Owen Goal

If we believe the polls (which, of course, we shouldn't) Owen Smith is all-in & drawing dead in his bid to replace Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader. Smith has hitherto not troubled these (or any other) pages, but has nonetheless been anointed as the brightest & best that the Parliamentary Labour Party has to offer which, unfortunately, is not hard to believe. In an article based on interviews with constituency party members The Guardian sheepishly revealed that no one really had a word to say about Smith whose main drawback is also his key virtue: anonymity. The assumption by Labour MPs, for better or worse, is that the least known of them is probably also the one least hated by Labour's members.

Although Smith is regarded as "soft Left" however, there is nothing soft about the approach that he is taking as his campaign ratchets up. And this is a problem.

His lines of attack are familiar: surrounding himself with women, he has branded himself as the sexual equality candidate while female Labour MPs have pushed the narrative that Corbyn is not doing enough to quell the abuse that his less evolved supporters are flinging at them. Surely the next step will be for Smith to reveal Jewish endorsements while saying that Corbyn has failed to confront the anti-Semitism of the Left. He will pose with British soldiers while saying that Corbyn is weak on security. He will appear at Battersea Dogs' Home to criticise Corbyn's lack of a full-voiced opposition to mistreatment of animals.

And the problem in all this is not for Corbyn but for the very people who want to unseat him, because Smith is effectively re-running the tactics of the failed Remain campaign: relentlessly attacking the very voters whom you expect to deliver your victory.

Brexit voters were treated as credulous & racist. This is the strategy used during the EU referendum campaign, and in that context it is worth remembering that MP Jo Cox was actually murdered: powerful proof that at least some Brexit adherents seemed to be exactly what the Remainers were claiming.

Yet an event that might have been expected to swing the entire course of the Referendum, in the end, did not turn the tide, and possibly for the same reason that Smith's strategy is doomed. People's attitudes had been hardened by weeks of abuse, to the point at which they were no longer willing to give any credence at all to the people who were trying to persuade them.

Right now there is no accusation that could be flung at Jeremy Corbyn that people are likely to believe: especially if they continue along the same lines as today's tale of a Watergate-style office break-in. It looks at first appearance like a stunt at best and a blatant smear at worst.

It may well be impossible for Smith to engage with the Labour rank & file but for sure he will not do it by pursuing his current path.

A Laboured Analogy

The Parliamentary Labour Party makes for a lousy boyfriend.

For a start, he always expects you to pay for his round, and he's always playing Lord Bountiful: treating everyone who comes into the pub, whispering to you that all this "networking" is really going to pay off down the line. Though whether it will be paying off for the both of you, or just for him, is a bit difficult to tell.

Then, he always seems to be gossiping about you with his friends. He tells them that you're a bit dumb, and boring, and whiny ... even that you're a bit anti-Semitic, which he seems to think makes him look enlightened & tolerant in mixed company.

Worst of all, he's always making a spectacle of himself chasing after other women. Every few years you'll find him making a play for some stray piece of skirt, even though he knows full well that she prefers the posh boy with the nice car from up the street. He'll put on his best suit, which doesn't even fit him, take her up West and, from what you've heard, make out that you and he broke up years ago.

Of course, once she's dumped him (like she always does) he's back, telling you that he should have listened to you more and say if you let him back then it'll all be different this time. He'll even go to the restaurant you choose before the pub on Friday night. Except, when you do choose, he sits there sulking through the starter and then says that he'd be eating his favourite bhuna by now if he'd made the choice for you.

Then he says that no real girlfriend would have made him eat this filthy Greek muck in the first place: you only do it to annoy him and if he wanted to eat goats cheese he'd have been a goat. And he's had it with you and your fucking stupid ideas of where to eat and you'd better get your coat you dumb bitch because he's off for a bhuna and if you don't like it you can lump it, see?

And when you tell him that you haven't even had your moussaka yet and you were looking forward to it he tells you: "Look, the moussaka's off, no moussaka, this restaurant's a bust. All of my friends keep telling me: there is no fucking moussaka, okay? I'm not sitting here to find out whether some fucking moussaka that doesn't even exist warps into existence and appears on a plate in front of you, because I'm pretty sure that if I get to the pub by nine tonight then that girl from up the road is going to be there, gagging for it."

But this time you tell him: no, she's not gagging for it because she's going steady with that other guy, and the other guy says he's keeping her until 2020 so you can whistle for your bhuna, Parliamentary Labour Party.

And he just looks at you. That look. That look that says "if I have to eat Greek salad one more time and look at your stupid face I'll kill myself".

So that night you throw a brick through his window, obviously.

Go To Your Happy Place

At a time when Plan B is desperately needed - when UK MPs are required to process the narrow but unambiguous rejection of their advice and get on with the job that they were elected to do - those who have found it easiest to adjust are the ones who are just pushing Plan A. The SNP (led by the person who is currently probably today the UK's most popular politician on any side: pocket dynamo Nicola Sturgeon) thinks that Scottish Independence may be the answer. Sinn Féin feels that Irish Independence may do the trick. Conservative MPs are getting down to the serious business of trying to stop Boris Johnson getting to Number 10. And Labour MPs are trying to remove Jeremy Corbyn.

Removing Jeremy Corbyn is, of course, not so much the Plan A of Labour MPs as the One Plan To Rule Them All. Since this mild-mannered and rather bland specimen of Far Left extremism was foisted on them by the contemptible rank & file they have been waiting on the steps of the capitol with a murderous gleam in their collective eye hoping to catch sight of him cycling by, but have been repeatedly cheated of their prey. They were already to pounce after the Oldham West & Royton by-election last year (which confounded their hopes by resulting in a ringing Labour victory) and almost did so at the time of the underwhelming council election results in May. Had he delivered in terms of the election failure that all Labour MPs so clearly covet, he would have been gone by now.

Under the circumstances, the Parliamentary Labour Party has picked now as its time to strike (if strike be quite the word for the centrist wing of the party with its inherent mistrust of unions). Seemingly, the EU referendum result is to be laid at his door due to the tepidity with which he campaigned for a Remain victory.

Well, that's the ostensible reason at least.

Setting aside for now the question about whether changing the leader is wise at such a time of convulsion, what is the benefit to the party to remove anyone, let alone the leader, on the basis of a lack of Euro-enthusiasm? Broadly there are two options: Brexit or a rejection of the Brexit vote by the political elites. If the political elites refuse to enact Brexit (which may still happen) then it doesn't really matter where people were on the referendum. On the other hand, if Brexit is going to be enacted then it will require Brexiters, Bremainers and everyone between those two camps to come to the aid of the country.

Labour can turn itself into the perfect pro-Bremain party, but that transformation will be too late to be anything but position the party on the other side of the question from the majority view of its voters, and any leader palatable to the PLP will almost certainly be someone whose wisdom on the question has just been rejected by the electorate.

Of course, Labour MPs are not thinking straight at all. They know that Cameron is going, that a general election may be years closer at hand than expected and that the bloody business of decapitation needs to be done now. In response to the crisis, they have gone to their happy place not by means of calm meditation & positive visualisation but with a massive intracardiac injection of whatever high-potency variant of cocaine fuels them. They think that - like Mia Wallace in Pulp Fiction - all they will do is thrash around the floor for a second and sit bolt upright with everything alright again.

Except - like Mia Wallace in Pulp Fiction - what they think is cocaine may be a fatal overdose of something else.

Careful What You Wish For

Like participants in an especially hedonistic stag party, UK voters awakened today to the challenge of distinguishing reality from the ghastly fever dream that had troubled their sleep. A dawning realisation will be transferred from face to face as people pass one another on the street and look nervously away. By God, it's true, we did that.

That (for those tripping over this very small corner of the internet whilst looking for something else in years to come) is this: the UK voted to leave the EU. Yes, the Little Train That Couldn't, did, and it turns out that Casey Jones was at the engine, going full steam to catastrophe.

When many of us went to bed last night we did so in a markedly different world: Farage had reputedly conceded; David Dimbleby had announced that the pro-EU campaign seemed to have prevailed; and even the pro-Leave talking heads seemed to think that the issue had been settled for the status quo. This consensus, however, was based on the idea that a large turnout would favour Remain: a narrative that was at odds with what many were saying about the demographic of their supporters. If those who vote Remain are the most educated, metropolitan, Guardian-reading members of society, aren't these the people who reliably vote in every election? Who were these other people registering and voting in large numbers? Why was the assumption that people who took too little interest in politics to vote in a General Election were suddenly rallying to the flag of the European Union?

The reality of the matter - that the Leave campaign had prevailed on the basis of a massive turnout - has proven to be a national act of civil disobedience. The vice anglais was well-named: the British people has cast aside its safe word and asking to be whipped a little harder please Miss. We're often told in the political context that turkeys don't vote for Christmas, yet the UK electorate has basted itself, cooked itself to perfection and has a saucière of cranberry sauce balanced on its left wing.

Quite why that is we will probably never know because the votes that swung this referendum are not the votes that we could see (the active, UKIP-voting people of Middle England who could be heard on every radio debate prior to voting day) but the votes that we couldn't: the quiet, unannounced votes that tipped the balance.

But if you're looking around today for someone to blame in the weeks, months, perhaps years to come, it's worth bearing in mind that the referendum only took place due to a cynical piece of manoeuvring from the man who professed to want it least. David Cameron jeopardised (History may say "sacrificed") his entire nation solely to minimise the UKIP vote at the last General Election, promising a referendum that would/could never pass in a bid to cling to power. On the morning after the night before, he proved to be not the result's only - but certainly its most prominent - casualty.

If the poets have tragedies yet to write then let them ponder that.

The Little Train That Couldn't

If you believe the mythology of these things, Neil Kinnock sunk Labour's chances of victory in the 1992 General Election at a rally in Sheffield where he uttered the deathless soundbite "We're alright!" The rally - which fittingly took place on April Fool's Day - is notable as being just about the last time in British political history that a politician ever made the mistake of showing spontaneous feeling at a conference podium. But the sentiment was at least positive.

Two days out from the EU Referendum, Sordel is ready to capitulate to the prevailing logic. Cameron has me convinced. The Department of Trade & Industry can't negotiate trade agreements. Countries investing in Britain are not after anything that we have to trade; they are primarily interested in our access to the Continental marketplace. Membership of NATO and the United Nations counts for nothing, and if you're pining for The Commonwealth, pine on Grandad. Britain cannot make it on its own, and certainly not with any of the likely potential pilots at the helm.

And this isn't sarcasm.

There is, admittedly, a positive argument for remaining in the EU. We're better inside helping shape the decisions than outside suffering the consequences of them. This affords the UK to effect genuine global change through multilateral action with European partners irrespective of their frankly waning power and relevance. None of that is wrong; people join exclusive clubs for a reason and they don't give up membership on a whim or without qualms.

But the positive logic is as nothing compared with the negative logic of staying in Europe. The UK didn't need an EU to shape international affairs in the past, but then it had leaders who would not have dreamed of devoting months of their time fighting a completely unnecessary referendum on the basis of the UK's fundamental weakness.

This is not party political sniping: Labour, Conservatives and Lib Dems (whatever happened to them?) are as one on this point. It can't be done, and - if it could - we can't do it.

Maybe some other UK with some other leader. Not this one. Not with Cameron, or Corbyn, or (let me check my notes) Tim Farron. Not with Boris Johnson, Nigel Farage or Michael Gove either, lest you think that Sordel dreams of princes across the sea.

If you can't trust your politicians, Brexit is too big a risk to take, which is why I cannot vote for it.

Cometh the Hour, Cometh the Slogan, and the slogan for these times is this: "We're All Wrong."

Slap Her, She's French

The normal sobriety with which our press covers defence issues seems to have given way badly over recent days, resulting in coverage that has at times resembled a teen drama.

Our military representatives in Washington had for some time, been carrying America's books and helping him with his Chemistry homework in the general hope that he would invite them to the prom. Now, however, a pretty French exchange student has arrived and caught America's eye. They have been looking for excuses to slip off together to the stacks and she keeps looking at us appraisingly before whispering things in his ear that makes them both laugh.

Once upon a time, it was understood that going to war as the U.S.'s bagman was done from broadly noble motives, but the tone of The Times especially gives Sordel pause for thought, because it's becoming clearer by the day that the real reason we go to war is for fear that the U.S. won't ask us next time.

Perhaps those of our generals wont to fill their hand luggage with Pentagon-issue complementary sewing kits and drinks coasters with the seal of the president are worried about their Frequent Flyer points, but there has been much public gnashing of the teeth that their status has been "downgraded" (and are presumably all now to be found in Premium Economy.)

Before we get entirely demoralised, however, that it was only ten years ago that America's "oldest ally" was so utterly out of favour in the U.S. that, anecdotally, even French Fries themselves were renamed in some quarters as a sign of national disapproval.

All America really needs is a gal who can get him where he's going. Come prom night, he'll be with the girl who can drive him to the gym, and he always dances with the person who brung him.

Hurtful though it may be to our generals not to be able to spill blood in the interests of the special relationship right now, there's no reason to believe that the opportunity will not crop up again soon.

Not With A Bang

As much of the world breathes an unnecessary sigh of relief that the Mayan Apocalypse did not come to fruition, at least one person in the United Kingdom must be wishing that it had. But unfortunately for David Cameron, he really does have to lead the government right up to the next election and (one suspects) not a second longer.

Rarely can John Lennon's perennial inquiry "And so this is Christmas and what have you done?" resounded more reproachfully in a British politician's ears.

Now, Sordel must acknowledge from the off that Gordon Brown did little more of any actual value, but at least he must have been fully occupied by whimpering, chewing his nails, mopping his nose with a dirty handkerchief and, of course, holding his breath when anyone came into his office looking for him.

Cameron, however, seems to be completely idle. Which is perhaps hardly surprising that he has no money to do anything. If he had an elder sister looking for some quality smooching time with her boyfriend, she would have to advance him the tuppeny bit to get himself down the pictures and take the long way home. Rarely has someone of high net worth been so administratively down on his uppers.

The measure of the situation is perhaps given by the way the government approaches problems these days. Rather than actually read the Leveson Report, for example, Cameron came straight out and said that he was not minded to legislate on it, but would the press please come up with their own ideas?

Faced with tax evasion by big corporations, the government did not actually attempt to close tax loopholes, but instead invited the British Public to shame those corporations into paying up.

Defeated by the complexities of the education system, the government now encourages people to set up their own local schools, and hospitals cannot be far behind. Indeed, if its relationship with the police continues in the direction it has been taking, it won't be long before social order is delivered by posse.

Perhaps not all of this, however, is a bad thing. Upset with civil war in Syria, Cameron wondered aloud who would rid him of this troublesome Assad, but otherwise kept his head down, an approach whose lack of heroic statesmanship is at least offset by a little practicality and humility.

Doing nothing has a virtue all of its own, as demonstrated by the fact that no one at the BBC got into any trouble at all for shelving that Newsnight investigation into Jimmy Savile. Perhaps not doing something is the new doing something.

Personally (and as demonstrated by the thin nutshell pickings of recent months) Sordel feels rather ahead of the fashion in this respect, and welcomes Cameron to join him on the sidelines, where we shout just as much but are not required actually to break a sweat.

Whatever else happened in 2012, we can expect less of it in 2013.