Saturday 16 May 2015

Personality Politics or Advice to Kez on Jim's Big Day

As a once upon a time Labour supporter,  I sincerely hope that what I'm writing right now will be fish and chip paper by tonight.  But here goes.

I suppose if Jim Murphy can use the referendum campaign as a personal pension plan, then there is no real surprise to see him scurrying round Holyrood trying to shore up his votes for the NEC meeting today.  I suppose if you and the lickspittles around you are so deluded as to have thought that the headlines gathered from the Daily Mail et al for your Irn Bru and Egg tour were the same thing as an historical endorsement for your personal charisma as the saviour of "your" party/career, then you might even think that surviving a no confidence vote after you've just lost every seat in Scotland including your own is the same thing as a mandate to drag the party of Keir Hardy into the grave after you.  That the destruction of all you pretend to hold dear in favour of your ego  is a fair enough plan for the next 12 months.  I suppose you might not have time to reflect as you begged and lied and threatened every vote you can out of the MSPs and apparatchiks yesterday that even Margaret Thatcher stepped down after narrowly WINNING a leadership vote among Tory MPs.  Even when people compare you publicly to Bruce Willis in the 6th Sense (somebody tell him he's DEAD) then you might, if you were desperate and dysfunctional enough, be sufficiently personally vain or deranged by your personality problems as to cling on.

What is actually surprising me this morning is the possibility that the Scottish Labour Party might LET you.  If this was an episode of the Sopranos, it would be time to call in the "unidentified Black males" who get the blame every time Tony needs to take somebody out to the back and cut up the body in Satriale's Pork Butchers.

Even now, as I write on Saturday morning at 8.20, one word from Kezia Dugdale, even a slight nod...and Jim is in the bag and the bag is in the river.

What did she say to him yesterday?  What will she say today as they face each other in the meeting of the NEC?  Will she quote Burt lancaster to Tony Curtis in the Sweet Smell of Success?

"You're dead, son.  Get yourself buried."

In a development that sends shivers of historic thrill and fear down my Old Labour spine, the STUC have publically slammed the Labour Party while announcing closer cooperation with the SNP government in resisting the Tories...
http://www.stuc.org.uk/news/1163/stuc-on-the-scottish-labour-party

That's the STUC, the founders and pay source of the Labour Party...cutting them loose.  Jim may also have been too busy to notice, but the noises coming out of Holyrood this week also signify a circling of wagons in preparation of the defence against Tory Westminster's Unholy War.  On the interpretation of the Smith Commission Proposals and the defense of the European Convention on Human Rights , Tory and Liberal MSPs...and even Labour ones, are forming sotto voce and provisional but quite tangible  defensive alliances with the SNP government.

Is this the atmosphere in which the Labour party really want a myopic, egotistical, self serving electoral dead fish hanging round their necks?  Is there anyone other than John McTernan and Jim who really think that's a good idea?  That the forward march of history take a step back in favour of the career rescue of one man, no matter whether or not they voted for him for leader only six months ago (in a fit of headline led, news managed bewilderment)?

Surely not?

On a rather bigger stage of history, about this time in May 1940, Neville Chamberlain drew Lord Halifax and Winston Churchill aside and said :"the King has asked me for a name...I thought I might suggest Lord Halifax?"

Churchill was trapped.  he couldn't say "No"...and he couldn't say "Yes".  So he said nothing.  He looked out of the window in silence until Halifax cracked and ruled himself out of the running.

Now...I know it's only wee Scotland...and the entire future of civilisation is not actually at stake....But Kezia, when Jim says today, "Kez...I know I can count on your support" and he smiles that weird, crooked smile...remember, he knows that at that moment he is entirely in your power...he is entirely dependent on your say so for his political survival...and he hates you for it.  He will never forgive you.  Powerless in everything else, he will destroy you along with the Party...

Believe me.  I'm a dramatist.  I know how this scene works.

If i were you, I'd look out of the window.




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