[Robin McAlpine Blog] No, stop it, don’t think of an erection

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No, stop it, don't think of an erection

There are a variety of things I never thought I’d write about politics and I’m going to have covered two of them before the end of this article. The first is that I never thought I’d have to offer the advice that if you have a slogan that sounds like it is titter-perfect for a Carry On movie, you should probably rethink.

This seems obvious; it is not really a controversial position to suggest that political communications should not easily be confused with schoolboy smut. So who on god’s green earth advises the Starmer administration?

There was an article in the Guardian debating whether ‘Delivery, delivery, delivery’ was the worst political slogan of all time. It would have had a good case if it hadn’t been launched alongside the truly peerless ‘growth you can feel in your pocket‘. Phnar phnar.

Seriously, stop it, stop thinking about an erection. That’s juvenile. Really, stop it. This is clearly a well-thought through plan. They’ve been saying ‘economic growth’ so much that someone has focussed-grouped it and found out that most of us now think that we don’t benefit from economic growth.

So they want to stress that this time it is economic growth that you will experience as material gain for your and your family. But let’s try really hard to talk like an ordinary person. Material gain in common parlance is ‘felt in your pocket’. See? You’re wrong and they’re right – it’s a brilliant catchphrase which is making everyone think about virtuous, resource-sharing economic development.

Definitely not a hard-on though. That would be childish. You should be ashamed of yourself.

I have no chance of properly capturing the full-scale meltdown of Starmer Labour in this piece. Let’s just say that he’s lost five ministers to scandal (or is it six?, I can’t remember) and that’s just his first year. It doesn’t even count his own carpet-bagging over luxury specs, designer suits and penthouse flats. Nor does it cover his Angela problem.

Because ‘change’ (remember, their own benchmark is that low) was probably not meant to mean ‘our ministers will lie to evade tax in an illegal manner in a way imperceptibly different from the lot that came before’. Rayner is feeling growth in her pocket right now. It’s just that she effectively stole it from Brighton and Hove City Council (or, in the end, the people of Brighton).

The idea that this is happening because they’re communicating badly is a comforting fiction for Labour

But this is just frippery. What we should probably be focussed on is the chaos. Remember when I was saying this lot were so inept that I can’t think of a comparator? That was on the second of May this year. You may struggle to recall but at that time they were having a major relaunch that they were telling everyone wasn’t a relaunch.

That wasn’t its first not-relaunch. Which I explained meant it was guaranteed not to be its last. Well, here we are and it’s happened again. This time it’s apparently about a power struggle with (checks notes – is this right?) Rachel Reeves. Rachel Reeves? You’re in a power struggle with Rachel Reeves? That’s like losing an arm wrestle with a startled bunny rabbit.

Starmer took her deputy and so now the right wing media has her on ‘blubber watch’. She cried once already, so what is being briefed against by your own leader going to do for her? I mean, she should of course be more concerned about the fact that she appears to be perhaps the least accomplished Chancellor of the Exchequer in living memory. And she’s worried about being fucked over by the worst Prime Minister?

But is he? Well, it depends how you categorise Liz Truss. But that is his comparator. Deep breath but Kemi Badenoch has better favourability ratings. I mean, that’s actually true, god help us. And every time it becomes apparent that he’s drowning not waving he has another not-relaunch. That’s four heads of communication in five years – because you know what they say about message consistency being for losers…

The idea that this is happening because they’re communicating badly is a comforting fiction for Labour. I mean they are communicating badly, but they could be fucking William Shakespeare and not sell this sorry mess of a not-government. Why they have not been ripped to shreds over the economic illiteracy of taxing jobs in a squeezed labour market causes me confusion.

There are so many illustrations of how inept this lot is it is hard to keep count. They are actively alienating their supporters in pursuit of Nigel Farage – who is not even taking their supporters. Because that’s a brilliant idea. It is utterly farcical watching Yvette Cooper cosplaying a racist.

What was the prep meeting for that? "How many flags do you have Yvette?". "What’s the normal number?". "Fucking loads." "Yes, that, that’s how many I’ve got." I know died-in-the-wool Ulster Unionist Rangers fans who have flute band music in their car. I know IRA-supporting Celtic fans. I know deeply committed Scottish nationalists. I even know some real, hard-core unionists.

You know who I know who has a flag up in their house? Just Keir Starmer. Of every living room I’ve ever been in and every home I’ve ever heard described or commented on, I’ve never seen a flag up as an ornament. Just Keir Starmer. He is outright fucking weird. Well, actually I believe it as much as I believe David Cameron supported West Ham (or Aston Villa – he didn’t know, why should I?)

The only real question is whether the Corbyn party implodes or not because if it doesn’t, it will overtake Labour at the next election

But fundamentally, the real point is that he honestly thought assassinating Corbyn and everyone who ever supported him was a mission and that how you govern is by just being a ‘grown up’. This is so embarrassingly short of even a basic understanding of the purpose or methods of government that I find it hard to hear without wincing. It’s like someone saying they love motor bikes because they love the feel of baked beans in their hair while they knit.

Fundamentally though they’re briefing that they’ve finally got a comms genius in (presumably after the stuff that isn’t about a male erection was devised). He is a genius because he was in Tony Blair’s team (though Blair thought he was pretty far right even by Blair standards) and then made £40m by acting as PR guy for any awful unsavoury anyone who wanted it. But it’s his USP that is the thing.

Because everywhere you look they’ve been briefing that ‘it’s different this time – he speaks like a normal person’. And that is the threshold for ‘genius’ in the Labour Party. Can walk in a straight line and can talk like the other 70-odd million people in Britain. And that is genuinely the bar to get over in Starmer’s Labour.

They’re finished. I think there is a new poll out with them at 11 per cent support. The only real question is whether the Corbyn party implodes or not because if it doesn’t, it will overtake Labour at the next election. At this rate the Greens might too. Labour is over. We’re just counting the time.

This would all be funny if it wasn’t for the other thing I never thought I’d write. But, in my careful and cautious opinion, today was the day that I finally concluded that the global West is at nascent fascism. I don’t use that world casually, but with Trump’s troops, the utterly lawless amnesty for Google and a Prime Minister banning peaceful protest and then echoing the far right in his hatred of migrants, the conditions are all in place and flourishing.

I’ll write more on this soon, but fascism is not death camps, it is the merger of elite interests protected by authoritarian government which pits the population against a minority grouping in that society to keep their hatred where it should be – away from the elites. That is classic Mussolini fascism. And it’s here. Now.

Which is why this desolate, pathetic, broken state of a fake Labour fake government is such an abomination. It is incapable of putting up any resistance to emerging fascism. It can do nothing but ape it and hope it helps them. It is beyond repairing at this point.

The only reason this isn’t the conclusion of the liberal establishment is the sunk cost fallacy. They spent so much claiming it was Corbyn that was the existential threat to Labour and Starmer the solution that they cannot admit that it will be Starmer who finishes the party if he is not removed (and now probably even if he is).

So there we are; stop it, stop thinking of an election. Don’t be childish. They’ve got this. It was a rocky start but now they’ve got everything they need to swell the bits of you that reach upwards, engorged in hope of seeing the light in a throbbing spurt of optimism.

Why are you all sniggering?

Source: No, stop it, don't think of an erection