In the Thick of It: The Private Diaries of a Minister by Alan Duncan (HarperCollins 2021)

Since being elected in 1992 as the Member of Parliament for Rutland and Melton, I had always considered myself to be an instinctive Eurosceptic. I voted ‘No’ in the 1975 referendum, and maintained my belief in the following decades that the EU was undemocratic, inflexible and in need of fundamental reform. As 2016 came around, I still expected to join the Leave campaign, and began discussions to do so. But, as will be seen, I eventually decided against it. With age and experience comes, if not wisdom, greater perspective. Politics cannot always be about indulging one’s natural inclinations.

Like many, I received my share of abuse for backing Remain, but I do not regret it. If anything,  events have reinforced me in my belief that I was right to pull back from the brink. Nor do I think I have fundamentally changed my position on Europe. Somewhere along the line from the early 1990s the cause of honest and thoughtful Euroscepticism mutated into a form of simplistic nationalism that strikes me as ugly and demeaning. Rather than devoting their energies to campaigning for the reform of outdated EU institutions and seeking a better deal for the UK, too many Eurosceptics retreated instead to crude sloganeering. There was a rational and pragmatic case to be made for leaving the EU, but few bothered to make it. Instead, we faced a wave of populist nonsense, emotive platitudes and downright lies: a barrage of Farage.

Beating the Fascists: The Untold Story of Anti-fascist Action by Sean Birchall (Freedom Press 2010)

Blows were exchanged. I took this tremendous punch in the forehead. Eamonn decked one of them; everyone was hacking away, A large bald fascist right in front of me took an iron bar straight over the nut. His whole face just went grey. Fractured skull for sure, I thought. Another one on his hands and knees on the floor dropped his iron bar - a great big silver thing with a screw through the top of it - and began shouting, ‘Enough! Enoughl’You’lI be lucky, I thought, as blows rained down.

“People started chasing the others over walls and through gardens. I think the van pulled away with only about half of them in it. Three were left in the middle of the road. A taxi stopped, and a woman got out, screaming hysterically. Someone pulled her back in. Everyone else ignored her.

“Without much discussion it was decided to carry on with the meeting. Though it was unlikely they would come back, I volunteered for sentry duty outside, more to calm myself down than anything else. One of the women who worked in the kitchen was carted off in an ambulance with a suspected heart attack. So I’m standing there when Labour M P Jeremy Corbyn opens the door of the centre and peeps out. ‘Have they gone?’ he says. ‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘Were they here for you or me?’ he says. ‘It was us,’ I reply. You could see the relief visible on his face. ‘Oh, good!’ he remarked cheerfully. Then, with a quick look in both directions, he skipped off down the road. I remember laughing at the time. How ironic, I thought. Here we have a Member of Parliament, no less, having to skulk around his own constituency for fear of rampaging fascists everyone else seems determined to deny exist.”

"Hair are your aerials . . ."

I'm 10 days away from having Jeremy Corbyn's 1973 hairstyle.

Pray for me.

Waiting for the great leap forward

Via a Facebook thread, one of those anecdotes you wish were true, if only to see Tom Watson and Nick Cohen's heads explode in indignation:

 "The competing Trot sects in 1980s Islington North CLP voted for Jeremy as their compromise candidate because each of them couldn’t accept that a member of a rival 4th International would be the MP".

'It doesn't fly, McFly'

Clever.

But wasn't 1985 the year when Kinnock made "that" Conference speech?

We've been here before . . .

Facial hair - check.

No tie - check.

Looking messianically into the distance - check,

Pointing out the class traitors in the audience - cheka.

Shame on me. Not for the piss-poor Cheka pun but because it's my first mention of Corbyn on the blog, and, then, it's only to post my half-arsed attempt at a political meme.

There is a silver lining, however.  I'm thinking of trying to sell the above pic - with the accompanying bad Cheka joke, naturally. Do you think the Daily Mail and Left Foot Forward might enter into a bidding war for the exclusive rights? I won't sell it for less than $2.