A few days ago I tweeted “Labour bans Jeremy Corbyn from voting for himself”. It seemed only logical they would do so, because after all they’d just banned Mark Steel, the veteran left-wing comedian, for supporting Corbyn (whilst also relentlessly taking the piss out of the Labour establishment’s absurd and totalitarian approach to the contest).
Today the estimable satirical news website Newsthump published an article headlined “Jeremy Corbyn barred from voting for Jeremy Corbyn“. I should add they follow me on Twitter…
But hey, I’m not bitter. It’s all to the good. Like all the best satire, this is truer than real life. By which I mean that by barring people like Mark Steel and Ken Loach for supporting Jeremy Corbyn’s values, Labour have created a paradox by even allowing Corbyn to run in the first place.
How can Labour ban ANYONE from voting – implicitly for Corbyn – and still allow him to be a candidate? Then again, they banned the Conservative-supporting Toby Young too, and somehow allowed crypto-Tory Liz Kendall to run, so what do I know. It’s a mess.
We should remember, of course, that Corbyn was only nominated to begin with by self-confessed morons not because they wanted him to be leader but because they were “advised we should have a broad debate”.
Even more ironically, there has been no debate, only Corbyn coming up with one popular policy after another and the other three candidates desperately attacking him whilst either not announcing any policies of their own or, er, agreeing with Corbyn’s. Or whilst not voting against the government on issues such as shoving more children into poverty.
Jeremy Corbyn running for Labour leader with a series of sensible, anti-austerity, pro-social justice and – for God’s sake – anti-Tory policies has been the only thing that’s kept me from completely despairing of politics in this nasty little country since the horrendous general election result in May.
Now that voting for the Labour leadership is finally underway I hope Jeremy thunders to victory in the first round and Labour can finally rebuild itself in its own true, original image – that of actually giving a shit about poor and vulnerable people – while we forget how utterly ridiculous this entire contest has otherwise been.