Political Gifts and Grifts

It's often been remarked that it is a miracle that Labour governments ever get elected in the UK bearing in mind that the majority of the country's media is rabidly pro-Tory.  Indeed, these days it seems to have traveled even further right, with outlets like GB News, (OK, I know that only three sad bastards and a dog watch it, but its miserable, shouty and hateful output seems to spread everywhere, thanks to the aforementioned Tory press), openly showing admiration for extreme right outfits like Reform.  I swear that we're only a hair's breadth away from the Express or Mail endorsing Tommy Robinson and printing 'Hurrah for the Black Shirts' as a headline.  But it is equally a miracle that, when they are elected, Labour governments are able to govern, so relentless is the stream of disinformation and bile directed at them in an attempt to destabilise them.  Obviously, most of this comes from the right-wing media, but, right now, some of the most poisonous invective is coming from, yeah, you guessed it, the Cult of Corbyn.  Still smarting from the fact that Labour under Starmer has managed to do - at the first attempt - what their guy couldn't achieve at all - winning a general election - they now seem determined to revel in every piece of shit thrown at Labour by the media they profess to hate and have always claimed fabricates stories against the Labour Party.

Now, there's no denying that, having lambasted the Tories for corruption and cronyism, it isn't a good look for the new Labour government's senior members to be accepting freebies from donors, (although, it isn't illegal or necessarily unethical), but let's not forget that the same press gleefully reporting this spent a lot of time defending Boris Johnson for accepting hospitality, holidays and even home decor from his wealth supporters.  There's a lot of hypocrisy involved here, plus, there's a long history of senior politicians, of all stripes, accepting the offer of things like holiday homes from donors and celebrities, which, in the past, has never elicited a murmur from the press.  Equally hypocritical is the non-story about Sue Gray's (Starmer's Chief of Staff) pay - 'Oh look, she earns more than the PM!  Isn't that terrible!  What a scandal!'  Except that it isn't any of those things, despite the BBC (who broke the 'story') defiantly running a headline in the aftermath reading 'Why Sue Gray's Salary Matters'.  Of course, it migt have helped if, from the outset they had been honest in pointing out that many senior civil servants earn more than the PM - as does the reporter behind the story (he earns far more than Gray, as it happens).  As the right likes to tell us, ad nauseum, if you want the best people, you have to give them top pay.  

The point is that, not only isn't any of this new, but you can pint the finger at just about anyone in political circles and you can be sure that they will have accepted hospitality, gifts, been involved in dubious fund-raising or are arguably overpaid.  Which brings us back to the Cult of Corbyn and their blessed Messiah.  That's right, even the saintly Jeremy Corbyn, (who can apparently walk on water, miraculously turn fruit into jam and cure lumbago with his touch), is guilty of involvement with some questionable money matters.  Now, I'm not saying that he is corrupt or has accepted backhanders, but some of us do remember those campaigns his acolytes ran on social media, trying to get donations from people to pay for a defence fund when he was apparently facing multiple libel charges.  I know that, in the UK, libel cases can be expensive and the penalties if you lose them steep, but the reality is that an MP's pay is way in excess of that of any of the people that these supporters were trying to grift money from.  Moreover, Corbyn himself doesn't exactly live in penury - he's got a bob or two in the bank, owns property, etc.  So, frankly, he can pay for his own legal defences.  I have absolutely no idea how much these campaigns raised, or how it was disbursed.  Certainly, I don't recall any of these cases going to court (I'm sure the right-wing press would have been all over them).  I'm prepared to believe that there was no impropriety on the part of the pious former Labour leader himself, but the fact is that even he can be tainted by association - something his Holier-than-thou followers should remember next time they gloat at some supposed scandal the right-wing press cook up against Starmer and his government.

(Don't worry, I'll be working my way back to the schlocky movies and pop culture in due course - it's just that most of the movies I've seen recently were re-watches of stuff I've already written up here.  Plus, there's a whole load of other stuff going on in the world that I've been feeling the urge to rant about).