I haven't posted anything for a few weeks due to domestic circumstances I won't bore you with - and look what's happened. We've abolished Europe, said goodbye to our Bullingdon boy PM, acquired a new PM avowedly on the side of the downtrodden but wishing to abolish all Human Rights Law, appointed another old Etonian with an aversion to all foreigners as Foreign Secretary and seen Her Majesty's Opposition set about committing harakiri over its inability to find a unified socialist identity. Also, Summer appears to have been completely abolished along with Europe. I really must try to keep posting regularly to keep us all on an even keel. The only positive thing I can find in all this chaos is the ignominious humiliation of Michael Gove, placed firmly back, hopefully permanently, in his hamster wheel.
The vote to leave the EU is surely, at heart, a reflection of over two decades of neo-liberal economic dogma that has left huge swathes of our country, particularly in the old industrial areas of the Midlands and the North, in Wales and some of our coastal regions, economically decimated and culturally undermined. The irony of the EU being one of the few sources of regeneration funding in these areas is more than offset by the failure of national governments to do anything effective to alleviate conditions in these areas, and the perception that the EU is fundamentally remote and undemocratic in its structure. The arrival of EU migrants working for the minimum wage or less, in insecure jobs with no protection from exploitative employers makes them an easy target for the impotent rage of those who have been left in the decaying heartlands of our old industrial areas with no hope, their communities destroyed and fast disappearing social protection. However, it's worth remembering that 63% of Labour's 2015 election vote supported remain, while only 46% of Tory voters did. Cameron's reckless and ill-considered gamble has finished his political ambitions and done colossal damage to Britain's future.
This should be the moment when the Labour party comes to the fore and sets about demolishing the neo-liberal myths, attacks the staggering incompetence of the government and develops a huge lead in the polls offering hope to those who have been left behind as our productive economy has declined. But no. The behaviour of Her Majesty's Opposition, were it not so tragic for those wishing for fundamental change in our deeply fractured society, would have the makings of a great new series of 'In the Thick of It'. The Parliamentary Party, being handed a golden opportunity to take the Tories apart, instead saw only an opportunity to turn on their own recently elected leader, a man whose political beliefs have always been at odds with the broadly social democratic views of those who have come to power in the twenty years since Blair's first premiership, and set about doing their damnedest to turn him out of office. Meanwhile, the well-drilled Tory party got on with what it does well - scuppering the pretensions of those whom the party elites dislike and quickly placing in power their chosen replacement. No necessity for wider party endorsement there.

The behaviour of the Parliamentary Labour Party can only be described as despicable and a gross dereliction of their first duty which is to be as effective an opposition as possible in taking the Tories to task for their ruthless pursuit of their own class interests. Rather than this they set about organising an embarrassingly cack-handed coup, then tried to stop the elected leader from standing in any re-run election and then, when failing in this, decided to run an election anyway whilst simultaneously attempting to rig the result through hastily implemented new voting restrictions. These are - quite rightly - being challenged in the courts. 
The job of fiercely challenging the current government who have just removed us all, for the flimsiest of electoral reasons, from a European Union relationship that has been carefully constructed over more than forty years, on a tiny majority vote, clearly in opposition to the wishes of the coming generation, the implications of which are still only beginning to be realised including the probably irresistible strain on the unity of the UK, has been abandoned in favour of an opportunistic attack on a leader whose politics they have always disliked. The cry that Corbyn has "lost the confidence of the PLP" is a nonsense. He never had the confidence of the PLP. They did everything they could to prevent his election and have undermined him at every opportunity for the simple reason that he represents a strand of political thought in the Labour Party that has been there since its inception and found its zenith in 1945 under another uncharismatic leader, Clement Attlee, who, nonetheless became the best peacetime PM in this country's history. I am not for a moment comparing Corbyn to Attlee, simply making the point that charisma is not always essential to effective politics, even in an information age. What is needed is the support of those with experience and ability to assist the democratically elected leader.

Another view on all this, of which I am very well aware, is that this behaviour is more to do with Mr. Corbyn's shortcomings as party leader than it is about not doing what an opposition is supposed to do - oppose the government rather than themselves. They will say - with some truth - that Mr. Corbyn is not a natural leader or communicator. That he speaks only to his own narrow base of supporters and fails to reach out to the country as a whole. That the opposition cannot effectively oppose until he has gone. Simple as that. As I have suggested, I think there is some truth in this. But it is not quite as simple as that.
Mr. Corbyn has faced sustained opposition to his leadership from large sections of the Parliamentary Party from the moment he was elected. This has little to do with his personal shortcomings as a leader, and everything to do with the fact that he has, for over thirty years as an MP, consistently argued for traditional socialist principles - nationalisation of public utilities, opposition to the neo-liberal economic policies implemented by both parties in government during the time he has been an MP, deeply critical of the deregulation of business and finance, opposed nuclear weapons as our principal defence policy - as well as being active in campaigning groups outside of the party like CND and the Palestine Solidarity Campaign. This has, inevitably, meant he has a record of opposing some of the policies of his own party. 
The shift of the party to the right, politically, during the Blair years has exacerbated the tensions between the traditional left and those who have found favour within the hierarchy of the party. The electoral success of Blair (I refuse to call him 'Tony', just as I will never call Thatcher 'Maggie' with their jocular overtones) has led to an intake of some Labour MP's with no connection to the labour movement or sympathy for socialist principles. The very word 'socialist' was outlawed under Blair. They now are led by someone whose ideological position many of them fundamentally oppose, and, of course, they have the support of all sections of the traditional mass media whose profit driven interests are also opposed to a socialist ethic, and, without exception, have launched an unceasing assault on everything he does. 

It is small wonder that the rather self-effacing Corbyn has had trouble getting his ideas across. He needs a strong supportive team to assist in the presentation of a radical and fundamental change to the way our economy and our profoundly undemocratic society is run. But Corbyn is also trying to forge a new way of doing politics. Of developing ways of involving ordinary people more directly and in a more sustainable way in the ongoing development of policy and its implementation. Both the leader of the party, and all those elected to further its policies, need to be more accountable to the membership of the party, making politics less contained in the Westminster bubble and bringing the electorate into the political process more directly.
 Britain has a huge democratic deficit in its political structures. Minority Tory governments can continue to dismantle the publicly owned and funded structures of our society and hand them over to enrich their friends in the city because we continue with a political structure in parliament that in no way reflects the way people think and vote. Until there is real proportional representation, the majority of the voting population will continue to be unrepresented. Mr. Corbyn is interested in developing ways of involving people more directly in the political process. Of forming loose alliances with other parties and groups on the left to work together to develop an effective opposition to the austerity agenda. If he is seen to have shortcomings as a leader by those in the PLP currently splitting the party in two, then they should recognise that he has a democratic mandate won fairly according to the rules of the party and they should do their utmost to assist the effectiveness of the main opposition party. What are they going to do if, or, more likely, when, he wins the leadership again? To simply stand aside from what the party, through an open democratic process, is insisting they do? Or split the party completely by breaking away in the manner of the ill-fated SDP? I'm reminded of an observation of Bertolt Brecht : 

"There are many elements to a campaign. Leadership is number one. Everything else is number two." 

I watched an interview with Stephen Kinnock on television in which he lambasted the  democratically elected leader of his party and refused to assist his leadership in any way. When asked what he would do if Corbyn is re-elected, his repeated reply was "I will continue to represent my constituents from the back benches." I was left wondering how he considered he was helping his constituents by abrogating his responsibility to assist the Party he represents, the party that has supported him in his political ambitions, and the party that is at least attempting to wrest power from the wealthy elite that currently holds it and empower ordinary people in a democratic and accountable manner. Unfortunately, he is not alone in the PLP and the Labour Party continues to suffer as a result. Bertolt Brecht again:

Some party hack decreed that the people
had lost the government's confidence
and could only regain it with redoubled effort.
If that is the case, would it not be simpler,
If the government simply dissolved the people 
And elected another? 

Substitute party for government and you have Kinnock to a tee. 

At the age of eleven, in1961, a schism was about to appear in my own life - a division that would have a big effect on many of my friends and certainly on me. I was about to leave my Junior School for a place at the new Technical High School a couple of miles from where I lived. I don't remember much about the last days at junior school.  I knew my best friend Colin, who had won a place at Grammar School would probably disappear from my - admittedly narrow -horizon, the council estate on which I lived. The only other boy going to the technical school was a quiet boy called Keith who was in another class and I didn't really know. My other close friends were all consigned to the secondary modern, and I also knew that those friendships would fall away as we no longer saw each other on a daily basis. I felt quite scared of what was ahead.
 That last day at school I do remember was marked by a kind of suppressed hysteria as everyone in our year group knew that this was the end of a significant part of our lives. People ran excitedly, but pointlessly, around the playground and the field that we used in the summer, but with little sense of fun. As we lined up for lunch - my last free school dinner - we sang songs, most of which were to do with the horrors of school. I can only remember a few lines, but one refrain has always stuck in my mind due to its absurdity: "No more Latin, no more French, no more sitting on the old school bench.."   Latin? French? at our state junior school, the main aim of which was to turn out a reasonably literate and numerate workforce? Not many of us would have known what Latin was. 
I walked home that day with a group of my mates and I knew that something irrevocable was about to happen, but something we couldn't talk about. We grew gradually quieter as each one of us peeled off to our respective homes. I lived the furthest away, and walked the last stretch alone.

My mother always had a problem with us in the holidays. She was working full time and there was, of course, no child care available. Single parents had no public existence in 1961. My maternal grandparents both still worked, and anyway, they cared for us after school most days, so needed a break from the three of us. My other grandparents simply were not up to the task. One strategy my mother adopted was to take us with her to work in the back of the old A35 van she now owned and drove to work in, and then set us free for the day with instructions on where to go and where to meet her at lunch-time. Since she now worked in central London, just off the embankment in Smith Square editing a small magazine for the Labour Party called 'Labour Woman', this was something of an unusual strategy and one which would certainly have social services on our backs today.
Sometimes it was only my brother and myself, so she must have found someone to look after my sister, but often it would be all three of us. At around 9.30 in the morning we would be set free to explore London with some suggestions of where we might go. We were still living on the breadline, so there was rarely much in the way of money between us. We got to know the Millbank area very well. We would walk down towards the Houses of Parliament and spend some time in Victoria Tower Gardens. A little further along, and across the road, was the Jewel Tower (still there of course), part of the original palace of Westminster, and it housed a small exhibition on several floors accessed by a medieval spiral staircase. Over the weeks of the summer I got to know every exhibit in that exhibition, since, in those days it was free to enter and thus a good place to take cover from rain. None of the exhibits interested me in the slightest, but it was dry. The curators also got to know us, and were usually very friendly towards us. We would wander on to Westminster Abbey and that must also have been free, because I certainly remember wandering around inside and finding Poet's Corner with its array of monuments to writers, some of whom I'd heard of and most of whom I would come to know later in my life.
On other days we would walk in the other direction, sometimes crossing over Lambeth Bridge and being very disappointed to find that Lambeth Palace seemed to be simply a red brick building of no interest to small children. Certainly not what we thought of as a palace. A long walk down river would take us past Vauxhall Bridge and down to Chelsea Bridge, where we could access Battersea Park, an enormous area of greenery that included a fun-fair, a small zoo, a huge pond and lots of stuff to play on. This was a really long trek for us, and would usually take up most of the day. I can't remember what we ate. Maybe my mother made us sandwiches, but we certainly would not have had money to spend. I enjoyed these explorations of the city - and there were occasions when we would take a bus to remoter areas like Greenwich - but how releasing three young children, unaccompanied by an adult, to wander freely around the metropolis would be viewed today, I don't know. I have always valued the knowledge I gained of the city, and I think my love of simply wandering without maps or directions, in all cities, here or abroad can be traced back to these childhood explorations. 
Summer, of course, would draw to an end and I knew that I would soon be wearing my new school uniform for the purpose for which it was acquired. I dreaded this next phase of my life. Only the unknown Keith would be a familiar face and the vast new building that I had visited for the interview haunted my mind and invaded my dreams. But there would be no escaping it.