They say art reflects back a society's image of itself. You could say that was certainly the case with Shadow Dancer, a sort-of conversion - of which in a minute - of Sega's 1989 coin-op. Not that ninja vigilantes were rescuing hostages or cleaning up New York's mean streets, but the game play theme was of asserting oneself against anxiety and dread by way of offing oodles of bad fellas. Like a large number of action games in a contemporary setting, many an arcade-style shooter/ninja/beat 'em up around the late 80s and early 90s, coincident with the rise of the 16-bit video game systems, were all about crime and fighting crime. This was the era of the war on drugs, endorsed by such luminaries as the Grange Hill cast - when they weren't toking on joints themselves - and a near ceaseless climate of fear of crime, in equal parts fanned and sensationalised by the press. Criminality of some form or another also pervaded film releases. RoboCop and Total Recall were about crime and corruption, among other things. The popular and nearly-forgotten weepy Ghost saw a spectral Patrick Swayze save Demi Moore from the creepy predations of a crooked friend who had had him murdered. On Saturday morning, kids' cartoons - whether aimed at boys (Transformers, Mask, Centurions) or girls (Care Bears, Rainbow Brite, Jem) - all dealt with hoodlums and/or thwarting criminal masterminds. Games were no different. The scrolling beat 'em up genre popularised by Double Dragon were all of a type. Someone gets kidnapped (usually a girlfriend) and it's up to the player(s) to smack, stamp, and slam their way through swarms of baddies to the inevitable crime boss face off. The Streets of Rage series, for example, exemplified this perfectly. In fact, come to think of it, of all the action games released during this time I cannot recall a single title of this ilk that does not revolve around the forces of (vigilante) justice squaring off against the power of crime.
Shadow Dancer was a sequel to Sega's widely influential Shinobi, a hit that proved so enduring it even found its way onto the Nintendo Entertainment System. Shinobi and a clutch of contemporaneous games, particularly Ninja Gaiden in the US and The Last Ninja here in Britain, helped make the ninja a ubiquitous figure in gaming. Titles featuring martial arts were also popular thanks to the cultural residues of 1970s kung fu movies and their 80s renaissance in the form of the Karate Kid movies, and assorted Jean-Claude Van Damme vehicles. Hence ninja games became an established sub genre in video gaming more widely. Players knew that any game so themed was likely to be a hard edged, no-nonsense action fest. By the time Shadow Dancer graced the arcades in 1989, ninja games were ten-a-penny. Its game play was very similar to the prequel - run from left to right, a little bit of platforming, pick up bomb components (instead of hostages), kill baddies, face down the boss, rinse and repeat. What caught arcade goers' attention was the gimmick. Your character sprite was accompanied by a dog who could be set on enemies to temporarily immobilise them while you jumped in with a swipe of your ninja sword or a flash of a shuriken. It wasn't a massive innovation by any means, but it gave the game that stand out appeal and ensured healthy sales and money spinning home conversions for various computer formats.
As a Sega game, it was bound to make its way over to the MegaDrive. After all, one of the machine's killer apps was the brilliant Super Shinobi/Revenge of Shinobi. Another Shinobi game was bound to do well and help shift units as well as machines. Therefore in 1990 Shadow Dancer emerged in Japan, and was released in short order in North America and Europe. But something was ... different. Shadow Dancer for the MegaDrive/Genesis is a curious game because it is completely different from its arcade parent, relatively speaking. The same core mechanics were the same. A limited bit of platforming in the hunt for hostages, the same quantity of shuriken-flinging fun, the ubiquitous end-of-game bad 'uns. And yes, the trusty hound is along for the ride. Yet, for reasons known only to themselves, Sega completely redesigned the game and its premise. In the arcade and its home versions, you were squaring off against terrorists who wanted to hijack a space shuttle for nefarious nuclear naughtiness. In this, the setting has been changed up. You're up against Union Lizard, a criminal outfit-cum-cult who've invaded New York after they murdered a mate of yours. Subtitled The Secret of Shinobi, we don't actually find out what that is, but over five levels of occasionally very tough action we take in a city coming apart at the seams. In the opening stage, the city is afflicted by earthquakes and lawlessness. An arresting panorama of burning tower blocks shimmers in the background as you dodge falling masonry, opening chasms, exploding manhole covers, bullets, and evil minions guarding hostages. The level boss is a fire breathing samurai (similar to Shinobi's first nemesis). The second level takes in a bridge (not Brooklyn Bridge, sadly) and an abandoned warehousing area, where you meet a wall dwelling demon. The third takes the action to a fight with enemy ninjas as you take an elevator up the side of the Statue of Liberty. And on it goes until you've cleared New York of evil doers and you get a nice twee ending cinematic of a becalmed, sunny-looking Manhattan skyline with the promise 'to be continued ...'.
At only five levels, the game is short but it can get very hard going. The energy bar of Revenge is abandoned for the one hit deaths of Shinobi, and some areas of some levels are set up to be really tricky traps - especially when you're having to fend off leaping ninjas who take three hits to kill. Another way of padding out an otherwise short game by ramping up the difficulty? Perhaps. Ultimately, Shadow Dancer - now hailed as something of a must-have for the MegaDrive library, hence its relatively steep price - was back then treated indifferently by most British gaming mags. At £34.99 in 1991, it must have come as a bit of disappointment for anyone expecting Revenge-style goodliness, albeit with a mutt. And this is the most baffling aspect of this game. The tradition of releasing pretty different games with arcade titles was an established practice as far as NES games were concerned. For instance, our friend Double Dragon went from being a straight two-player beat 'em up conversion into a single player platformer with punching and kicking on Nintendo's machine. Here, Sega produced an exclusive iteration of Shadow Dancer (that looked much better than other 16-bit home versions) but didn't add anything to the original game. It may have looked more swish. It might have had better music (which was influenced by Revenge's storming soundtrack, but is but a pale imitation), but what's on offer is a depthless experience. The only mystery the game contains is why Sega didn't produce a straight arcade version, or better yet had offered an arcade and original mode as they later did with Mercs. Never again was a dog featured in a Shinobi game. From the perspective of the mid-2010s, Shadow Dancer: The Secret of Shinobi is part of the early background noise of the crime-fighting, ninja-ry cultural wave that has only partly dissipated. Ninjas are as fashionable as fluorescent socks, while falling crime rates across the West has seen criminal player characters take central stage in modern gaming. Worth a visit, but not one to go out of your way for.
If you want to know what a good slice of political journalism in the 21st century looks like, Michael Crick's "scoop" is an exemplar. It has it all. The anonymous source. The wild claims. Guilt-by-association. Bandwagon chasing. According to Michael, the "far left are preparing to oust several Labour MPs". Sounds serious. He names the two MPs for Lewisham, Tristram Hunt, and Simon Danczuk as possible targets, at least according to some unnamed Unite organiser. However, as Unite and the Jeremy campaign make clear this had absolutely nothing to do with them, and that said activist is neither a lay official nor Labour member. In other words, our anonymous source has managed to nick some of the limelight by shooting his mouth off to a journo who long ago cut his teeth on a sensationalist expose of the far left. Has Michael rendered much of a service to those stubbornly welded to anti-Jeremy scaremongering? I doubt it. Undoubtedly some representatives of the party are scared about what tens of thousands of new members could mean for their reselection hopes, but so what? Our mysterious Unite activist, and indeed quite a few members on Labour's left might dream about ousting certain MPs (there won't be any tears in this house for Danczuk, it has to be said), but that's what they are at the moment: fantasies. That isn't to say it's going to be this way forever. As we know, what with Dave's boundary review coming up to "cut the cost of politics", as he puts it, a sizeable chunk of Labour MPs are going to have to be reselected anyway. Looking at my patch, and having seen the proposed boundaries from 2011-12, it's very likely that the North Staffs conurbation (Stoke-on-Trent + Newcastle-under-Lyme + Kidsgrove) will go from four seats to three. Depending on how they stack up, all could be scrapping for reselection. As well as interested others too. So the fear that some in the party have of mandatory reselections might not happen seeing as many MPs are facing them anyway. This in mind, assuming he wins Jeremy could avoid pushing the issue for party management reasons. That said, we should have mandatory reselections. A lifetime's entitlement to a particular seat is utterly inconsistent with democratic principles. That, and it's bad politics too. Look at Scotland. Look at the rotten fiefdoms scarring many a safe Labour area. The absence of internal challenges led to sclerotic local parties, to lazy local parties in which membership dwindled and campaigning seldom happened. One of my comrades, who recently went for a selection in a "safe" Scottish seat, told me the constituency was divided into two urban areas. The outgoing MP had, for 20 years, only bothered with one-half of the seat. That was where the meetings were. Where most of the members were, and was therefore unconcerned with what happened to the party in the other half of the seat so long as matters remained tickety-boo in his.He had no incentive to bother talking to the members, so didn't. Of course, compulsory reselections aren't a magic bullet. Sitting representatives have certain incumbency advantages, such as status (people new to the party might be shocked by the small number of members who treat the office of MP as a sacred thing), or resources to get a reselection through, but better this than the alternative that has helped cost this party dear.
Just a few of points by way of counterfactual theorising in response to James Bloodworth's piece in the International Business Times about Syria and the decision not to go to war. James's chief contention is that had the Commons voted to bomb Assad and his regime this time two years ago, the appalling refugee crisis and the tidal wave of suffering it unleashed might well have been averted. It very might well have not, either. As it happens, I think opposing the war was the right thing and adds to Ed Miliband's credentials as one of the most effective opposition leaders never to have won an election. But that was no triumph. Not intervening against Assad didn't mean endorsing his crimes and utter disregard for the devastation the regime is prepared to wreak to prevent its toppling, but one cannot simply sweep wash one's hands of it. It was clear back then that 'doing nothing' had consequences, and those were likely to be many more tens of thousands of deaths. The heartrending scenes from the Mediterranean today were always foreseeable. While some opposition to bombing Syria might have been motivated by callous disregard for the fates of others and/or little Englandism - which has always been UKIP's position, incidentally - the only really credible defence for those opposed was the supposition that the consequences of bombing and overthrowing the Assad regime would have been even worse. Yes, Assad has killed a great many more than his opponents. The prisons and torture chambers at his disposal remain busy as the civil war grinds on. However, had US and UK warplanes attacked his regime, crippled its military capability, and seen it swept aside by the ground forces of its enemies, in all likelihood the vacuum would have been filled by Islamic State. The chemical and biological arms Assad has would have become their chemical and biological weapons. With the Syrian regime gone, there's little doubt a new wave of terror would have swept the land. The other factions in the civil war - the other Islamists, what ever is left of the FSA, the Kurds in the North, IS will have had a freer hand to deal with them. Its invasion of Iraq could have reached further. Lebanon might well have been threatened. In a weird turn of fate, Hezbollah and Israel might have shared a common enemy. And thanks to the "prestige" of its victory and larger, more porous borders; even more foreign fighters may have made their way to IS territory via Jordan. It's very difficult to see how this scenario could not have come to pass. The injection of large numbers of US and UK troops might have brought about an Afghanistan/Iraq-style "solution" with all the anti-insurgency actions and casualties that would have entailed, but IS would have been locked out. However, as we know neither the public nor for that matter the political and military elites were taken with such a scenario. Perhaps timing could have made a difference. Had the bombs fallen on Damascus earlier today's crisis might have been avoided. Possibly, but as the last foray into Libya showed early intervention is no guarantee of success. If the bombs had landed in support of the 2011 uprisings, what has befallen Tripoli, Benghazi, etc. could be a window into the road not taken in Syria. That, however, was never on the table. One cannot never know for certain, but thinking through counterfactuals has to weigh up possibilities. In this case, looking at the factors on the ground now, the balance of forces in play two years ago, and on the basis of past histories of Western intervention and its consequences, what we have now - as appalling as it is - is likely to be the lesser evil of all possible horrendous worlds. The thorny question is what can be done about it now and, apart from taking the refugees, the answer is not a lot.
Remember UKIP? You know, that garishly-branded so-called people's party that has form on the privatisation of the NHS, massive tax cuts for the mega wealthy, and thinks things like the minimum wage and maternity pay should be at an employer's discretion? Reminding us they're very real and very relevant, UKIP have made their first headlines since Farage's farrago over the party's leadership all the way back in May. They will, apparently, be launching their own 'no' campaign for EU withdrawal independent of the others competing for its official mantle. After a period of much welcome respite from Nigel Farage and their putrid politics, can this turn see them reclaim the headlines and the axis of political debate? The biggest problem with UKIP is their populism. It's their main strength and greatest weakness. As a barely coherent us vs themism UKIP is, among other things, a direct outgrowth of decades of hateful, empty-headed rabble rousing by the press and a failure by mainstream politicians to challenge it. Au contraire, with some notable exceptions most have happily gone along with it. Despite this the (right wing) press rhetoric grants our MPs no slack. They are clueless but dishonest schemers who want to destroy Britain. The EU is the symbol of their elitism, and immigrants - whether EU citizens, workers from outside of it, or refugees fleeing war, terror, and dictatorship - a visible manifestation of the plot to bury our national character under waves of migrants. Of course, a cursory analysis of UKIP and its chief backers reveal nothing more than another rich man's scapegoating tool. Its rhetoric is populist, but its politics helps them in their ceaseless struggle against us. The problem with UKIP's populism, which is undoubtedly deeply felt by the millions who vote for them, is its seasonal character. If the EU or immigration are dominating the headlines, their support swells. If not, well, take this summer for instance. Were it not for the Corbyn surge, the only news story would have been the appalling scenes from Calais and the Mediterranean. Immigration would have dominated the Labour leadership contest, candidates would be shadow boxing with UKIP, and the purples' poll ratings would have likely recovered. Instead, despite immigration registering as the number one concern and despite a couple of months of hostile headlines, the Labour left's insurgent populism appears to be killing them. That and/or an evaporation of media coverage of all things kippy thanks to the very same. The local council by-election results since June appear to bear this out. For three months onthetrot not only have their vote shares and averages declined, for the first time in a long time they've persistently lagged behind the Liberal Democrats (despite standing in more seats) and in August were out-organised and out-polled by the Greens - another first. Whatever one might think of Jeremy Corbyn, a Labour Party led by him and equipped with a left programme makes for a more convincing populist outfit than an awkward melange of city slickers, anti-politics types, and more-or-less open racists. So for UKIP to properly come back, they need to make the political weather again. Banging on about immigration, as Farage signaled this morning, has worked before. No doubt UKIP's bigwigs are hoping that there is ripe political territory here again. As far as they're concerned, if Jeremy wins Labour will be abandoning this debate entirely allowing the purples to move in and hoover up those disenchanted voters in the northern strongholds. Perhaps, it just depends how Jeremy's attempt to reframe the debate goes - especially with a policy suggestion of extra resources for areas where new populations tend to settle. It will be interesting to see - should it get the chance to be implemented - whether these positive proposals are able to meet the relentless "throw 'em out, close the borders" bigotry of UKIP. The second, coming back to the EU referendum, is their proposal for an independent, Farage-led, UKIP-branded campaign. This is a politically astute move for a couple of reasons. Whether Dave will let his cabinet members agitate for a no vote remains to be seen, but there was always the danger that the prominence afforded leading Tories and Tory backbenchers using kipper-type language and indulging the sorts of scaremongering they've cornered the political market in could actually leech away some of UKIP's support back to the Tories. Remember, a good chunk of their present membership were signed up thanks to Dave's piloting of equal marriage through the Commons. A sign that the Tories are going right, or at least are seen to be comfortable holding within it plenty of right wingers, might mean curtains. Then again, being independent of the official campaign is no guarantee this won't happen. It just means that Farage can hold forth on whatever he sees fit and, perhaps, set the political tone for the No campaign in general. UKIP has also drawn lessons from Labour's Scottish calamity. While anti-EU Tories might gain from a touch of populism of their own, UKIP could lose out if they're perceived to be too chummy with establishment figures. If he's as smart as he thinks he is, Farage would do well to avoid sharing platforms with Philip Hammond, IDS, and the rest of the eurosceptic bunch. What UKIP are hoping for is that continued immigration concerns and generalised antipathy to official politics will ensure the party profits the most from sticking up for Britain. They're hoping for their SNP moment, whether the referendum goes their way or not. The question is can they pull it off? I'd like to say I trust the good sense of the British electorate, but I don't. That said they are in a weak position right now and the cards are stacked against them, but all it takes is for the seasons to change again for them to spring back - and the complacency of their opponents.
Most popular last month were: 1. Jeremy Corbyn, Stalinism, and the Cold War Boilerplate 2. Who I Voted For Labour Leader 3. Gordon Brown and Power 4. Why I Am Voting For Jeremy Corbyn 5. Some Questions for Jeremy Corbyn Yes, we've made it through August and it's still Jeremy-fest as far as the blog's concerned. Not that I'm complaining, it was the third best month ever page view-wise. Were it not for things happening in real life sapping my bloggerly energies, a few more posts could have seen it do even better. There's very little chance of this changing in September. In less than a fortnight we'll have a new Labour leader and whether it's Jeremy or not, politics is going to get very interesting. There's that, the party conferences, and any number of events due to intrude upon public consciousness. And your humble scribe will be there to chronicle it all. What's my second-chance pick of the month? More Corbyn, I'm afraid. Much has been made of Jeremy's lack of leadership credentials, and some are forecasting doom and gloom. However, in this piece, I suggest there are a number of factors that might dampen down any open revolts in the Parliamentary Labour Party.
I was going to write about Tony Blair (again) tonight, but lassitude and an anime binge (Attack on Titan, if you must know) intervened. Here instead is a trip 11 years back to one of that summer's most brilliant compositions.
* There were eight by-elections in Scotland ** There was one by-election in Wales *** There were no Independent clashes **** Other this month consisted of Scottish Libertarian (12), Pirate Party (13), Scottish Christian (77), SSP (117), Orkney Manifesto Group (593), North East party (214), Mebyon Kernow (85), Yorkshire First (115) Overall, 37,337 votes were cast over 16 local authority (tier one and tier two) contests. All percentages are rounded to the nearest single decimal place. A total of six council seats changed hands. For comparison see July's results here. If this has been the silliest of silly seasons ever where long-held political certainties were trampled beneath the stampede of tens of thousands of new Labour Party members, it's apt that August's by-elections reflect the weirdness. First off, the SNP vote across just seven by-elections has made it the popular vote winner UK-wide for the first time. It is unprecedented that Labour and the Tories have been forced to concede their duopoly. Will the SNP wave ever show signs of ebbing? That Tory result as well is the worst ever since I've been recording local election results. Though the blues shouldn't feel too blue. It's unlikely to be evidence of a Corbyn surge swamping their redoubts: with eight Scottish by-elections and only three in favourable Tory territory. That said, despite awful polling, Labour's holding its own. Also of interest is the scrap between the minor parties. This is the third month on the trot the LibDems have beaten UKIP. The yellows I think have grounds to be cautiously optimistic, even though their results here weren't great. And UKIP, well, without the the muck of the media to fertilise them they're not doing terribly well. Long may it continue. More interestingly, the Greens have beaten both for the first time. Remember the Green Surge? The huge pile of extra members they picked up since the Scottish referendum are starting to bear fruit with more seats contested and, presumably, a better ground operation. If Jeremy wins, will this progress get thrown into reverse? In all, an astonishing month. Will September revert to business as usual or hold yet more surprises?
Like my friend Lawrence, I haven't been terribly inspired by the Labour leadership campaign. Even Corbynmania has failed to stir me, except to the extent of writing many posts trying to understand what it means and how it will effect our party and our movement. So when it came to deciding who to vote for, I found it very difficult. Now, I have a confession to make. Last month our constituency party met to decide who to nominate. Liz, Yvette, and Jeremy had their speakers - Tristram gave a good account for Liz. Andy, a new comrade, spoke for Jeremy. And I spoke for Yvette. Why? In a frankly terrible speech (so much for applying the 'be prepared' maxim I berate others for failing to employ), I laid down the reasons why I liked Jeremy's policies, but also that a strategy dependent on mobilising non-voters is most unlikely to win. Of Yvette, Andy, and Liz, it was Yvette who had the best chance of winning over those Tory voters we need to capture. Much to my amazement, these incoherent mutterings did the business and the Stoke Central nomination narrowly went to the shadow home secretary. This was before the Welfare Reform debacle saw the party descend into disarray and put a Saturn 5 under Jeremy's campaign. Has my mind changed much since? I have found choosing incredibly difficult, so let's talk about the easy parts first. There was no way Liz Kendall was getting any of my preferences. I think she comes across as someone who's terribly insincere, and has shown an appalling lack of judgement in the running of her campaign. Berating members for not getting it, and allowing herself to be painted as a continuity Blair figure raises serious questions about whether she could win an election. Matters are not helped by stubbornly defending free schools and invasive private sector penetration of the NHS. If that wasn't enough, like many of her PLP friends and comrades, she doesn't understand the nature of our party. Had things turned out differently and she was a proper contender, I would be seriously worried about the future of the party. And Andy Burnham. What can you say? Ask me a year ago who I'd be supporting for Labour leader, and I would have said him. Now? Not on your Nelly. The time for examining what has gone so badly wrong for his campaign isn't now - especially when it's a subject this blog will be turning to in the future. But honestly, to have tacked right with his leadership declaration and then opportunistically zigged-zagged here, there, and every-bloody-where as the contest has worn on ... Andy is a nice bloke, can speak with genuine conviction, and does have some good policies to sell. Yet he's like a driver with a faulty SatNav on a cliff's edge - you never know whether he'll follow a dodgy prompt and dash the car on the rocks below, or ignore it convinced that the thin air in front of him is the right road to take. While not as dangerous to the party as a Liz leadership would be, it's well within his range to take Labour in a disastrous direction if he thinks the head winds are favourable. That leaves Jeremy and Yvette. Yes, I do think Jeremy is less divisive and problematic than Andy and Liz, and that any "chaos" resulting from his winning is overstated. His campaign has not only proven slick and well-run, it has set the political tone for the entire contest. It's telling that the two candidates with roots in the wider party - Andy and Yvette - have moved leftwards to compensate while Camp Liz floats away in a Blairist bubble of their own making. For the first time in a long time, the left have made an appreciable - and I for one hope lasting - impact on mainstream politics. You know there's a but coming, don't you? I do have some major reservations about Jeremy's candidacy - for all the good it has done - and I don't think these can be ignored as "ephemeral" or "inessential". We've visited the issue of dodgy associations before. Of course, it is absurd to suggest Jeremy in any way shares the politics of some of the unsavoury individuals he's rubbed shoulders with in the past, and so much of the muck-raking by the likes of Louise Mensch is just that. But time and again, it happens. More recently, for instance, Jeremy happily gave an interview to the Australian branch of the LaRouche cult. If you've never heard of them, look Lyndon LaRouche up - anti-semitism is but one of their appalling characteristics. This sort of carelessness is a problem for some on the left, and it worries me that Jeremy and/or his staff are seemingly incapable of Googling background information, or don't deem it to be relevant. If Jeremy wins, this one will come back and come back some more. The second big issue I have is electoral strategy, namely the seeming indifference much of Jeremy's support has to winning over Tory voters and the emphasis he wishes to place on mobilising non-voters. This approach has been gamed on Ravi's blog under the present boundaries. His best estimate puts us behind the Tories - assuming present Labour and Tory support stays where it is - and he also notes that the 2020 election will be fought on boundaries less favourable to our party. The next election is going to be a tough slog, and I'm sorry, I have very little time for anyone agnostic about us winning. Over the next five years the Tories are going to shaft our funding base and throw obstacles in the way of trade unions. And do we have to talk about what they have in store for our people as well? Can you imagine what could happen again if they win in 2020? I've got a good job and have no reason to believe my health will deteriorate over the next 10 years, but that could easily change. There are, of course, many millions not as fortunate as I and will suffer unless we get back into power at the first available opportunity. And there is the development and strength of the left itself. Few, if anyone expected a left insurgency of this magnitude. But one should not cheer lead uncritically, like much of the far left outside Labour are doing, but to try and understand it in order to shape it. As far as I'm concerned the new member/supporter wave is not a 'social movement' as such, as per Scotland, but more like a mass affiliation of many ones and twos. It is a tendency attracted by Jeremy's unorthodoxy and amplified by social media. Some of it are former Labour people, but the overwhelming bulk are new to politics - that's if the membership surge we've had in our neck of the woods is anything to go by. If you like it is unrooted, a variegated and individuated group of people in search of a social movement. As such, noting its rootlessness, it would be a huge mistake to take this as evidence of a much wider constituency waiting to gift us local election after European election after general election. The second related point here comes from an opportunity/risk analysis. A Jeremy leadership is likely to attract another wave of new recruits and strengthen the gravity of left politics generally. The problem is I cannot see how, in the absence of a catastrophe, that this will be enough to win an election. Even worse, an electoral defeat will be taken as a defeat for socialist ideas, just at the moment their revival is getting underway. There is, of course, never a right time for the left to make a play, and the opportunity Jeremy's candidacy represents is one that does not come along too often. Nevertheless, that is what I think - an early peak could see us stumble into an equally early trough. Who was my alternative then? In the end, it came back to Yvette Cooper. It's only these last couple of weeks her campaign has cranked up. Just like Labour until a year before the general election, she's gone from having no policies to them appearing in abundance. Yes, her platform is pretty dull by the mould-breaking standards of Jeremy's, but interestingly she has moved from austerity lite to anti-austerity lite. There are a couple of things to get excited about, such as universal childcare, and boosting investment in and wages of those in the care industry and those who care for loved ones - Yvette is absolutely right to see this as an infrastructural issue. Yvette has found her voice attacking the government about the refugee crisis in the Med, on FE cuts, on their stupid assault on green industries. Yet I have to say my support doesn't come with much enthusiasm, hence why I'm merely stating my views rather than proselytising. But as the compromise candidate, Yvette has the best chance of keeping the party together and winning a general election in 2020. Of course, if Jeremy wins politics becomes much more interesting. In that event I will carry on building the party and using this platform to dispense analysis, unsolicited advice, and support. It was a very difficult decision but, unfortunately, I just don't fancy our chances if we go to the country with him at the helm.
