“Oh drink to the paths of sin: I’ve trod ’em
— who doesn’t know what went on in Sodem?
The nymph with the apple? My friend
Ignore her!
But please tell me what went on in Gomorrah?”
From Ehl-e-Library
by Bachchoo
I shan’t be there to collect my winnings, but I bet that some future Indian historian will analyse the fall of the Congress Party as owing not simply to the dynastic inclination that became a pad-padshahi, but to the absolute lack of democracy that allowed this impediment to flourish. The historian will quote in evidence the several breakaways from the party and identify them as failed attempts at trying to bring some democratic procedure to the power equations of the party. He or she could start by pointing at the formation of Swatantra and then Morarji Desai’s breakaway, Sharad Pawar’s, the Bengali revolt and the flight before the Emergency of prominent members.
If nothing else, the Bharatiya Janata Party and the triumph of Narendra Modiji is a very small move towards democratic procedures in national politics. Long may it gestate and develop into something resembling real democratic parties like the Labour Party of the UK. Oh dear, have I put my foot in the mire of Anglophilia? Has my feeble analysis led me to be accused of non-patriotic “sahebgiri”? No way, Akshay! My contention and admiration for the Labour Party’s, albeit hopelessly inadequate, but aspirant procedures is occasioned by this week’s election of Jeremy Corbyn to its leadership.
Mr Corbyn came from nowhere and if bookies’ odds are anything to go by, when his name was first mentioned as a possible successor to Ed Miliband who resigned after Labour’s defeat in May, he was a 500-1. Again, I missed that boat. I should have put a hundred pounds on Mr Corbyn and would have been the proud possessor of — Yes! (minus tax, of course!) The procedures of the Labour Party require an MP to get 20 nominations from other Labour members of Parliament. Then the entire membership of the Labour Party and those who have registered to vote by paying £3 by post or email, vote for their first and second choices. If a candidate gets more than 50 per cent of these votes at the first ballot, he or she wins.
Mr Corbyn didn’t at first have the 20 votes of his colleagues to even get on the ballot paper. Then some wiseacre in the party thought that without a strong left-winger on the ballot the debate that the party had promised the country about its future would be unbalanced and soppy. The three already nominated MPs were known in one way or the other to be soft on capitalist measures and policies. Some of my friends went so far as to call them Tories in working-class clothing. The wiseacre, not intending in any way to vote for Mr Corbyn in the election went about persuading 19 of his colleagues to put their signatures on Mr Corbyn’s nomination so that they could have a “lefty” on the ballot and widen the debate.
More fools they! As soon as he was nominated, the odds on his winning the leadership fell from 500-1 to 14-1. (Even so, if I’d put my money where my mouth normally is, I would have had a tidy sum to spend on a few cases of good vintage, but alas… Get on with the democratic thing, we don’t want to know about your gambling habits — Ed. — Yaar, bachchey bhukey hein, peyt ki puja-fd.) There took place then what can only be described as a democratic revolt in the general membership of the Labour Party. Within hours of his nomination, Mr Corbyn was polled as the favourite to win the leadership. He was parodied in the press as too old, too far left, a Trotskyite, a rebel, a fool… everything being short of a blood-sucking vampire who ate babies for breakfast.
What had poor Mr Corbyn done? In his mild-mannered non-confrontational way he had set out his policies: he wants to re-nationalise the railways, to stop spending money on nuclear submarines, to use Keynesian methods to build more cheap houses, to abolish university fees for students and make universities free again, to stop the tax dodgers from hoarding money abroad, to take measures to prevent London being bought up by Russian oligarchs and Arab billionaires, to start a proper debate on Britain’s membership of Nato, to reform the House of Lords, to prevent the Tory government from cutting the subsidies that the poorest in society get — and very much more. His manifesto was seen as the only opposition to the policies of the Tories, a wind of fresh thinking and an upholding of the values that Labour once espoused.
The denigration of Mr Corbyn in the press and the media carried on, but had no effect on his popularity with the Labour voters. He won the ballot by 60 per cent of the vote in the first round. His followers began to call him JC — initials usually reserved for the son of God. JC ran into his first row when he appointed his shadow Cabinet — the party’s spokesmen and women who would “shadow” government ministers and departments. He appointed a gender-balanced shadow Cabinet but was accused of giving the “important” posts of shadow chancellor, home secretary and foreign secretary to men. His staff replied that these would no longer be the important ministries — health, education and the ministries that dealt with lives rather than laws would!
Then, as Leader of the Opposition and potential Prime Minister, JC attended a ceremony to commemorate the Second World War Battle of Britain in which the Royal Air Force fought off a German air attack. He wore a red tie but left his top shirt button undone and then when the Prime Minister and other grandees sang the national anthem, JC kept his mouth shut refusing to call on God to save the Queen. His symbolic Republican revolt wasn’t popular. In Britain, republicans shouldn’t keep their mouths shut!
