Sunday 21 February 2016

Imagine if 6 Labour ministers voted against a Labour govt policy....



Let's pause awhile and do some imagining. Let's imagine a Labour government of any kind, and a major policy decision was taken by the prime minister. At this point, 6 cabinet ministers announce that they are going to vote against this.

Now let's imagine the reaction of the major press, TV and radio outlets. Let's just imagine the chorus of screaming headlines and interviewers saying e.g. 'the prime minister's position is surely untenable', 'the markets will react to this surely', 'the country can't tolerate divided government, surely', 'remember Churchill surely,' [they always do that, whether it's relevant or not]...and a whole stream of superannuated back bench MPs, discredited tossers, constitutional 'experts', tax dodgers and assorted billionaires would be wheeled out on TV to stare at us balefully from our screens warning us that this is what you get with socialists in power (whether of course it's right wing nut jobs like Blair or a contorted presbyterian like Brown or whoever whichever not particularly socialist person was in power)...


Oh yes, we have a headline saying the government is 'split' at the moment, (Telegraph today) but none of the united force of 'Fleet Street' and the BBC driving in the tanks to destroy the lot of them....

In fact, the opposite: the combined force of print and TV will do all they can to enjoy the tittle tattle of dissent whilst doing all they can to shore up the cracked edifice. The main function of that in the short term of course is to keep out Corbyn. After all, he's in favour of a fully public NHS, the bastard.