I awoke this morning to the news that Tony Blair has announced that the election of Jeremy Corbyn as leader would lead to the 'annihilation of the Labour Party at the polls'. This pronouncement is headline news in every news outlet today, from the rabid right tabloids to the quisling 'liberal' press and broadcasters.
 Now, when Blair speaks of annihilation, I think he should be taken very seriously. He, after all, knows quite a lot about this particular subject. There are the annihilated civilians in Iraq - 123,000 up to 2012 according to Iraq Bodycount, but in total much more likely to be around 500,000. When Blair colluded with Bush to unleash the world's most sophisticated high explosives on the city of Baghdad, did he simply close his eyes to the inevitable annihilation of thousands of ordinary Iraqi families cowering in their unprotected homes? Has he shrugged off the countless civilian deaths in Lybia, Syria, Palestine (where he is deeply implicated in his partisan role, since 2007, as an EU 'peace envoy' in the massacre of 1,500 civilians including over 300 children, when Israel invaded Gaza) and now Tunisia and Egypt as the influence of IS continues to grow -  all connected to the fall-out from the 2003 disaster?
In domestic politics, the Blair years saw the annihilation of Labour Party membership as it fell by over 100,000  (now rising at its fastest rate for decades with the prospect of a Corbyn win). And, of course, the total annihilation of Labour in Scotland, ludicrously dismissed by the Blairites as simply a sudden surge in nationalism, even though a referendum on independence was convincingly lost by the nationalists only a few months previously. Apparently the SNP's political programme - surprisingly similar to that espoused by Corbyn - had nothing to do with Labour's Scottish humiliation and the SNP's overwhelming victory.
And the final annihilation, now almost a Pavlovian response whenever Blair's name is mentioned, is the annihilation of any sense of  personal morality. As Blair - like many of his ilk - has used his public office to further his vast private fortune, he has rightly earned the almost universal contempt in which he is now held by those who retain a sense of human decency. Jeremy Corbyn has always lived entirely on his parliamentary salary and has set an exemplary example of public service and personal integrity, whether you agree with his politics or not.

Back in 1956 and my arrival on the estate where I would spend my formative years, the Labour Party still had a firm base in the industrial working-class and was clearly seen as being the natural agency for the improvement of the life chances of working people. The state was, from a traditional Labour perspective, the prime means of wealth redistribution to achieve improved schools, health services, housing, welfare benefits and investment for the collective good in the nationalised industries. The belief was that greater social cohesion was good for everyone, even for those who were better off and who paid a higher share of their wealth to achieve it.
 By now, my mother had transferred her political allegiance from the CP to the Labour Party, but even then, the party was divided into its left and right, though the left was much stronger than now. Accusations of entryism, then from the communist left, were also just as common as now. Gaitskell was generally despised by the left of the party, who looked to Bevan and Foot for inspiration. The Labour Party tradition of its leadership (Gaitskell at this time) betraying its founding priciples and selling its soul to the powerful was vigorously being made then, as now. It was the issue of unilateral nuclear disarmament and the rise of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament which was to be the focal point of long and very acrimonious division in the party this time and my mother was, of course, fully behind, and active within, the CND movement.

All this made only a passing impression on my six year old self. My initiation into council estate life was to come a few days after moving there in the form of one who would torment and dominate almost the whole of my six year stay - Georgie Burton. Georgie Burton (never George) was a bit older than me and the eldest of three children who lived in the next block of flats along from where we lived, though both blocks were joined by connected small garden plots. It was on one of these plots that he first approached me. He was taller than me with a wiry build, blonde hair, very blue eyes and a habit, like his younger brother, Jimmy, of speaking to you with his thumb, childishly, in his mouth. Childish, he wasn't.  Objectively, he looked quite angelic, and this was what made his demeanour so threatening. He simply oozed menace. He began with a series of questions concerning my right to be there, my right to be on this particular path, my right to be within his sight, in fact, my right to exist at all. This could, apparently, only be determined through immediate physical combat, to take place on the grass plot in front of the flats, now, this minute. Amazingly, the grass plot was already filling up with enthusiastic spectators who must have sensed in some estate driven intuitive manner, that an entertaining punch-up was imminent. A crowd of local kids rapidly assembled, not particularly excited, more simply accepting this ritual as a normal part of daily existence. How true this was, I was to find out over the coming years.
The fight began with the traditional opening gambit of simply grabbing each other in an attempt to wrestle the other to the ground, or, failing at this, kicking the legs away from under your opponent. This continued for some time until I found, to my surprise, that I was slowly getting the upper hand. Although smaller than Georgie, I was stocky and had a lower centre of gravity and I found that, with one swift swipe at his legs, he was suddenly on the ground and I was sitting on top of him, right on his chest and able to hold both his arms on the ground. There was a momentary impasse - he couldn't move because I held his arms tight and pressed down on his chest, but I couldn't press home my advantage because I would have to let go of one of his wrists, allowing him back into the fight. Since this was the case, and I was on top of him, I began to feel that, well, I had won. Any reasonable person would have to admit that. I was on top, he was underneath and there was nothing he could do. Obviously, victory was mine. I began to feel pleased and looked around the onlookers hoping for some acknowledgement of my victory. None was obviously there, but, nonetheless, I relented my grip and began to ease my weight off him. As soon as I did this, he simply hit me with his right fist hard in the side of my head. I had never been punched like this before. A serious, hard thwack that went right through me. I now found myself on my back with Georgie now on top of me from where he continued to punch me hard in the face. This was not just a pain I had never felt before, but seemed to contravene every aspect of acceptable behaviour I had ever encountered before in my - admittedly brief - life. I was more shocked than hurt. No, not true, I was shocked, but also very hurt. He didn't even stop, just continued punching. My nose was now pouring blood and my lip was cut. I could do nothing but wait for him to finish. Which eventually he did, and walked nonchalantly away as though nothing of consequence had taken place at all. For me, it was a sudden and profound awareness of something of very great consequence. My life was about to change once more, and the change did not look good.