he has been the national chair since 2001), Corbyn is currently the frontrunner by a mile in this new 2015-style Labour Party leadership election race which ends on 10 September – well, if polls in this country are ever to be trusted again of course.
A self-described democratic socialist, Corbyn has advocated the renationalisation of public utilities and railways; combating corporate tax evasion and avoidance as an alternative to austerity; abolishing university tuition fees and restoring student grants; unilateral nuclear disarmament and cancellation of the UK’s Trident submarine weapons program; quantitative easing to fund infrastructure and renewable energy projects; and reversing cuts to the public sector and welfare made since 2010 by the government of David Cameron. There’s one more: he wants the UK to leave NATO.
In an interview for Iranian television, shortly after U.S. Special Forces had raided the Al Qaeda chief’s Pakistan compound in 2012, Corbyn famously called the death of Osama bin Laden a “tragedy”.
To wit, the general consensus among the political pundits after the May election was that Labour had lost because Ed Miliband just wasn’t credible as a potential Prime Minister, stumbling, in one case literally, from one interview gaffe to another; and because the party’s Manifesto was too left-leaning and held no credible alternative to the perceived sophistication and solidity, fiscal and otherwise, of the Conservatives’ protagonists and their program for Government.
So how can anybody who means the Labour Party well believe making a Jeremy Corbyn its leader would be a good idea with a view to winning the next General Election in 2020?
Well, you don’t have to be much of a cynic – although admittedly it does help – to conclude it’s probably mostly those that do not wish the Labour Party well who have now infiltrated this free-for-all internal leadership election process, about to secure Corbyn’s victory when the votes are counted in a few days’ time.
Whether latter-day Trotskyites or closet Conservatives, jointly they are making sure a Labour Party led by him would not become electable. Period.
Tony Blair, the last Labour politician to have won not just one, not just two, but three consecutive elections, has said: “If Jeremy Corbyn becomes leader it won’t be a defeat like 1983 or 2015 at the next election. It will mean rout, possibly annihilation.”
And Nigel Farage, the eloquent and always entertaining – good qualities in a politician – leader of UKIP is already getting all excited at the prospect: "I have to say I hope he wins. The best news of all? A Corbyn win will be the death of the Green Party. Hooray." I guess that’s what you call a double whammy.
“Everybody’s looking for something.”
The British have given the world some great authors and wonderful works of literature. Looking at the unfolding Corbyn saga, I am reminded of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland (1865), generally recognised as a prime example of the genre of literary nonsense. Nothing is as it appears to be, everything seems to be standing on its head, and it’s all quite frightening, but Alice at least is finally woken up by her sister and realises it has all been just a disturbing dream.
What the Labour Party is currently doing falls under the genre of political nonsense, but played out in the real world. This is Labour in Wonderland.
The Financial Times has rightly pointed out,
At a High School dance, Marty plays with the band led by a kid called Marvin Berry. Marty launches the musicians into what turns out to be the not-yet-written Rock ‘n’ Roll classic “Johnny B. Goode”. While Marty performs, Marvin discreetly leaves the stage and calls (Americans did already have telephones in those days, mostly wall-mounted) his cousin Chuck Berry, telling him he has found the "new sound" Chuck needs. The rest is music history.
“Everybody’s looking for something.”
After “Johnny B. Goode”, Marty gets a little carried away on stage and does imitations of other future guitar heroes – Pete Townshend, Jimi Hendrix, and Eddie van Halen.
Noticing the baffled, uncomprehending stares from the audience, Marty stops and tells the students: "I guess you're not ready for that. But your kids are gonna LOVE it."
I doubt our children will get too enthused by the direction we are taking politics.
Unless of course Kanye West comes through on his threat, uttered at the MTV Video Music Awards over the past weekend, and really does run for U.S. President in 2020.
And sorry, dear Alice, this time you are awake, wide awake.
Since the days of Lewis Carroll, the world has made great headway on its road to Absurdistan.
Anyhow, the lyrics to “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)” are as follows:
Sweet dreams are made of this
Who am I to disagree?
I travel the world
And the seven seas
Everybody's looking for something
Some of them want to use you
Some of them want to get used by you
Some of them want to abuse you
Some of them want to be abused
In a nutshell, this is an apt modern-day rendering of the classic words attributed to Petronius, a Roman satirist of the first century AD: “Mundus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur.”
“The world wants to be deceived, so let it be deceived.”
And why is that so? Because, hey, Annie will tell you, “Everybody’s looking for something”.
If you live in the UK or take an interest in British politics from a distance, you may anticipate where this is going, at least for the next few paragraphs.
You see, back in May of this year, we had General Elections with an outcome so unexpected that it (should have) embarrassed every self-respecting pollster as they all got it gloriously wrong. Instead of what had universally been predicted as a “too-close-to-call” race, the Conservatives and the Scottish National Party (SNP) figuratively wiped the floor of the House of Commons with Opposition leader Ed Miliband and his band of merry Labour candidates.
Declaration of interest: I am especially bitter about the outcome of the election and the fact that nobody predicted it because in a moment of panic earlier in the year, when they feared things were not going their way, the Conservative Party followed the advice of their Australian campaign guru, Lynton Crosby and decided to adopt a strategy of “Asymmetrical Demobilisation”. A-what?
This approach basically boils down to taking away from the opposition’s list of good stuff they would do if elected anything that even remotely looks like low-hanging fruit and tell the baffled public, “Just in case you want this, and you may well not, you don’t need to bother giving the other guys your vote – we’re taking care of it already.” Which brought us Plain Packaging in the UK. Not that it won the Government any votes of course…
Elsewhere, German Chancellor Dr Angela Merkel is a mistress of this approach – just ask any Social Democrat or Liberal in Berlin – but she has been doing it successfully for many years now without the very expensive help from Lynton Crosby who is giving the term “hired gun” a whole new meaning.
Post counting of the UK votes, and having received and cashed in his check, he didn’t waste any time decamping from Westminster, and on his way home Down Under took a slight detour by stopping over in Sri Lanka where he helped the United National Front for Good Governance win that country’s parliamentary elections on 17 August, returning Ranil Wickremesinghe as Prime Minister, much to the chagrin of local strongman Mahinda Rajapaksa who had already been voted out of the Presidential residence in the capital Colombo in January when he sought an unprecedented third term in office – 2015 just wasn’t his year I guess. Bad karma.
By the way, in the interest of his clients, and being an Australian, I don’t think Lynton Crosby deals in polysyllables or theories of Political Science – he just calls the time-tested strategy described above as “barnacles off the boat”.
Now that he is back in Australia, and in all probability never having to work again for a living, I wonder if he might consider dropping PMI from his firm’s local client list which had made him assailable in the first place, and a liability and source of embarrassment to Prime Minister David Cameron, causing this wily, but otherwise unimpressive politician to be receptive to suggestions he needed to demonstrate to the do-gooders up and down the country he was not “in the pockets of Big Tobacco”. Personally, he couldn’t care less about Plain Packaging and has long since forgotten it was ever passed in Parliament, while we are now stuck with it. And yes, I am still seriously upset.
But then, The Right Honourable David Cameron, MP – just Dave to his toff friends, as in: “I say, jolly good show, Dave old chap.” – is not known for being hampered by strong convictions on anything. As he himself has famously admitted, one day he just decided it might be fun to be Prime Minister and has since then successfully pursued this particular career path.
“Everybody’s looking for something.”
Fast-forward a couple of months, and the UK Labour Party, still smarting from an unexpected drubbing both north and south of the border (to Scotland that is); sandwiched by fringe parties appealing to working class voters both from the Left (SNP) and the Right (United Kingdom Independence Party, aka UKIP); having licked their wounds and unceremoniously rid themselves of loser Ed and his cronies in their leadership; has decided to reinvent itself and head Back to the Future.
If I can be permitted another bout of nostalgia for the popular culture of 30 years ago – this is the title of a seriously funny Hollywood movie of 1985, directed by Robert Zemeckis and starring Michael J. Fox as Marty McFly, a typical American teenager of the Eighties, who is accidentally sent back to 1955 in a plutonium-powered DeLorean "time machine" invented by more than just slightly mad scientist Dr Emmett Brown, played by Christopher Lloyd. During his often hysterical, always amazing trip back in time, Marty must make certain his teenage parents-to-be meet and fall in love – so he can get back to the future.
I don’t know about you, but I am always intrigued by time travel stories and the implications of historical cause and effect. What if?
The sound track is also very good – Huey Lewis and The News, “The Power of Love” anyone?
There were two sequels to Back to the Future, in 1989 and 1990, but as is often the case, they didn’t have the impact of the initial movie. One exception to that rule is The Godfather: Part II (1974).
Sadly, Michael J. Fox was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease in 1991 and disclosed his condition to the public in 1998. Fox semi-retired from acting in 2000 as his health deteriorated. He has since become a proponent for research into this terribly debilitating condition, creating the Michael J. Fox Foundation, and on March 5, 2010, Sweden's Karolinska Institutet, one of the most prestigious medical universities in the world which appoints the Nobel Prize winners in that discipline, awarded him a honoris causa doctorate for his work in advocating a cure for Parkinson's disease.
Meanwhile, back in the year 2015, as the UK Labour Party is still seeking a way back from oblivion we briefly need to brush up on a bit of background:
Founded in 1900, Labour has historically viewed itself as “the party of the producers – of the workers, in the widest sense of that noble word: of all the people, without distinction to class or sex, who labour to enrich the community”. Over a century later, in an affluent post-industrial society with high levels of social security, where nothing much is produced anymore, Labour’s original positioning has lost its relevance, and both its content and leadership seem no longer fit to return the Party to power.
So the antiquated organisation, having recognized its need to adapt to the social and political landscape of the 21st century, asked one of its Trade Union stalwarts, Ray Collins, to work out a reform plan on how to become attractive again to the electorate, which he presented in February 2014 (Building a One Nation Labour Party) and from which I have lifted the above quote by Arthur Henderson, General Secretary back in 1918.
In response to ever-falling membership numbers and shaken by the recent election disaster, Labour is now implementing one of Collins’ key recommendations, seeking to open up to diverse constituencies through a new, ridiculously “inclusive” leadership selection procedure. And there’s the rub.
How does it work? Well, the Party’s traditional Electoral College, dominated by the Trade Unions and the establishment of what considers themselves to be representing the “workers’” interests, has been replaced by a “one-person-one-vote” system, allowing three groups to decide on the next Labour leader:
Party members – sure; supporters through affiliated unions and organizations – fair enough I guess; and, remarkably, supporters registering online, paying a one-off fee of £3 – hello?
Enter Jeremy Corbyn, Stage Left (not Right).
Jeremy Who? By way of an introduction, this honourable gentleman of 66 years is a British Labour Party politician who has represented the London constituency of Islington North in the House of Commons since 1983. A member of the Socialist Campaign Group, the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign, Amnesty International, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and the Stop the War Coalition (of which he has been the national chair since 2001), Corbyn is currently the frontrunner by a mile in this new 2015-style Labour Party leadership election race which ends on 10 September – well, if polls in this country are ever to be trusted again of course.
A self-described democratic socialist, Corbyn has advocated the renationalisation of public utilities and railways; combating corporate tax evasion and avoidance as an alternative to austerity; abolishing university tuition fees and restoring student grants; unilateral nuclear disarmament and cancellation of the UK’s Trident submarine weapons program; quantitative easing to fund infrastructure and renewable energy projects; and reversing cuts to the public sector and welfare made since 2010 by the government of David Cameron. There’s one more: he wants the UK to leave NATO.
In an interview for Iranian television, shortly after U.S. Special Forces had raided the Al Qaeda chief’s Pakistan compound in 2012, Corbyn famously called the death of Osama bin Laden a “tragedy”.
To wit, the general consensus among the political pundits after the May election was that Labour had lost because Ed Miliband just wasn’t credible as a potential Prime Minister, stumbling, in one case literally, from one interview gaffe to another; and because the party’s Manifesto was too left-leaning and held no credible alternative to the perceived sophistication and solidity, fiscal and otherwise, of the Conservatives’ protagonists and their program for Government.
So how can anybody who means the Labour Party well believe making a Jeremy Corbyn its leader would be a good idea with a view to winning the next General Election in 2020?
Well, you don’t have to be much of a cynic – although admittedly it does help – to conclude it’s probably mostly those that do not wish the Labour Party well who have now infiltrated this free-for-all internal leadership election process, about to secure Corbyn’s victory when the votes are counted in a few days’ time.
Whether latter-day Trotskyites or closet Conservatives, jointly they are making sure a Labour Party led by him would not become electable. Period.
Tony Blair, the last Labour politician to have won not just one, not just two, but three consecutive elections, has said: “If Jeremy Corbyn becomes leader it won’t be a defeat like 1983 or 2015 at the next election. It will mean rout, possibly annihilation.”
And Nigel Farage, the eloquent and always entertaining – good qualities in a politician – leader of UKIP is already getting all excited at the prospect: "I have to say I hope he wins. The best news of all? A Corbyn win will be the death of the Green Party. Hooray." I guess that’s what you call a double whammy.
“Everybody’s looking for something.”
The British have given the world some great authors and wonderful works of literature. Looking at the unfolding Corbyn saga, I am reminded of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland (1865), generally recognised as a prime example of the genre of literary nonsense. Nothing is as it appears to be, everything seems to be standing on its head, and it’s all quite frightening, but Alice at least is finally woken up by her sister and realises it has all been just a disturbing dream.
What the Labour Party is currently doing falls under the genre of political nonsense, but played out in the real world. This is Labour in Wonderland.
The Financial Times has rightly pointed out,
“For years, those of us who actually care about politics have had to listen to others wittering on about low turnouts, voter apathy and tales of how The X Factor and Strictly Come Dancing are better at energising potential voters. Now we are seeing the Strictly syndrome take hold of the Labour party.“ (9 August 2015)
“It’s a sleeper hit that has turned into a fabulous festival of fun. Watch Jeremy sashay across the floor with his friends in Hamas and Hizbollah, roar as he supports every public sector strike, opposes all benefit reform, purges centrists and marginalises his party.
“It’s going to be a wildly entertaining ride with loads of laughs. Unless, of course, you are one of those underprivileged types who actually needs there to be a viable alternative to the Conservatives, in which case it won’t be much fun at all — strictly speaking.” (7 August 2015)My favourite scene in Back to the Future?
At a High School dance, Marty plays with the band led by a kid called Marvin Berry. Marty launches the musicians into what turns out to be the not-yet-written Rock ‘n’ Roll classic “Johnny B. Goode”. While Marty performs, Marvin discreetly leaves the stage and calls (Americans did already have telephones in those days, mostly wall-mounted) his cousin Chuck Berry, telling him he has found the "new sound" Chuck needs. The rest is music history.
“Everybody’s looking for something.”
After “Johnny B. Goode”, Marty gets a little carried away on stage and does imitations of other future guitar heroes – Pete Townshend, Jimi Hendrix, and Eddie van Halen.
Noticing the baffled, uncomprehending stares from the audience, Marty stops and tells the students: "I guess you're not ready for that. But your kids are gonna LOVE it."
I doubt our children will get too enthused by the direction we are taking politics.
Unless of course Kanye West comes through on his threat, uttered at the MTV Video Music Awards over the past weekend, and really does run for U.S. President in 2020.
And sorry, dear Alice, this time you are awake, wide awake.
Since the days of Lewis Carroll, the world has made great headway on its road to Absurdistan.
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