A lady in a wheelchair dressed in a badger costume. No, not a new David Attenborough programme on the horizon but one of the many protesters who were outside the Conservative Party Conference on Sunday. It all sounds jolly enough, but these protests weren’t the usual “Down with austerity”, as a closer look at our badger-inspired protestor reveals a sign that says: “Cull the Tories, not the Badgers.” Another sign close by has a very similar message: “The only cuts that we need are Tories on the guillotine” is my favourite.
It’s difficult to take a bunch of Lefties protesting outside a rival Party conference seriously. It’s doubtful that the images caused any dedicated Tories to cancel their membership. However the scenes of Labour protesters at last year’s Conservative Conference throwing eggs and spitting on attendees might have led some Labour supporters to seriously consider their future in the party.
What should be of concern is that the anger that has been fermenting for years has finally reached overspill with the re-election of Jeremy Corbyn. Listening to them talk, you’d think people in this country have never been in a more destitute position. You’d be forgiven for thinking that the deficit isn’t down, that unemployment hasn’t been slashed, and that income tax isn’t down for millions of people.
Labour claims that people are worse off, despite world-renowned economists like Thomas Sowell and Deirdre McCloskey, who argue that the West has never had it better. It may seem surprising that Labour are so out of touch, but when you consider that Corbyn’s grand plan is to increase public expenditure, you realise that we’re dealing with a Party living in fantasy land.
The fact of the matter is Labour needs everybody to be worse off, and for the ‘divide’ between the rich and poor to be growing, if they stand any chance to win an election. This sacred doctrine of Tory-induced-inequality cannot be challenged because they need such a narrative to justify their very existence. When that narrative doesn’t exist, they revert to Jackanory-story mode and conjure something up. This negative spin is what Labour supporters latch on to and makes them angry.
They become so angry that they spit on people who disagree with them, they promote the murders of Conservative supporters, they want the executions of Conservative MPs, they mock service men and women, and they apparently have no hesitation in blatant anti-semitism. The ‘Us v Them’ narrative does nothing but foster hatred and distrust. Just as with the Hard Right, the Hard Left reaches its tentacles of corruption into the lives of many, disseminating its lies and slowly poisoning its host.
Of course the ever more frequent disgusting behaviour isn’t perpetrated by even half of everybody in the Labour Party, but it’s time for them to admit that it is their narrative that resurrected this monster. With the Hard Left now firmly in control of the ship, moderate Labour supporters need to battle against the tide and take the wheel, preferably before they hit the iceberg. The only way to do this is by changing the narrative and admitting that things aren’t that bad.
If Labour fail to do this, then they will become more politically extreme and could face electoral oblivion in 2020. Whereas this might be a total political victory for the Tories, it will only harm our Parliamentary democracy.
